B ECAUSE of a growing concern about the quality of higher education in the United States, increased attention has been given in recent years to the evaluation of colleges and universities. Evaluation studies have been conducted by accrediting groups, educational organizations, interested individuals and, especially, by institutions themselves. Many colleges and universities have made self-studies, not only in the interest of quality in higher education, but also to aid in longrange planning. The establishment of bureaus of institutional research and the support provided by foundations have stimulated additional interest in the problem. Despite the interest in institutional evaluation, the results thus far fall short of expectations. Although the findings of self-studies in many cases have been useful to the local institution, they have not developed principles of evaluation which would have wide application. In accrediting, evaluation plays a central role, particularly in the process of determining the degree of quality which separates the acceptable from the ''not quite acceptable." The principal techniques used by accrediting agencies in the evaluation of colleges and universities are the personal interview and the questionnaire. Institutions have been required to supply an extensive body of information by answering questions put to them in oral or written form; and their educational quality has been judged in large part on the basis of the information collected by means of these two data-gathering devices. To be sure, the interview and questionnaire are essential tools in institutional evaluation, but experience in counseling and personnel work has shown that, particularly in predicting success, other measuring instruments, such as tests, are usually more effective in assessing the aptitudes, interests, and achievements of individuals than are the interview and related observational procedures.' One wonders, therefore, how much time, money, and energy are wasted each year by excessive reliance on personal visits of accrediting teams when better data could possibly be collected by the use of other measurement techniques. If it is granted that the interview and questionnaire are not adequate techniques for gathering data, what other methods are satisfactory? One must recognize that evaluation proceeds from certain assumptions. The writer, with many others, believes that an educational institution