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Databank: How to @ NU

Expenditures per Faculty: Peer Comparisons

These data are gathered in support of the NUL Dean of the Libraries' annual collections budget proposal.

The data are pulled from many sources, because there is no one source that can provide what is necessary. Although this situation is not ideal, after many trials and tests the following were found to be the most reliable sources for this project.

Step One - The Institutions

Below are the institutions included in this comparison of NUL's expenditures per faculty.

Comparison libraries -- Law and Medical Faculty and Expenditures need to be Included at this Stage but will be Excluded in the Final Analysis/Chart:

      1. Northwestern
      2. Yale
      3. Columbia
      4. MIT
      5. Duke
      6. Cornell
      7. University of Chicago

Step Two - Faculty Counts

  1. Contact the Office of Institutional Research (IR) to obtain faculty figures.
  2. Request faculty data broken into: All, Law and Medical, for all libraries listed above. Later, the Law and Medical faculty figures will be subtracted from All.
  3. The tables below ("B") should be sent to Institutional Research as reminders of how the data were pulled in the past. It is important to be consistent, in part because the historical data will continue to be used along side with current figures.

A. SOURCES OF DATA USED BY IR

a. IPEDS - Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System: non-NU Total faculty and Medical faculty numbers.
b. AAUDE - Association of American Universities Data Exchange: some Law faculty.
c. Factbooks or Data Books found on institutional websites: Law faculty, all NU faculty, and used to assess other figures. In the case of NU, the NU Data Bank ("Faculty Counts" box) should be used. In other cases, these posted figures were compared to see if they were more or less in line with IPEDS and AAUDE.
 

B. SOURCES USED PER INSTITUTION AND PER DATA POINT

ALL Data Source used by Institutional Research
Chicago IPEDS
Columbia IPEDS
Cornell IPEDS: Use this source because the website does not show full vs part-time.
Duke IPEDS
MIT IPEDS: MIT classifies some of their research faculty differently which would explain low numbers. 
NU Factbook (Data Book)
Yale IPEDS
MEDICAL Data Source used by Institutional Research
Chicago IPEDS
Columbia IPEDS
Cornell IPEDS - Cornell's Weill Medical College is separate from their Ithaca campus
Duke IPEDS
MIT No medical school
NU IPEDS
Yale IPEDS
LAW Data Source used by Institutional Research
Chicago AAUDE
Columbia Factbook and AAUDE
Cornell Factbook and AAUDE
Duke AAUDE
MIT No law school
NU Factbook (Data Book)
Yale AAUDE

Step Three - Library Expenditures & Final Calculations

All library expenditures data are taken from the publication ARL Statistics (online). It is necessary to pull data from the main libraries, medical and law surveys.

   1. Subtract medical and law library expenditures from the total listed on the overall ARL survey.

   2. Divide by the number of non-medical/non-law faculty.

Example:
   1. Office of IR provides total faculty numbers and Medical faculty counts reported in IPEDS for Columbia University.
   2. IR provides law faculty numbers from AAUDE, compared with their Factbook, for Columbia University.
   3. ERaCA subtracts Columbia's law and medical faculty from the total reported by IPEDS.
   4. ERaCA pulls from ARL the total library expenditures data for Columbia University libraries as well as expenditure data reported in ARL's law and medical surveys.
   5. ERaCA subtracts law and medical library expenditures from the total reported in ARL Statistics.
   6. And divides the result by number of faculty.