The Study Of Institutional Research In Colleges And Universities

With gradually popularizing and marketing higher education, broadening power of running schools and increasing complexity in management, researchers must care about how to respond to the challenge of complicated management problems. In the case, the decision-maker turn attention to the institutional research which centers on management problems. Institutional research is becoming one important part of higher educational research because it can collect, analyze and report data and information in order to meet the need of higher education change.The paper expatiates the each aspect of institutional research such as concept, history, function, organization, operation and application, describing the practice of institutional research, revealing the important function of institutional research in higher educational management and exploring on the viable method.In order to improve the scientific level of higher institute management in our country and promote the sustainable development of higher education research, we are obliged to learn from the experience and model of American institutional research. Nowadays, the problems that need resolving are: (1) orientate institutional research: orientation must have duality of scientific management and practical theory; (2) enlarge the independent right of opening schools, the development of institutional research requires the administrative drive of governments and schools; (3) review the orientation of higher education research institution in college, update the organizational design higher education research institution so as to guarantee the practice of institutional research in system; (4) quicken the construction of database resources in higher education, develop the relationship in sharing data among different schools, and improve the using level of data; (5)"institutional research"should be brought into postgraduate education, develop the professional degree system like EdD and EdM with Chinese characteristics, cultivate the professional talents fit for the requirements of the positions in institutional research.