Book excerpt: American higher education faces a challenging environment. Decreasing state appropriations, rising costs, and tightening budgets have left American colleges and universities scrambling to achieve their missions with ever more limited resources. Campus leaders have therefore increasingly relied upon institutional research and strategic planning departments to make transparent and rational decisions and to promote good stewardship of critical but finite resources. Institutional Research Initiatives in Higher Education illustrates the wealth of institutional research activities occurring in American higher education. Featuring chapters by a prominent mix of authors representing community colleges, traditional undergraduate institutions, land grant institutions, research and flagship universities, and state agencies, this book provides numerous insights into the contemporary challenges, innovative programs, and best practices in institutional research. With contributors from a variety of regions and types of institutions, each chapter provides rigorous analysis of campus-based research activities in areas such as strategic planning, admissions and enrollment management, assessment and compliance, and financial planning and budgeting. Like the departments it studies, Institutional Research Initiatives in Higher Education is an invaluable resource for university administrators, researchers, and policymakers alike.