ACE and the UCLA
School of Education and Information Studies (UCLA Ed&IS) today announced a
new partnership to strengthen and lead the Higher Education Research Institute
(HERI). ACE will join UCLA in carrying out the current HERI portfolio, and the
two institutions will work together to enhance the institute by 2025.
HERI is a nationally recognized interdisciplinary research
center for assessment, evaluation, information, and policy studies. HERI hosts
the Cooperative Institutional Research Program (CIRP), a national longitudinal
study of the American higher education system that is regarded as the most
comprehensive source of information on college students. Originally established
at ACE in 1966 and administered by HERI since 1973, CIRP is the nation’s
largest and oldest empirical study of higher education. The study includes data
on more than 1,900 institutions, over 15 million students, and more than
300,000 faculty. The CIRP longitudinal program produces a noted series of research
reports including The Freshman Survey, Your First College Year Survey, Diverse
Learning Environments Survey, and the College Senior Survey.
Since 2022, HERI surveys and research have been
managed by the National Center for Research on Evaluation, Standards, and Student
Testing (CRESST) at UCLA Ed&IS. For more than five decades, CRESST has delivered
high-quality research, assessment design and implementation, and measurement and
statistical innovation that informs teaching and learning. CRESST is driving
the next generation of psychometric, statistical, and computational models and
approaches to improve data analyses and evidence-based inferences across
diverse educational settings including higher education. Led by Ed&IS faculty,
CRESST will play a key role in shaping the future of HERI.
“ACE is tremendously excited to work with UCLA
Ed&IS to build on the groundbreaking work it has already achieved,” ACE
President Ted Mitchell said. “As a trailblazer in higher education research, HERI
has produced crucial findings on the students attending college and informed higher
education leaders about the students they serve. We look forward to working
with UCLA Ed&IS to further this mission.”
“UCLA Ed&IS is so pleased to join forces with
ACE,” the Wasserman Dean and UCLA Ed&IS professor Tina Christie said. “Our
partnership will strengthen the impact of HERI as an essential report on the
state of students in higher education and to best serve our institutions of
higher education.”
Over the next year, ACE and UCLA will work together
to advance HERI and its intellectual and practical impact. UCLA will continue
to manage and administer existing surveys, and the two partners will produce new
HERI survey reports, including a report on data from The Freshman Survey. As
the partnership develops, ACE will take on more active and coordinated roles in
survey outreach and recruitment efforts, starting with the 2024 survey cycle.
ACE’s partnership with UCLA adds a critical element
to the Council’s expansive
research portfolio. ACE has long been a national leader in
faculty- and president-level data collection and research in higher education,
and this partnership will expand the scope to students, enabling it to study nearly
every facet of higher education.
“HERI has long been the prominent institute researching
all aspects of the millions of students who pursue postsecondary education,”
said Hironao Okahana, assistant vice president and executive director of ACE’s
Education Futures Lab. “This partnership will bolster the research we conduct
by adding a transformative component to our work. We could not be more thrilled
to join forces with UCLA Ed&IS in pursuit of supporting higher education
institutions and the students they serve.”
“We are very excited to envision HERI’s future with
ACE,” CRESST Director Li Cai said. “This is an opportunity to elevate and
expand HERI’s research in new ways for new purposes. With the extensive
capacity and expertise of ACE and CRESST’s knowledge of assessment and
methodology, we see HERI growing into an even more impactful and influential
source of evidence in higher education and beyond.”