Primary Research Group has published Survey of Assessment Practices in Higher Education, 2014 Edition, ISBN 978-1-57440-292-6.

The study is based on data from 50+ North American colleges with data broken out by size and type of college, level of tuition and public/private status. The report covers institutional requirements for departmental assessment plans, policies on both faculty and student assessment, standardized test administration, outreach to students for assessment purposes, graduation requirements, and the institutional politics around assessment issues. The report also gives key benchmarking data on the size and budget of the college assessment office, or other office that performs similar functions. The study helps college administrators to answer questions such as: what are colleges doing in student and faculty assessment? What resources are being spent? What have colleges found to be successful? How have their efforts changed in the past few years and how are they likely to change in the future? What kind of assessment technologies and strategies are they finding useful? How are they reacting to new pressures from the Federal and state governments to demonstrate effectiveness as educators?

Just a few of the report's main findings are that:

• Colleges in the sample report that a mean of 77.2% of academic departments have developed detailed assessment plans.
• Colleges with more than 12,000 enrolled full-time equivalent students were significantly more likely than others to report that their major academic departments had detailed assessment plans.
• Nearly 62% of colleges sampled had an assessment office.
• Private, BA-granting institutions were far more likely than others to require a standardized test in some major area as a requirement for graduation.
• 20% of the institutions sampled paid their highest ranking assessment office more than $99,000 (USD) annually.

The study is available directly from Primary Research Group and also from major distributors of books and research reports. Print and PDF versions are available for $97.00. Site licenses are also available. For a table of contents, free excerpt, list of survey participants and the questionnaire, or to place an order, visit our website at www.PrimaryResearch.com.