Public Policy Challenges Facing Higher Education In The American West

Public Policy Challenges Facing Higher Education in the American West is the first regional public policy study of American higher education. Presidents of the Western State Commission for Higher Education and the National Center for Higher Education Management Systems, alongside nationally recognized policy analysts and current western campus presidents, provosts, and administrators, tackle seven key public policy issues facing postsecondary education in the American West: student access, federal research funding, state governance, state financing, state appropriations and their relationship to institutional tuition, distance education and technology, and the role of community colleges. These analysts, researchers, and administrators offer a clear and complete analysis of the facts of each policy situation, the public policy options, and their connections to state and university relationships. Fifteen western states, including Alaska, California, and Hawaii, comprise the expansive region under discussion. With its companion volume, Higher Education in the American West: Regional History and State Contexts, this book is essential reading for higher education policymakers, scholars, and anyone who wants to know what the relationship between states and universities in the West has been and where it is going.

Public Policy Challenges Facing Higher Education in the American West is the first regional public policy study of American higher education. Presidents of the Western State Commission for Higher Education and the National Center for Higher Education Management Systems, alongside nationally recognized policy analysts and current western campus presidents, provosts, and administrators, tackle seven key public policy issues facing postsecondary education in the American West: student access, federal research funding, state governance, state financing, state appropriations and their relationship to institutional tuition, distance education and technology, and the role of community colleges. These analysts, researchers, and administrators offer a clear and complete analysis of the facts of each policy situation, the public policy options, and their connections to state and university relationships. Fifteen western states, including Alaska, California, and Hawaii, comprise the expansive region under discussion. With its companion volume, Higher Education in the American West: Regional History and State Contexts, this book is essential reading for higher education policymakers, scholars, and anyone who wants to know what the relationship between states and universities in the West has been and where it is going.

Higher Education in the American West: Regional History and State Contexts is the first comprehensive regional history of American higher education. It offers new historical research on how societal forces and state actions brought about the region's one thousand two hundred institutions of higher learning in 15 western states.

America's colleges and universities are social institutions -- embedded in the wider society and subject in various ways to its constraining forces. In American Higher Education in the Twenty-first Century, researchers who share this understanding explore the new realities of higher education and consider its greatest challenges for the next century. Subject to increasing scrutiny by the media and the public, colleges and universities must wrestle with a wide range of issues generated by their various external constituencies. Academic leaders rearrange their curricula to meet demands for multiculturalism. They seek an appropriate response as race-based admissions procedures come under attack. They assess student learning and monitor faculty productivity--while simultaneously responding to calls for the end of tenure and for explanations of why the cost of attending college has risen so dramatically. Using the changing social, political, and economic contexts of colleges and universities as a lens for examining these complex issues, the contributors seek to understand the forces -- whether unique to our era or rooted in the past -- that currently influence higher education and will continue to do so in the next century. Whether discussing finance or technology or academic freedom or the canon, the authors find that relations between academic institutions and their surrounding societies have generally been ambivalent: both involved and withdrawn, servicing and criticizing, needing and being needed. Understanding the complex interplay between institutions and external forces, they conclude, is the key to guiding the endeavors of faculty, students, and administrative leaders alike.

In two volumes, editors Lester F. Goodchild, Richard W. Jonsen, Patty Limerick, and David A. Longanecker, working with eminent historians, policy analysts, and university leaders, provide a comprehensive overview of the role of education in the American West and the relationships between individual states and their institutions of higher learning. The volumes examine the states from North Dakota and the mountain West to Alaska and California, treating each both individually and as a part of the region; they provide concise, detailed information about each one's history, development, and current policies. One volume spans two hundred years of history, while its companion focuses on clarifying seven key public policy challenges facing higher education in the West today. Together, they make essential reading for higher education policymakers, scholars, and anyone who wants to know what the relationship between states and universities in the West has been and what its future might be.

Recognizing that institutes of higher education function simultaneously in local and global contexts, this volume explores the applications of domestic and global policies in a range of industrialized nations in North America and Australia, and developing ones of Brazil, Indonesia, Myanmar, and in Southern Africa and the Caribbean The chapters focus on policies relating to global matters such as diversity, STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) innovations, and development amid natural disasters and conflicts. In each case, authors consider how policies were envisioned, how they compare to the realities of implementation, and how far they have been successfully supported by the communities and translated into legislations and formal or informal programs. Based upon decades of research and executive positions by senior scholars and perspectives of emerging professionals, the volume concentrates on motifs that portray relationships among policies and comparative analysis that reveals the need for global collaborations. This important book will be of great interest to researchers, scholars, postgraduates, and government and philanthropic professionals in the fields of higher education, public and educational policy, comparative education, and international affairs.

The current era in higher education is characterized by increased need for accountability and fiscal constraint coupled with demands for increased productivity. Higher education is expected to meet the demand of changing student demographics, as well as requests for research and service from government and industry. To preserve the academy's ability to meet these demands, the editors and contributors to this volume argue that, while change is inevitable and desirable, any radical alterations to the practices that have established and upheld the excellence of higher education in the United States must be carefully considered.The editors and contributors cherish the best ideals of higher education: academic freedom, commitment to both inquiry and teaching, and preservation of an independence of mind and spirit in the face of external pressures. At the same time, the authors of these essays also reflect upon the failings of higher education, including problematic historical legacies such as racism, sexism, and anti-semitism. In Defense of American Higher Education is a careful analysis of what we have inherited, undertaken with a critical eye for constructive reform. It will be of interest to anyone concerned about the future of American higher education.