Kindle Notes & Highlights
five National Institutional Research Forums that led to the creation of AIR
Was the association to be theoretical in nature, intended to contribute to basic understandings of the higher education enterprise, or was it to be concerned with problems of a purely operational nature?
Dyer concludes that both views must be integrated because “either approach if used by itself is almost certain to be sterile; used together they have an outside chance of changing things for the better
arguing for institutional research as an independent force empowered to objectively look into all aspects of an institution, especially the self-study and long-range planning processes
Dressel states: “The basic purpose of institutional research is to probe deeply into the workings of an institution for evidence of weakness or flaws which interfere with the attainment of its purposes or which utilize an undue amount of resources in so doing. In the search for flaws, no function, individual, or unit should be regarded as off limits
More than thirty years ago, Doi (1979) attributed the viability of institutional research to the confluence of actors and events with reciprocal interests, including (1) the regional interstate compacts for higher education, which served as the first advocates for establishing institutional research offices; (2) the spread of state-wide coordination of higher education, from nine states in 1954 to forty-eight states in 1978; and (3) the growth of research into the higher education enterprise and development of instruments of interest to individual institutions by organizations such as the
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