Planning and Assessment in Higher Education: Demonstrating Institutional Effectiveness is an applied manual on implementing assessment in higher education. It approaches assessment from a practical standpoint including the impact of assessment on multiple aspects and from multiple perspectives in higher education.

The chapters on assessing student life are well thought out and extremely practical. They contain a wealth of information that would be useful for universities that are in various stages of assessment gathering. The chapters on course assessment is less applied. However, Middaugh does include a vast amount of resources to expand your knowledge in course assessment.

One of the strengths of the book is that includes practical information about accreditation, although most specific examples are focused on the Middle States Commission on Higher Education. There is also a huge slant towards using Institutional Research data for assessment purposes. This is great if your university is not utilizing this data, but not as helpful if that is all that your university utilizes.

I would not consider Planning and Assessment in Higher Education to be the only resource that a university needs. Nor does it ever try to be. It is a useful guide that provides a wealth of other resources to pursue depending on the specific need of your university. It is also extremely well written and easy to read. The way Middaugh explained some items, items that I had previously worked on, gave me a fresh understanding of the usefulness and potential.