This survey is available every three years from the Higher Education Research Institute at UCLA. The last and only time Oberlin participated was in 1996. At that time, only faculty on campus received a survey. This time we mailed the instrument to every faculty whose primary responsibility was teaching regardless of leave status. Although approximately the same number of faculty responded this year, the response rate was 30% which is considerably lower than 1996. There are some indications that the respondents may not be representative of the population so care should be taken in reviewing the results. Completed surveys were mailed directly to HERI and all followup to non-respondents was conducted by the Institute.

Selection of the peer group was limited by participating institutions and those that agreed to share their data. While not a perfect comparison, the peer group consists of four liberal arts colleges against whom we frequently compete for students. Three of them are schools against which we compete on a fairly even basis. The fourth is an institution that draws many more students away from Oberlin than we do from it.