When I hear “data and analytics culture,” I immediately think of the work Jason Simon and his team are doing at the University of North Texas (UNT). Jason Simon, Ph.D., Associate Vice President of ...

When I began working in the field of institutional research (IR) in 2010, my daily tasks consisted of completing some externally mandated reports and a few ad hoc internal requests. Today, there are daily data requests, ...

The Admissions Research Consortium (ARC) aims to help colleges understand how the impacts of the pandemic are shaping their incoming classes, and how these impacts might continue to affect college performance outcomes in...

New research from CUPA-HR shows that higher education institutions are in the midst of a talent crisis, as many staff, professionals and administrators are considering other employment opportunities due to dissatisfactio...

NCES has recently published a webpage providing information on the similarities and differences between the three IPEDS surveys components primarily focused on measuring student success: Graduation Rates (GR), Graduation...

The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) published the 2022 Condition of Education, which contains key indicators on all levels of education, labor force outcomes, and international comparisons. Dow...

The AIR community mourns the loss of Alexander Astin, who was a pioneer of student experience research and theories and professor emeritus at the UCLA School of Education & Information Studies. He passed away May 18 ...

Significant ethical scandals are thankfully rare in institutional research and effectiveness (IR/IE). Every few years brings a case of an institution that has deliberately falsified data, usually data for external survey...

Amid the election for our new AIR leaders, I think it is important as you contemplate who to vote for to reflect on the purpose of your vote. I fundamentally believe the leaders we choose are an image of our hope fo...

Institutional Research (IR) professionals intimately understand that good data can facilitate smart decisions. That truth applies to the field of IR, too. The National Survey of IR Offices is the premier source of ...

Congratulations to the latest recipients of the Charles F. Elton Best Paper Award: Qingmin Shi, John R. Crooker, Christina Drum, and Brent M. Drake, University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Their paper, “Investigation of t...

Back in fall 2006, I had barely started my career in the IR/IE field, and our oldest child was starting her first year in Governor’s School in Virginia. One of her assigned books was How to Lie with Statistics by...

The full impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on our students, prospective students, faculty, and staff is not yet known. Institutional research professionals can help support a better understanding of this impact by first r...

When the AIR Board approved the AIR Statement of Ethical Principles in September 2019, COVID-19 wasn't a blip on anyone's radar. Those were halcyon days, when the most popular dashboards tracked student success and enr...

One of the foundational principles of our work in data and analytics is the ethical use of data. In the 2018 AIR National Survey of IR Offices, we asked Office Leaders to evaluate the statement, “Staff adhere to st...

Seven years, nine volumes, and 17 scholarly articles later, Sharron Ronco has retired from her role as editor of AIR Professional File, the association’s scholarly journal. In her volunteer role as editor, Sharro...

As higher education institutions continue to recover from challenges presented by the pandemic, they are forced to grapple with persistent nationwide enrollment declines as well as student perceptions regarding the value...

The leaders I admire most are the ones who are authentic in their values and show us the very best of humanity. Some leaders are elected, appointed, promoted, or even accidently anointed. But the leaders who seem to be c...

Data literacy is the ability to read, work with, analyze, and communicate with data*. As data and analytics professionals, we depend on our stakeholders to have the necessary data literacy skills to consume and use the ...

A new version of DataLab, including an updated and improved PowerStats, is now available. The new DataLab improves the ease-of-use and performance of PowerStats; incorporates the charting functions of QuickStats into Pow...