When budget reductions loom, college administrators obviously feel pressure to make rapid plans for cost-cutting and for ways to enhance institutional efficiency. On many campuses, college leaders look to their various deans for input on cost-cutting and efficiency. No doubt, it’s an excellent idea for the campus president (or chief executive officer-CEO) to consult with all of his/her different department and program managers on such critical matters. However, budget crises place a premium upon the quality of decision making, and one type of staff person on campus should always have a role in assuring that decision-making employs the best information possible. That type of staff person is the institutional researcher (although that individual may officially carry some other job title in the organization chart).

There are a number of reasons why college leaders should use their institutional researchers in these times of budgetary pressure, and why such an approach is itself a “best practice.” Most importantly, the institutional researcher (or IR for brevity) can often help a college identify the most appropriate solution for a given situation. The IR can help to make best practices on campus possible. This is not to say that faculty and department chairs will adopt suboptimal courses of action without the use of the IR. But use of the IR will probably increase the chances that the college leaders will make the best decision possible under the circumstances.

Why Use an IR Person?

Too many observers, the idea of using an IR to help identify best practices in student services (or in other domains on campus), especially during fiscal crises, may seem unreasonable. Don’t IRs just produce reports, crank out statistical analyses, conduct surveys, and read esoteric research journals? How can those tasks help when the college leaders need quick and relevant information in lay (i.e., nontechnical) terms?

The answers may surprise you. IRs do produce reports, crank out statistical analyses, conduct surveys, and read esoteric research journals (and they often do much more). But these are experiences and skills that make the IR valuable to decision makers. Most IRs mentally operate a bank of knowledge, developed from their everyday activities, on a wide span of topics that can factor into budget and program decisions. This bank tends to have deposits of unique information that do not exist elsewhere among faculty, staff or administrators at the college. The multidisciplinary nature of the IR’s knowledge makes that knowledge unique among the personnel on a campus, compounding the value of this deposit. Although IRs tend to have a graduate degree in a specific field such as psychology, education, business administration, political science, and sociology, their jobs often require them to function also as data managers, research consultants, methodology practitioners, experimenters, market(ing) analysts, forecasters (especially for enrollment), and human resource analysts.

Objectivity is Paramount

The IR also offers the college leader a source of objective information and analysis that may play a pivotal role in decisions that traditionally trigger competition between departments for a larger share of dwindling resources. The IR has the capacity to provide that objectivity because he/she has the skill (and often the data as well) to present empirical evidence in support of a particular decision path. From an administrative perspective, many IRs also work in an organizational structure that gives them bureaucratic independence, a factor that can help to assure the objectivity of their analyses. That is, the IR may not report to one of the departments or programs that must fight to defend its budget.

And what can be said about quick and relevant information in lay terms? To a great extent, the modern IR who has had sufficient time and resources for the job can provide quick and relevant information in lay terms. My experiences with modern IRs in the community colleges tend to be “myth-busters.” They defy the stereotype of researchers by delivering relatively prompt responses for requested information in chunks that most audiences can digest (i.e., understand).

A True Applied Researcher

The modern community college IR is a truly applied researcher who probably has a much better grasp of the business, political, and social dimensions of decision needs on campus than the typical academic researcher at a university who must focus his/her energies upon the pursuit of scholarly publications. IRs can usually respond to information requests within a few days (or sooner), especially if their institutions have conscientiously invested in the information systems for decision making (compared to just information systems for compliance) and if the IR has had enough time and background to develop a wide array of analytical skills. It is true that IRs will slip into “research jargon” at times, but any communication from academic deans, faculty, or CEOs will also include a like amount of professional jargon. Furthermore, the ability for IRs to communicate successfully to different audiences does improve as IRs engage in presentations or reports at various conferences—a by-product of professional development strategies that bodies like the RP Group and CAIR (California Association for Institutional Research) have continued to support.

Lots of skill sets

Note that IRs can help college decision makers well beyond the customary analysis of the institution’s administrative data systems. First, IRs have the background in research methodology to evaluate the quality of information—the validity of a particular analysis—before decision makers actually use a specific analysis before them. So IRs can help decision makers avoid the “garbage-in, garbage-out” syndrome that can severely degrade decision making. Second, IRs have the background in data collection to obtain relevant data for decision makers. IRs can often access inventories of existing studies on a topic by either querying online databases, by visiting research libraries, by exploring their own professional resources (their office “libraries”) or by communicating with IR colleagues. If necessary (and time permits), IRs can execute surveys to obtain opinions, ratings, and/or estimates of things. IRs can also provide new and useful information by simulating scenarios (the “what-if” strategy) for decision makers.

You may observe that some colleges have IRs who can do precisely what I have described above (and much more) while some other colleges seem to have much less capacity for institutional research. This too should come as no surprise because institutional research at a college depends heavily upon the philosophy and management style of the college leadership. At some colleges, leaders have decided to do without an IR altogether (largely as their own cost-reduction strategy), but these institutions will also face the steepest challenges in future decision making as well. Where colleges have invested very little in terms of recruitment, selection, hiring, support, and professional development, you may anticipate a commensurate level of capacity with the IRs there. Where high turnover of IRs has occurred (or where the incumbent IR is a very recent hire), the capacity for institutional research may again fall short of the best-case scenarios that other colleges have with IRs of lengthy experience at their institutions. In sum, it is true that the amount of benefit that a college can receive from an IR will depend heavily upon the way that institution has managed its institutional research in the past.

Summary

In closing, if institutional leaders must make critical budgetary decisions, they will need the expertise of institutional researchers to reach the best decisions possible. Under these circumstances, the importance of a good institutional researcher actually rises rather than declines. The cost of decision errors grows rather than diminishes. Put another way, using IRs will help institutions to look for answers in all the right places.

About the Author

Willard Hom has served for about six years as the Director of the Research & Planning Unit at the System Office, California Community Colleges. Before joining the System Office in 1999, he conducted social research for the California Department of Health Services and the California Employment Development Department. He received a B.A. in Political Science from University of California Davis and an M.B.A. from California State University Sacramento.