In the US, the university administration runs its own office of ¿insti- tional research¿ in order to base its decisions on systematic information. Furthermore, higher education research can rely on a relatively stable academic basis if study programmes on higher education exist. Again, this is most frequently the case in the United States. Finally, governments and other macro-societal actors sometimes have their own offices or institutes of policy research and prepare the policies of the actors they report to. In addition, research on higher education can be institutionalized in a - riety of ways. Often, research institutes on higher education are quite visible. They were established