Institutional Effectiveness Today One is not trained to be an institutional researcher, but rather becomes an institutional researcher. The Wikipedia page for Institutional Research suggests, in the section labeled, “Becoming an Institutional Researcher,” that “[t]here is no single academic degree that qualifies one to be an institutional researcher….”[1] Although mostContinue Reading
Facts and Myths Few tasks are more like the torture of Sisyphus than institutional reporting in higher education: in its repetitious cycle, the forms annually emptied, the blank cells filled routinely, year after year, submission by submission. In response to what many regard as the irredeemable chore of external submissions,Continue Reading
The Fundamental Nature of Tuition-Dependent Institutions “Colleges and universities, whether public or private,” Gabriel E. Kaplan stresses, “are embedded within market and political environments that place certain [external] demands and expectations” on higher education executives and internal constituents.[1] In that respect, the fundamental nature of tuition-dependent colleges and universities reflectsContinue Reading
A Practical Discovery about Tuition Discount Rates Among the many bytes of data driving decision making in institutions of higher education, the tuition discount rate, or “tuition discounting,” invites some of the most voluminous and discomfiting commentary in the public space. As the Google Ngram Chart below shows, tuition discountingContinue Reading
Introduction to a Decisive Matter A common vogue in education for some time, as an occasional paper by the Rand Corporation from nearly ten years ago attests, education leaders often assert that data-driven or evidence-based decision-making is improving the operations of their institutions and the outcomes of their students. DespiteContinue Reading
