ABSTRACT
This chapter explores a rather rare person in research on education – someone so aware of the need for independence, so alert to the possibility of bias that he chooses to study a college campus where he does not teach or study. Successful access to any organization or group involves foreknowledge of its structure and distribution of power. Colleges are hierarchically organized. Formal permission to study the college must come from the administration, but the faculty should also be informed, especially members of social science departments, who might regard the study as an intrusion on their territory. In colleges of high prestige, the researcher may be hampered in his negotiations because the administrators cannot imagine that anything harmful to the college could be discovered. A leader may know so much about the college and how it works that he sees himself as the only informant the researcher will need.
