The World of Higher Education The Lost Potential of Institutional Research: Insights from 'Outsourcing Student Success'
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Nov 14, 2024 Joseph Wyckoff, author of 'Outsourcing Student Success', sheds light on the often-overlooked field of institutional research. He delves into its origins at the University of Illinois and its evolution amid post-WWII expansion. The conversation covers the tension between faculty and institutional researchers, administrators' hesitance to empower IR, and how a deprofessionalization in the field has stifled scholarly growth. Wyckoff also imagines a world where institutional research achieved recognition comparable to librarianship.
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Modern IR Origins In 1918
- Offices of institutional research began around 1918 at the University of Illinois, not as an ancient university practice.
- Joseph Wyckoff traces modern IR to Coleman Griffiths's 1918 Bureau of Institutional Research and later Ruth Eckert's work.
IR Fueled Postwar System Building
- Institutional research expanded during postwar massification and shaped state systems like California's master plan.
- Wyckoff argues IR offices were integral to state-level studies and planning in the mid-20th century.
Faculty Suspicion Undermined IR's Rise
- By the 1960s faculty grew suspicious of IR as a managerial, high-modernist threat to autonomy.
- That suspicion helped shape a narrative that discouraged professionalizing IR as a scientific discipline.