Clearly, it is late and I owe apologies to Nick Lowe, Elvis Costello, and any who read further. (Of course, if you read beyond the title, you probably deserve what you get.)

As I walk through IPEDS data
Searching for light in the darkness of insanity
I asked myself as all looked lost
Is there only GRS and CDR?

And each time I feel like this inside
There’s one thing I want to know:
What’s so funny ’bout peace, love, and unit record? oh, oh
What’s so funny ’bout peace, love, and unit record?

And as I think on ratings systems
My spirit gets so down-hearted sometimes
So where are the leaders with trusted data?
And where is the harmony in trusted scores?

‘Cuz each time I feel it slipping way
Just makes me want to cry
What’s so funny ’bout peace, love, and unit record? oh, oh
What’s so funny ’bout peace, love, and unit record?

I feel like I should say more (though no further apologies) to reward you for getting this far. IPEDS-UR is not the solution to everything that ails higher education. By itself, it won’t fix anything. What it can do is improve the institutional-level data that is available for the universe of IPEDS institutions. Just that bit is really not much of an improvement. After all, if we are going to use the same broken and inadequate models of decision-making based on peer comparisons and policy goals set by consultants (that seem to do an awful lot of work for the big foundations providing money for higher ed) then I am not sure things are really going to improve.

There is a lot of potential value in being able to calculate the same measures for all institutions – simply because not all institutions have invested in institutional research. Some are unable to do so because they are simply to small. Doing IPEDS is what counts as institutional research in these places.

IPEDS is NOT institutional research.

So, IPEDS-UR can provide an institutional research service and help institutions clean their data through the submission process. Indeed, this has been very much the case with SCHEV’s student-level collections. For years, the smaller institutions relied on our extensive data edits to clean up their data and used our reports, both those publicly available and those used in the submission process, to meet their campus reporting needs. It is not a bad model  and for that reason alone, IPEDS-UR may be worth it.

‘Cuz each time I feel it slipping way
Just makes me want to cry
What’s so funny ’bout peace, love, and unit record? oh, oh
What’s so funny ’bout peace, love, and unit record?