This is the final report in Casey's "Closing the Achievement Gap" series that highlights stories, results, and lessons learned from more than a decade of education investing. This publication presents an overview of the Foundation's support to four organizations, each of which targeted technical assistance to a specific audience. It summarizes…

Quality measurement is essential in every form of research, including institutional research and assessment. Unfortunately, most survey research today (both published and unpublished) is lacking with regards to quality measurement. Reporting means and standard deviations based on ordinal measures is an inappropriate, yet widespread practice in the…

In this paper, the author summarizes the role and contributions of the scholarship and institutional research about student engagement and its relevance for student development professionals and others committed to enhancing the quality of the undergraduate experience. The presentation is organized into four major sections. First, the author…

Lourdes College is a small, private, coeducational commuter college located in northwest Ohio. In early 2009, the Lourdes College Board of Trustees ratified a new strategic plan promoting institutional strength and sustainability over the next six years. The desired outcome was to make Lourdes College a stronger, more vibrant, even more socially…

The recognition of prior learning (RPL) is a cornerstone of the lifelong learning policies of most developed nations. Yet the scholarly view in Australia has been that, unlike other post-compulsory education sectors, universities have erected barriers to limit the development of RPL. This paper re-examines the current policy environment and finds…

Evaluative statements from alumni have legitimacy with both internal and external stakeholders. Thus, alumni studies can provide valuable evidence of institutional effectiveness and lend themselves to both locally designed and commercial survey instruments for data collection. Under ideal conditions, the results of alumni studies equip faculty and…

Career Academies are small learning communities established at the high school level that use career strands as an organizing framework for learning and instruction, as well as for engaging the interest and energies of students. Standards common to well-designed Career Academy: (1) Central goal of preparing students for higher education and…

Nationally, state spending for public higher education has been declining as a proportion of state general fund expenditures. Traditionally state-appropriated budgets for public colleges and universities tend to be cut during times of economic crisis, but often these funds are not always restored once the crisis has passed. As a result "the…

Institutions that have organized and centralized their data enjoy an obvious advantage in grappling with strategic planning and other issues. As the drumbeat for accountability, planning, and demonstrating effectiveness to internal and external stakeholders intensifies, the stature and importance of institutional research offices on most campuses…

Purpose: The paper's aims is to explore the relationship between having a complete strategic focus and the extent of the internationalisation of university business schools and the level of desire for the future internationalisation and to further validate the model of internationalisation. Design/methodology/approach: Data were collected for…

This paper provides an overview of the issue of student anonymity in the summative assessment of student work in higher education. It considers both theoretical literature pertaining to bias in the evaluation of the work of others and the limited empirical work undertaken on this issue in higher education. It then describes the experience of three…

This article explores the extent to which primary school headteachers are prepared for the increasing contribution that self-evaluation is now expected to make to raising standards. Data were collected from headteachers in one local authority in England using a questionnaire and a number of semi-structured interviews. The findings indicate that…

Modern organizations such as institutions of higher education characteristically include various administrative offices that gather and maintain records on employees and applicants for employment as part of their normal course of business. The objective of such record keeping is generally that of promoting efficient and effective management of an…

This article reviews multiple regression analysis, describes how its results should be interpreted, and instructs institutional researchers on how to conduct such analyses using an example focused on faculty pay equity between men and women. The use of multiple regression analysis will be presented as a method with which to compare salaries of…

The purpose of this research is to employ a theoretical perspective to better understand and recognize the role of institutional culture within the civic responsibility movement in higher education. A three-part conceptual framework (Swidler, 1986) is used to investigate the influence of culture on civic responsibility at two research…