My book, "Creating Entrepreneurial Universities", based on mid-1990s research in five European universities, set forth five "pathways of transformation" by which public universities assume a highly proactive stance. On the basis of further research that tracks developments in these institutions during the late 1990s, this paper…

The use of geographic information systems (GIS) has seen a steady increase since the first PC-based GIS software was developed in the latter half of the 1980s. Prior to that, GIS was run on mainframe computers and was a relatively crude and arcane technology by today's standards. This chapter introduces key concepts, tools, data sources, and types…

This chapter shows how institutional researchers can make use of geographic information systems (GIS) to improve the quality of their surveys and extract more information from their results. GIS can contribute to at least three stages of the survey process: (1) survey design (through a better understanding of the population being surveyed); (2)…

This brief document includes the American Association of Community Colleges (AACC) mission statement, information about AACC as an organization, AACC departments, contacts, annual revenues and expenditures for 2005. Also included is a community college facts "at a glance" section, which provides statistics on the number and type of colleges,…

The authors provide an overview of data mining, giving special attention to the relationship between data mining and statistics to unravel some misunderstandings about the two techniques. (Contains 1 figure.)

As a tour de force, data mining is likely to gain wider use in the next few years. To facilitate this transition, we make several recommendations addressed to both institutional research professionals and the Association of Institutional Research.

This article begins with an introduction to the context and general situation of transnational higher education (TNHE) in Asia, especially in East and Southeast Asia. It then examines development of TNHE in some selected Asian countries from different perspectives and provides a detailed description of TNHE in China. The article concludes by…

This article identifies the types of legal issues that result from technological change and discusses the different institutions involved in resolving those problems. It demonstrates that, despite the focus on political solutions, other institutions also have a role to play in solving legal dilemmas presented by technological change. Legislation…

Action research can play an important role in institutional research endeavors to improve the quality of organizational performance in higher education. This article outlines how the action research perspective informed a research design that integrated fragmented and isolated student success initiatives at a large urban two-year institution where…

We need to complicate current accounts of critical pedagogy by examining how educational institutions beyond traditional classrooms have served progressive movements. One example was the Sea Island Citizenship Schools. By examining the latter's history, we also become better aware of how the education-related work of the American civil rights…

This paper reports on a commissioned research project to evaluate the impact of support (mainly funding) given by the UK Government's National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts (NESTA) to various projects under the general heading of "science learning" over a four-year period (2000-2004). Findings emerging from the study…

Institutional research (IR) in Latin America is experiencing dramatic growth due, in no small measure, to the need for quality assurance in educational institutions developing trained workforces for emerging economies. Quality can be assured only where it can be measured, and that is at the core of institutional research in countries to the south…

Considering accountability, affordability, and access through the experiences in Chile, East Asia, Australia, Croatia, and the United States offers a clear reminder that trends and issues in higher education are often more similar across national contexts than they are distinct. Across higher education, institutions and systems are responding to…

To properly evaluate the financial contributions of each revenue source, institutional researchers must use key economic concepts in their work. (Contains 1 table and 2 figures.)

The author applies strategic response theory to develop hypotheses about the type of response that public colleges and universities will exhibit as a consequence of state policies to encourage the scholarship of teaching, discovery, and application. (Contains 2 tables.)