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.