All of its studies are confidential, and only a few college administrators are granted access to its data.
Clearly, the Consortium on Financing Higher Education is hardly a group that seeks the spotlight.
However, the institutionally supported organization of 31 private colleges and universities -- including all of the Ivy League -- was pushed into the national news a few weeks ago when an internal memo at Harvard analyzing data from a 2002 COFHE student satisfaction study was leaked to The Boston Globe.
The survey found that Harvard ranked 26th out of the 31 COFHE colleges in student satisfaction.
Although the performance of the other 30 COFHE schools -- including Penn -- remains a secret, the group's work has made a significant impact.
"We help universities with long-term strategic planning," COFHE Director of Research Tony Broh said, adding that COFHE's primary function is to gather data and help its member institutions share information efficiently.
COFHE surveys have been especially useful in helping Penn study issues like financial aid and work study, Penn Director of Institutional Research Bernard Lentz said.
Such studies are often used by the Undergraduate Student Retention and Success Committee, a group composed of students, faculty and administrators that reports to the provost's office.
One survey helped administrators determine how much time students spend working off campus during the school year, filling what Lentz called a "big gap" in the University's knowledge.
The value of institutional data, he said, is often to help confirm or disprove the "salient anecdote," or widely held, yet unproven, view.
Penn President Amy Gutmann said that the surveys provide "some benchmarks for helping us to analyze what the likely sources of our strengths and our weaknesses are."
COFHE studies help the University determine how it compares to peer institutions.
Carol Scheman, Penn's representative to the COFHE Assembly, said that she receives a weekly e-mail from the COFHE listserv.
Scheman, who also serves as the vice president for government, community and public affairs, said that the listserv once served as a forum for schools to exchange ideas on how to deal with an on-campus outbreak during the SARS scare several years ago.
Although it is not a lobbying organization, COFHE's data is sometimes used by its members to influence federal policy. Some legislative issues, Lentz said, could potentially have a million-dollar impact on Penn.
Because Penn's endowment is substantially smaller than some of its competitors', institutional data are especially important.
"The room for error is greater," he said, "when you have a $20 billion endowment [like Harvard] than when you have a $4 billion one" like Penn.
COFHE studies must remain confidential, however, for a variety of reasons, Lentz said.
If all of COFHE's data were made public, he said, it could be used to carry out various agendas against the member schools.
He added that higher education is a "highly competitive world," making the analogy that "you don't want all of your product test results that happened at General Motors to be given to Ford."
Broh noted that confidentiality is an important condition to the volunteer survey respondents.
