This final chapter provides observations about institutional research in community colleges derived from the preceding chapters and the issue editors' own experiences. Taken as a whole, the chapters in this issue, as well as the editors' experiences, suggest several observations about institutional research in community colleges. These include the…

System offices for community college institutional research differ in many ways from campus offices for community college institutional research. The other chapters in this volume describe salient characteristics of system IR offices, but many readers may want to see a direct comparison of system IR offices to campus IR offices in the community…

In this chapter, the author looks back at his undergraduate experiences and ahead to his own future as an education researcher. He also offers recommendations for future research on students of color in STEM. His suggested topics of research include: (1) the factors that compel racial minorities to choose STEM majors; (2) the learning and…

Considering accountability, affordability, and access through the experiences in Chile, East Asia, Australia, Croatia, and the United States offers a clear reminder that trends and issues in higher education are often more similar across national contexts than they are distinct. Across higher education, institutions and systems are responding to…

Research should be judged by the questions asked and the critiques offered.

This chapter serves as a guide for quantitative researchers who seek to approach their research questions critically.

Cross-sectional frameworks, or between-group approaches, in quantitative research in higher education have limitations that hinder what we know about the intersection of race and educational opportunities and outcomes. (Contains 5 figures.)

Most traditional models, frameworks, and findings that apply to the majority of students and faculty do not adequately apply to important subpopulations. The recommendations here will help researchers become more sensitive to the nuances among various educational subgroups, and to pay more attention to outliers.

The path from environmental regulation to sustainable institutions has not been a smooth one. By the 1960s, it was clear that the environment was in trouble, with severe air and water pollution, the casual disposal of toxic waste, mountains of garbage, and the loss of many species of plants and animals. The response was a series of restrictive…

To meet the sustainability challenge, colleges and universities will have to reorient their educational programs. Institutional research (IR) can help assess and demonstrate the success of such initiatives. The change that is required in the way people view the world and their place in it is what the author calls a "sustainable mindset." A…

This chapter introduces the key economic concepts, models, and methods that can help inform institutional research in higher education. (Contains 1 table and 9 figures.)

To properly evaluate the financial contributions of each revenue source, institutional researchers must use key economic concepts in their work. (Contains 1 table and 2 figures.)

Economics provides fertile ground, both theoretical and empirical, for institutional researchers interested in higher education costs. (Contains 1 figure.)

This chapter demonstrates how institutional researchers at institutions of higher education can use economic theory for enrollment management. (Contains 4 figures.)

Economic models of the way in which faculty allocate their time, and the behavior of labor markets, can help inform institutional research on faculty in a variety of ways. (Contains 3 tables and 3 figures.)