When resources are plentiful most enterprises flourish, including higher education, and the need for making difficult management decisions is not so pressing. In the late 1960's and early 1970's competing priorities for available resources, demographic forecasts of sharply declining enrollments among traditional college age populations, and public debate about the benefits of higher education have brought about an increased awareness that higher education institutions require effective management. Skepticism about employing quantitative management techniques to measure the essentially qualitative process of higher education has resulted in increased external pressures for better accountability methods. This has prompted higher educational institutions to try a variety of quantitative management approaches that draw on fields such as economics, mathematics, statistics, engineering, information science, and psychometrics. The higher education manager must continually seek to blend the universe of human values, preferences, aspirations, and interpersonal dynamics with the universe of things, facts, dollars, resources, and constraints. The educational research community must provide conceptual leadership in the development of appropriate measurement techniques or the void will be filled by those who have less understanding and support for education's intrinsic goals. (Editor)