How institutional research can improve the quality of institutional performance of colleges and universities in the face of funding constraints is discussed. An example of the use of instructional research to assist in documenting institutional quality in Australia is noted. Institutional research uses data collection, analysis, and interpretation to support planning, management, and decisionmaking. Strategies to improve the quality of outcomes and/or processes during times of limited resources are grouped under the following headings: environmental scanning and reassessing the appropriateness of mission and goals, concentrating resources on selected core activities and processes, phasing out activities seen as weak or peripheral to the institution's mission, improving management and decisionmaking processes, streamlining administrative procedures, enhancing communication and coordination, simplifying organizational structures, developing cooperative and collaborative arrangements for joint programs and shared resource use, and implementing more effective monitoring and review processes. As illustration, it is noted that institutional research is assisting Australian universities to document their achievement of quality for the Committee for Quality Assurance in Higher Education through a 3-year (1993-95) quality review cycle. (SW)