Recent News

Data governance structures in higher education can lead to a lack of understanding of the value of data within an institution. According to the most recent American College President Study, college and un...

We are often asked, "How many staff should our IR/IE office have?" In the 2018 AIR National Survey of Institutional Research Offices, we asked Office Leaders to provide the average staff FTE per type of staff role (see b...

While the office routinely uses Tableau dashboards to share data with the campus community, there are also projects where an infographic may be a more visually compelling alternative. The office has invested in two tools...

Sudden change and its impact on the way we go about business highlight existing challenges and yet can give rise to new opportunities, too. Learn More

There are many features in Microsoft Excel that go unnoticed. One of these features allows you to add flair to your data visualization with relative ease. When creating column charts in Excel, we often utilize the defaul...

Debbie Dailey retired as Director of Institutional Research and Effectiveness at Birmingham-Southern College. Read more about her accomplishments by viewing her 2020 AIR Outstanding Service Award profile.  ...

In these uncertain times you should know that you are not alone. Whether your concerns center around the pandemic, financial constraints, enrollment matters, or social unrest, AIR is here to support you and your work. As...

One of my favorite books is “The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right” by Atul Gawande. In this book, Dr. Gawande explains that in our ever-changing world, many processes are complicated with inter-co...

Whether beginning a new position or continuing in an established one, data and information expectations for Institutional Research (IR) offices continue to expand at an accelerated pace. Open source availability of tools...

New Best Colleges Unpublished Rankings and Excel Data Files Available from U.S. News U.S. News is again providing, free of charge to any institutional researcher, Excel spreadsheets with ranking data that appear in the m...