When Geoffrey Sherington and I set out on our project on the Australian Public University, which culminated in "Sydney: The Making of a Public University" (2012), we wanted to move away from the emphasis of conventional institutional history on chancellors, vice-chancellors and governing councils in order to explore the university as a…

This chapter demonstrates that the effects of good teaching and academic challenge on leadership and psychological well-being during the first year of college differ for African-American and White students, which suggests that institutional researchers should disaggregate data by race or other relevant student characteristics when trying to…

Professions exist to serve the needs of society and, in the case of the dental profession, patients. Academic dental institutions strive to help meet these needs by educating and developing future practitioners, educators, researchers, and citizen leaders who serve the community and shape the changing environment in which they provide care. As…

Transnational collaboration by educational researchers in Europe has grown fast since the mid-1990s and the means to support it have become more easily accessible. A study of the growth of the European Educational Research Association (EERA) since its foundation in the mid-1990s shows how transnational research in European education began, and how…

This paper analyzes the routes of the evaluation of higher education in Brazil, from 1995 until 2010. In 1995, during Fernando Henrique Cardoso's administration, higher education began a process of expansion through private enterprise. At that time, evaluation had a key role. The focus was the evaluation of courses conducted by the Ministry…

This article offers strategies for administrators who struggle to contextualize their writing programs in institutional climates increasingly focused on recruitment and retention, rather than discipline and discovery. As composition scholars negotiate disciplinary and institutional values, there are productive juxtapositions of university mission…

The measures of institutional success are more meaningful through the further realization of the institution's vision and mission and how the institution is supporting its declared values through various initiatives and behaviours. Institutions and their leaders rely on these statements as foundational pillars by which to launch new programs,…

In the last two decades, fundamental changes in information distribution, in the general economy, and in the behaviors of faculty, students, and library staff have problematized the question of an academic library's value and how it can be measured. This article reviews those changes and, drawing on research linked to the Collegiate Learning…

In order to obtain an accreditation, the university management must implement a quality assurance system and be able to document that quality policy and procedures are followed and acted upon as appropriate. One element in this system is monitoring students' satisfaction. In this paper, we describe a method of acquiring the necessary…

This article seeks to evaluate universities against an ideal and finds the modern university gravely wanting in terms of its governance, staff and student relationships, and in the way it delivers its teaching and research. It is corrupted by power relationships, the lack of real accountability of SMTs, the failure to recognise the disciplines and…

Efforts to develop common higher education data standards are expanding both within and across countries. The institutional research (IR) community plays a critical role in assuring that these efforts capture the diverse manifestations of the postsecondary and tertiary education systems and promote responsible comparisons. This chapter provides…

This chapter presents a synthesis of the conceptualization and practice of institutional research (IR) in higher education (HE) in emerging countries across Southern Africa, Latin America and the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) regions. The chapter contextualizes the growing need for IR in these regions, identifies problems and challenges…

The upcoming challenge for higher education institutions (HEIs) globally is how to respond to an increasing variety of societal needs but with fewer public resources and increased accountability demands. In this chapter we draw attention to the central role institutional research (IR) professionals play in positioning HEIs in a competitive and…

Although institutional research has been a significant feature of U.S. higher education for more than 50 years, it is not so well understood in other parts of the world. As higher education around the world faces increasingly challenging times in responding to pressures of massification and globalization, increasing forms of accountability and…

While individuals in each country or part of the world face unique issues, many challenges facing higher education today are similar across the world. The great majority of higher education systems have grown in recent decades, enrolling far more students than they did in prior years and expanding their activities into new spheres such as economic…