Colleges and universities have engaged in a bewildering succession of reform efforts to improve institutional performance and student success in higher education since the 1960s, with little success. After more than fifty years of seeking solutions internally, institutions are turning more and more to outside, for-profit firms to do it for them—raising important questions about the mission and the future of higher education. The history of institutional research provides an important perspective on the inability of higher education executives to deliver fully on the promise of data based decision-making at American colleges and universities. Since its inception in the early twentieth century, the institutional research profession has sought to advance modern management techniques, data analytics, and knowledge about what works in college student success. The profession's struggle to spur reform has contributed to the ongoing crisis in US higher education and the recent turn to outsourcing student success solutions to private sector vendors of data science. An independent and critical analysis of the history of institutional research in higher education administration, this book explores the history of the profession from the early twentieth century to the present and the culture of non-accountability that rose in opposition to forestall research on higher education. The narrative delivers a cautionary tale for those carrying forward the mantle of higher education reform and reveals to policy makers, administrators, faculty, students and families the reasons why the data that institutions collect, analyze, and publicize have not advanced college student success.