The purpose of this project is to explore the limitations of federal postsecondary data as data as those data relate to Indigenous students and to Tribal Colleges and Universities. After first establishing some of the statistical limitations we commonly find in postsecondary data with Indigenous students, we provide strategies and practices that…

Accelerating advancements in learning analytics and artificial intelligence (AI) offers unprecedented opportunities for improving educational experiences. Without including students' perspectives, however, there is a potential for these advancements to inadvertently marginalize or harm the very individuals these technologies aim to support. This…

Although student advising is known to improve student success, its application is often inadequate in institutions that are resource constrained. Given recent advances in large language models (LLMs) such as Chat Generative Pre-trained Transformer (ChatGPT), automated approaches such as the AutoScholar Advisor system affords viable alternatives to…

Creating a welcoming community is key for an academic environment to thrive. This approach includes accurately representing community members' identities to understand their experiences, and establishing procedures for recording and utilizing individuals' names to support their ability to express their identities freely and without fear of…

Survey methodology is the dominant approach among universities in the United States for reporting employment outcomes for recent graduates. However, past studies have shown that survey methodology may yield upwardly biased results, which can result in overreporting of employment rates and salary outcomes. This case study describes the development…

A commonly used metric for measuring college costs, drawn from data in the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS), is expenditure per full-time equivalent (FTE) student. This article discusses an error in this per FTE calculation when using IPEDS data, especially with regard to community colleges. The problem is that expenditures…

Several authors (Bowman & Denson, 2014; Gilbreath et al., 2011) have claimed that measures of fit between a student and the institution they are attending should be useful for institutional decision-making. These student-institution fit instruments were originally developed for research with specific student populations in one institution, but…

The main purpose of institutional research (IR) is to provide objective, systematic, and thorough data that support an institution's enrollment goals, planning, policy formation, and decision making. Traditionally, institutions gathered data on their activities, students and staff, programs, management, and operations. University staff then…

Higher education leaders have repeatedly called for improved diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts, but many institutions continue to fall short. Data can play an integral role in this work; key among them are data on student demographics, including race/ethnicity. Meeting diversity, equity, and inclusion goals requires a thorough and nuanced…

Inclusivity in data reports for undocumented students can be difficult to achieve. By nature of those students' status and livelihood, there is contention among academics and practitioners on whether this is a population that should not be formally tracked or identified, for a variety of reasons. Concerns about tracking arise because of the…

Higher education institutions in the United States have collected and analyzed data for decades. From mandatory reporting for state and federal compliance to ad hoc reporting for internal and external stakeholders, there are myriad business purposes for which administrators, staff, and faculty routinely gather data. As more colleges and…