The Handbook of Institutional Research

by Richard D. Howard

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 Educational Testing Service, American College Testing Program, or the National Center for Higher Education Management Systems (NCHEMS); and (4) the growth of graduate programs in higher education whose professors expand the perspectives of institutional research practitioners, and whose academic departments occasionally provide a home base for practitioners who seek a more contemplative life later in their careers.