This chapter addresses how IR/IE both responds to and leads in our institutions and across higher education in measuring and improving student success. We introduce a new student success measurement framework in the context of internal and external facing needs, we define the importance of actionable information to inform decision-making, and we…

Contemporary students have a varied set of needs--the "lifecycle" of a typical student may no longer be 4 years of continuous enrollment between the ages of 18 and 22, and many students bring rich and varied experiences with them to college. As institutions strive to allocate resources in ways that provide the most benefit to student…

Community colleges and minority serving institutions play important roles in the U.S. higher education system. These open and predominantly broad access institutions serve more first-generation, low-income, post-traditional, and racially and ethnically diverse student populations than any other sector. Institutional leaders will increasingly need…

This chapter puts forth a model of student-success-focused policy development at small colleges that elucidates the role of the institutional research (IR) professional, highlighting how the breadth of roles and responsibilities that IR professionals serve at these institutions intersect with traditional training and background.

This chapter demonstrates that the effects of good teaching and academic challenge on leadership and psychological well-being during the first year of college differ for African-American and White students, which suggests that institutional researchers should disaggregate data by race or other relevant student characteristics when trying to…

Although their structures and funding sources differ, Research I institutions and small liberal arts colleges share the same goal of helping students master the knowledge and skills that will enable them to become informed citizens who are able to contribute effectively a democratic society. But how can this transformation be achieved, and what…

From the excesses of Wall Street to the whole mortgage mess, the issue of accountability has become part of a heated national conversation. It is a debate to which higher education is certainly no stranger. But now, with tuition rates at private and public schools rising precipitously--and state budgets shriveling--the cries for increased…

Over the last few decades, college admission rates for Latinos have increased. However, the achievement gap between Latino students and other ethnic groups remains wide. Peer mentorship programs have shared in some degree of success in promoting the academic success of diverse and underrepresented student populations. Despite the growing…

This article discusses the growth and current state of learning communities (LCs) in higher education. It reviews literature on the impact of LCs, highlighting a sample of single-institution studies and describing results from multi-institutional studies. LCs have been a growing movement aimed at educational reform for decades, and evidence…

The origins of institutional effectiveness are traced, its evolution within community colleges is described, the use of the term "institutional effectiveness" is analyzed, and a practical, operational definition of the term is presented. The author hopes that this definition and the discussion in this article prove useful to community college…

How can it be that 50 years after the passage of the Civil Rights Act, our institutions of higher education have still not found ways of reducing the higher education gaps for racial and ethnic groups? That is the question that informs and animates the Equity Scorecard model of organizational change. It shifts institutions' focus from what…

In 1989, John S. and James L. Knight established the Knight Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics. Although it has no regulatory authority or oversight responsibilities, the Knight Commission's periodic reports are widely read and taken into account by decision-making bodies. Beginning in 1991, the Knight Commission called for greater faculty…

Relatively inexpensive studies that go beyond the boundaries of individual institutions have considerable attraction, particularly at a time when resources are under significant constraint. These studies can be viewed as existing under the rather larger umbrella of "supra-institutional research". Three examples illustrate the argument…

This chapter describes the development of a state-level student tracking system that enables the state and institutions to follow various cohort types of students across institutional boundaries. The system was developed by the Policy Research and Data Warehousing section of the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia (SCHEV). SCHEV is the…

This document is intended for leaders and decision makers who work with community colleges at the classroom, college, and system level. Readers will find an overview of the purpose, activities, findings, and recommendations from a three-year project involving 11 California community colleges, undertaken as a partnership between The Carnegie…