institutional research

Institutional research is a broad category of work done at colleges and universities to inform campus decision making and planning in areas such as admissions, financial aid, curriculum, enrollment management, staffing, student life, finance, facilities, athletics, and alumni relations. Institutional researchers generally collect, analyze, report, and warehouse quantitative and qualitative data on their institution's students, faculty, staff, curriculum and course offerings, and learning outcomes.Institutional researchers are often involved in collecting and reporting information to government bodies like the United States Department of Education's Integrated Post-Secondary Education Data System and to a variety of informational guidebooks for prospective students and their families, such as the annual U.S. News & World Report college and university rankings. Institutional researchers often also share institutional data with one another so that they can compare their own practices and outcomes against those of similar colleges and universities. Organizations that facilitate this sort of cooperation include the Association of American Universities, the Higher Education Data Sharing consortium, the Consortium on Financing Higher Education, the College and University Professional Association for Human Resources, and others. Finally, institutional research is the source of much of the information that colleges and universities provide to regional and national accreditation bodies to document how the institution fulfills the standards for accreditation.[1]
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