Institutional Research Units in Higher Education Institutions in South Africa

Institutional research utilisation and issues of legitimacy: Perspectives from practitioners at selected traditional universities

“…The second tier requires practitioners to have substantive management knowledge in four areas: students, staff, facilities and finances (issues intelligence) and finally, the third tier requires practitioners to have knowledge of the broader history and culture of higher education as well as the skills to adapt to the rapid progress in information technologies (contextual intelligence). While Muller, Langa and Dlamini (2016) demonstrated how IR practitioner skills and knowledge in South African universities seem to be largely limited to Terenzini's (2013) Tier 1 (technical/analytical intelligence), our research is suggesting that IR units are maturing and in at least one of the institutions we analysed the IR practitioners are already beginning to demonstrate contextual intelligence (Tier 3). Interestingly, this IR unit is also positioned closely to the primary decision-makers in the university (namely, Vice-Chancellor's office).…”

Historical perspectives on research on higher education, institutional research and research utilisation

“…student enrolments and graduations) to the national Department of Higher Education and Training. In many institutions the IR offices (or similar offices with different names, such as Planning Office, or Office for Institutional Effectiveness or Quality Assurance Office) also assumed responsibility for the support of quality assurance activities (such as institutional audits and programme accreditation) through the provision of institutional data for quality assurance purposes (Muller, Langa & Dlamini, 2016). Against the back-drop of globalisation and global standardisation of higher education, higher education institutions do not only have to meet the national excellence and quality assurance requirements, they also have to meet, where applicable, the requirements of global accrediting agencies (Webber & Calderon, 2015).…”

Higher education access in South Africa for students with criminal records

“…This includes how institutions of higher learning deal with student data since application forms in these institutions do not provide information about how requested data is handled. Compliance with the Act would require centralising the storage of such sensitive information (criminal history) in addition to the information gathered from all students subject to the student administration or any institutional research unit/department 61 . These staff members are trained in the ethics of data management in accordance with national and institutional policies to ensure clarity on restrictions and thus the necessary clearance steps for staff members to access such information.…”