Every AIR leader begins somewhere. For some, it starts with a colleague recognizing their potential. For others, it begins with a personal decision to step forward, contribute to the profession, and serve a community tha...

Building a retention watchlist that staff can actually useRetention models often produce more names than a student-success team can reasonably review. At that point, a technically strong model can still fail as a decisio...

Anyone who has coded open-ended survey data knows the frustration of a response that signals something important but does not provide enough detail to inform action. A student might share, “The sessions weren&rsquo...

The Association for Institutional Research (AIR) has joined the American Council on Education (ACE) and more than a dozen other higher education associations in a comment letter on the U.S. Department of Education's prop...

AIR has heard from institutions with questions about how prior-year Financial Value Transparency/Gainful Employment (FVT/GE) reporting affects their ability to complete the current reporting cycle through the National St...

The fall 2026-27 collection for the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) opened September 16, 2026. A few support resources are new this cycle, so keyholders will want to get oriented before the fall de...

The U.S. Department of Education has filed its supplemental explanation of the Admissions and Consumer Transparency Supplement (ACTS), the step a federal court required when it sent the survey back to the agency in Augus...

The U.S. Department of Education recently announced that more than 1,900 institutions have not reported or have underreported data required under the Financial Value Transparency and Gainful Employment (FVT/GE) regulatio...

The Challenge If you search through a bookstore, a video tutorial library, or your favorite search engine for ideas on being more productive, you will find more content than you could possibly digest. I know this be...

Excel is a core tool for Institutional Research and Effectiveness (IR/IE) offices, but small friction points may disrupt your concentration and break your workflow. As it’s easy to miss useful features amongst the ...

For me, the most rewarding part of IR is seeing the direct, real-world impact data has on student success initiatives and support programs—especially those serving diverse and marginalized students. Some of my favo...

On August 14, AIR submitted comments on IPEDS Technical Review Panel (TRP) #72, urging NCES to recognize that high-quality IPEDS data depend on both strong institutional practices and federal reporting processes that set...

Not sure where to start with FVT/GE and STATS reporting? This AIR-prepared checklist walks institutions through every phase to prepare for the October 1, 2026 reporting deadline — covering the early-implementation ...

A federal court has sent the Admissions and Consumer Transparency Supplement (ACTS) back to the U.S. Department of Education for further explanation, while leaving in place an injunction that pauses reporting deadlines f...

Federal earnings data are playing an increasingly important role in higher education — in federal accountability policy, consumer information, research, and institutional decision-making. The new Student Tuition an...

A U.S. Senate committee has advanced the College Transparency Act (CTA), a bill that would overturn the longstanding federal ban on a student-level data network. The committee voted 21 to 1 on August 5, 2026, to move the...

Below you'll find the complete set of materials from the Program Accountability Reporting webinar: the full recording, the presentation slides, a curated Q&A summary organized by topic, and a list of resources mentio...

A summary of the latest IPEDS Technical Review Panel (TRP 72), IPEDS Data Quality: Practices, Strategies, and Structures to Support High-Quality Submissions, is now available for public review. The comment period remains...

A practical guide for researchers and Institutional Research (IR) professionals navigating the AI-assisted analysis landscapeAs universities increasingly provide access to large language models (LLMs) for faculty, studen...

Every year, Association for Institutional Research (AIR) members are encouraged to nominate themselves or a colleague for leadership opportunities. Yet many members hesitate—not because they lack the qualifications...