Analytics derived from the student learning environment provide new insights into the collegiate experience; they can be used as a supplement to or, to some extent, in place of traditional surveys. To serve this purpose, however, greater attention must be paid to conceptual frameworks and to advancing institutional systems, activating new…

Efforts to develop common higher education data standards are expanding both within and across countries. The institutional research (IR) community plays a critical role in assuring that these efforts capture the diverse manifestations of the postsecondary and tertiary education systems and promote responsible comparisons. This chapter provides…

One of the many pieces of "consumer information" that the Higher Education Opportunity Act (HEOA) requires the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) to post on its College Navigator website is a student-to-faculty ratio for institutions in the IPEDS universe with undergraduate programs. NCES added the collection of this measure…

The student full-time equivalent (FTE) measure has a long history in U.S. postsecondary education. Credit hours, contact hours, and their derivative FTE have been used as proxies for both student and faculty effort. FTE ultimately became a core measure for planning, evaluating and assessing human resource allocation within higher education.…

This chapter describes how an action research framework facilitates using evaluation and assessment results to improve programs and demonstrate institutional effectiveness. (Contains 1 table.)

The effect of alternative census dates on the determination of student enrollment and retention rates and the accuracy of tuition revenue projections was analyzed at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis. A set of pseudo-extract files was created for the first 8 weeks of two consecutive fall semesters (1993 and 1994). The accuracy of…

The sources and structure of data reported in the annual "Top 100" list of colleges and universities conferring the highest numbers of degrees to students of color are described, and the use of the data to make comparisons between historically black and traditionally white institutions is explained. Some trends in the eight-year history of the…

The sources and structure of data reported in the annual "Top 100" list of colleges and universities conferring the highest numbers of degrees to students of color are described, including the way in which various student categories are reported. (MSE)