In the midst of insistent demands for accountability, self-analysis by all educational institutions has become an urgent necessity. Long-range, comprehensive planning is an essential prerequisite for coping effectively with the rapid changes taking place in education, and institutional research is an essential element in such planning. For an…

An effective environmental scan will improve the quality of community college planning and decision making by alerting institutional leaders to the challenges and opportunities in the environment. Scanning can be done in three ways: (1) establishing a scanning committee to gather and synthesize information to guide planning; (2) sponsoring a…

Since the inaugural meeting of the Southeastern Association of Community College Research in 1975, the research conducted at community colleges, as well as the issues facing researchers, have remained fairly constant. Research has been consistently understaffed and the themes of research have tended to focus on relating student progress to…

A study was conducted in January 1981 to assess the level of research activities within the Los Angeles Community College District (LACCD). The study sought to identify the staff and monetary resources allocated to research; the activities in which researchers were involved and the amount of time they devoted to each; and those areas which…

Despite the growing contributions of community college institutes and associations to educational research, most university-based colleges of education still minimize the value of this research and often contain only one professor whose primary interest and/or expertise is community colleges. To address this issue, researchers should make efforts…