#  Program on Higher Education Research 

 



 The Institute for Quantitative Social Science (IQSS) has established a new **Program on Higher Education Research.** IQSS scientific programs focus on areas of inquiry that are of particular interest to faculty directors who enjoy a close working relationship with IQSS administrative, development, and technical staff that provide invaluable infrastructure to researchers.

This new program will conduct and support rigorous research on topics pertaining to higher education. Possible areas of research include:

- **Current indices of academic freedom** – including the ease of talking about difficult subjects or researching controversial questions – have often been based on unrepresentative surveys without taking advantage of modern survey methods. Higher education would benefit from rigorous study of these topics, as well as studies of the causal factors that influence levels of academic freedom in practice.
- **What are practices** across Universities for faculty investigation and discipline, and which influence practice?
- **What are the effects of tenure** on academic freedom and faculty quality? What are some alternatives? What does that do to quality and academic freedom? Governance? Are there alternative institutional arrangements that should be considered?
- **More general topics** of what works to educate our students have also long been of interest but not often studied by Harvard faculty. We hope to lead a research program to change this.

[   ![Council on Academic Freedom at Harvard logo](/sites/g/files/omnuum8171/files/styles/hwp_1_1__720x720_scale/public/harvard-iqss/files/cafh_logo_rgb_small.png?itok=wRebE5ef) 

 ](https://sites.harvard.edu/cafh/)The Program on Higher Education Research will also house the [Council on Academic Freedom at Harvard (CAFH)](https://sites.harvard.edu/cafh/), a Harvard-wide faculty-led group of more than 200 Harvard faculty members, dedicated to the promotion of academic freedom, civil discourse, and viewpoint diversity at Harvard. Every scientific program also involves faculty actively unearthing new directions for empirical research; the Program on Higher Education Research will benefit especially from CAFH via the participation of far more faculty than usual in discussions about new empirical topics to research, study, and analyze.