Institutional Change

Research

Association for Institutional Research
The Association for Institutional Research (AIR) is dedicated to professional growth of all who participate in decision making related to higher education via management research, policy analysis and planning. AIR members work in many different postsecondary areas -- finance, academic affairs, instruction, student services, and institutional development -- and in offices at the international, state, system, or campus levels. The AIR executive office is located at Florida State University. The web site offers internet resources for institutional research in such areas as administration, technology, student affairs, and teaching/research.

Center for Policy Analysis - Internet Sources for Higher Education Policy and Research Topics
A program of the American Council on Education (ACE)'s Division of Programs and Analysis, the Center for Policy Analysis provides a list of Internet resources, including higher education and other educational associations; educational journals and other publications; educational research, policy centers, and institutes; general information on colleges and universities on topics of comparative and other information about U.S. colleges and of historically black and minority institutions; and government-funded educational resources.

The Condition of Education, 2001
Published by the National Center for Education Statistics, The Condition of Education summarizes important developments and trends in education using the latest available data. The report, which is required by law, is an indicator report intended for a general audience of readers who are interested in education. The indicators represent a consensus of professional judgment on the most significant national measures of the condition and progress of education for which accurate data are available. The 2001 edition offers a special focus essay on the access, persistence, and success of first-generation students in postsecondary education. The report is available online in PDF format.

The Cooperative Institutional Research Program (CIRP)
The Cooperative Institutional Research Program (CIRP) is a national longitudinal study of the American higher education system that is sponsored by the American Council on Education and the Higher Education Research Institute (HERI) at the University of California, Los Angeles. Established in 1966 at the American Council on Education, the CIRP is the nation's largest and oldest empirical study of higher education and includes the Freshman Survey, College Student Survey, Entering Student Survey, and Faculty Survey.

The Education Review
The Education Review is a freely accessible electronic journal that publishes reviews of recent books in education, covering the entire range of education scholarship and practice. Reviews are archived, and you can receive announcements of the journal's publication by means of a listserv (EDREV). The Education Review is a service of the College of Education at Arizona State University.

Educational Research Online
The Web version of Educational Researcher (ER) is published by the American Educational Research Association (AERA) and contains scholarly articles of general significance to the educational research and development community from a wide range of disciplines. The journal features articles that report, synthesize, review, or analyze scholarly inquiry, with emphasis placed on articles that focus on the interpretation, implication, or significance of research and development work in education.

ERIC Clearinghouse on Higher Education (ERIC-HE)
The Educational Resources Information Center Clearinghouse on Higher Education (ERIC-HE) was established in 1968 at George Washington University's Graduate School of Education and Human Development and is now located at the National Center for Higher Education in Washington, D.C. The ERIC database contains more than 850,000 abstracts of documents and journal articles on education research and practice.

Higher Education Abstracts
Higher Education Abstracts, published by The Claremont Graduate University, is a quarterly compilation of abstracts of journal articles, conference papers, research reports, and books pertaining to college students, faculty, administrators, and related topics in higher education. Formerly College Student Personnel Abstracts, Higher Education Abstracts is the only abstracting publication that focuses solely on higher education and covers all types of literature. HEA covers more than 200 journals in the fields of education, computer sciences, management, psychology, sociology, and law; papers read at meetings of major education and social sciences conferences, and research reports issued by professional organizations, government agencies, and foundations. Coverage includes materials from the United States and Canada and from foreign publications printed in English.

Higher Education Research Institute (HERI)
The Higher Education Research Institute, based in the Graduate School of Education & Information Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles, serves as an interdisciplinary center for research, evaluation, information, policy studies, and research training in postsecondary education. HERI's research program covers such topics as the outcomes of postsecondary education, leadership development, faculty performance, federal and state policy, and educational equity. The Institute's holdings include more than a hundred datasets that are regularly maintained for analysis of postsecondary education. With the American Council on Education, HERI sponsors the Cooperative Institutional Research Program (CIRP). The HERI web site contains the 1999 Freshman Survey Press Release and the 1999 Freshman Survey Executive Summary.

Highlights from the National Opinion Research Center's 1998 Summary Report of Doctorate Recipients
This overview of trends in doctoral degree attainment is based on a National Research Councilsummary of the Survey of Earned Doctorates (SED) and the Survey of Doctorate Recipients (SDR), conducted by the National Opinion Research Center, a non-profit corporation affiliated with the University of Chicago. Amy Castner has provided a summary of some highlights from the most recent survey, published in 1998. For the complete report, see Sanderson, A., B. Dugoni, T. Hoffer, and L. Selfa. Doctorate Recipients from United States Universities: Summary Report 1998. Chicago: National Opinion Research Center, 1999. The report gives the results of data collected in the Survey of Earned Doctorates, conducted for five Federal Agencies, NSF, NIH, USED, and USDA, by NORC.

Measuring Up 2000: The State by State Report Card for Higher Education
This State-By-State Report Card for Higher Education was released November 30, 2000, by the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education, a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization. The report features comprehensive, individual profiles of each state, as well as brief "states-at-a-glance" comparisons. Measuring Up 2000 is based on quantitative measures of performance, and states are evaluated using "A" through "F" grades in five key areas: Preparation, Participation, Affordability, Completion, and Benefits. The study was funded through grants from several foundations.

National Center for Education Statistics (NCES)
Part of the U.S. Department of Education's Office of Educational Research and Improvement, NCES is the primary federal entity for collecting and analyzing data that are related to education in the United States and other nations. The site includes the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS), a comprehensive system of surveys designed to collect data from all primary providers of postsecondary education. IPEDS is built around a series of interrelated surveys to collect institution-level data in such areas as enrollments, program completions, faculty, staff, and finances.

National Education Association's Research Center Update
Issued six times a year, the Update gives brief reports on recent data on faculty and staff. Recent issues have focused on the numbers of part-time faculty, the numbers of tenured faculty, the numbers and categories of support staff, e-mail and privacy, retirement plans of faculty, and research on distance education. The June 2001 issue of Update analyzes faculty tenure data from the Department of Education's National Study of Postsecondary Faculty 1998-99 that show a widening salary gap between tenured and non-tenured faculty. All documents are available in PDF format.

AAC&U offers these resources only as possible models of interest and has not submitted each of them to any substantial peer or quality review. If you have questions about any particular resource, please contact the institution sponsoring it directly.