The Politics Of Performance Funding For Higher Education

The first nation-wide analysis of the politics of performance funding in higher education. Performance funding ties state support of colleges and universities directly to institutional performance on specific outcomes, including retention, number of credits accrued, graduation, and job placement. The theory is that introducing market-like forces will prod institutions to become more efficient and effective. In The Politics of Performance Funding for Higher Education, Kevin J. Dougherty and Rebecca S. Natow explore the sometimes puzzling evolution of this mode of funding higher education. Drawing on an eight-state study of performance funding in Florida, Illinois, Indiana, Missouri, Ohio, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Washington, Dougherty and Natow shed light on the social and political factors affecting the origins, evolution, and demise of these programs. Their findings uncover patterns of frequent adoption, discontinuation, and re-adoption. Of the thirty-six states that have ever adopted performance funding, two-thirds discontinued it, although many of those later re-adopted it. Even when performance funding programs persist over time, they can undergo considerable changes in both the amount of state funding and in the indicators used to allocate funding. Yet performance funding continues to attract interest from federal and state officials, state policy associations, and major foundations as a way of improving educational outcomes. The authors explore the various forces, actors, and motives behind the adoption, discontinuation, and transformation of performance funding programs. They compare U.S. programs to international models, and they gauge the likely future of performance funding, given the volatility of the political forces driving it. Aimed at educators, sociologists, political scientists, and policy makers, this book will be hailed as the definitive assessment of the origins and evolution of performance funding.

Ultimately, the authors recommend that states create new ways of helping colleges with many at-risk students, define performance indicators and measures better tailored to institutional missions, and improve the capacity of colleges to engage in organizational learning.

There is a void in the literature on how to conduct research in the finance and economics of higher education. Students, professors, and practitioners have no concise document that examines the field, provides history, definitions of terms, sources of data, and research methods. Higher Education Finance Research: Policy, Politics, and Practice fills that void. The book is structured in four parts. The first section provides a brief history and description of the general organization of American higher education, the sources and uses of funds over the last 100 years, and who is served in what types of institutions. Definitions of terms that are unique to higher education are provided, and some basic rules for conducting research on the economics and finance of higher education are established. Although in some ways, conducting research in higher education funding is similar to that for elementary/secondary education, there are some important distinctions that also are provided. The second section introduces guiding philosophies, sources of data, data elements/vocabulary, metrics, and analytics related to institutional revenues and expenditures. Chapters in this section focus on student oriented revenues, institutionally-oriented revenues, and funding formulas. The third section introduces accountability-related concepts by first examining the accountability movement in higher education and performance-based approaches applied in budgeting and funding, then looking at methods to determine public and private returns on investment in postsecondary education, and closing with an examination of finance from the perspective of the primary consumer: students. The fourth and last section of the book focuses on presenting postsecondary finance research to policy audiences to assist in connecting academic research and policy making. Chapters focus on accounting for time considerations in analysis, the placing of data in context to make the data and findings relevant, and ways to effectively communicate findings to various policy-making audiences.

"One of the striking ways in which state governments have pursued better performance in public higher education is through the use of performance funding. Performance funding involves tying state support directly to institutional performance on specific outcomes such as rates of graduation and job placement. The principal rationale for performance funding has been that the introduction of market-like forces will prod institutions to become more efficient, delivering "more bang for the buck." Kevin Dougherty, an expert on state performance funding, finds its development puzzling. First, despite the great interest in it, only half the states have ever adopted performance funding for higher education. Moreover, of the states that did adopt performance funding, over half later dropped it. Finally, in the states that have retained performance funding over a long period of time, their programs have undergone considerable changes in the amount of state funding they devote to performance funding and in the content of the indicators they use to allocate that funding. In spite of this, performance funding continues to attract interest as a way of improving educational outcomes. This book, based on an extensive ten-state study, aims to shed light on the social and political factors affecting the origins, evolution, and demise of these programs"--

Understanding the politics of Higher Education is becoming more important as the sector is increasingly recognised as a vital source of innovation, skills, economic prosperity, and personal wellbeing. Yet key political differences remain over such issues as who should pay for higher education, how should it be accountable, and how we measure its quality and productivity. Particularly, are states or markets the key in helping to address such matters. The Handbook provides framing perspectives and perspectives, chapters on funding, governance and regulation, and pieces on the political economy of higher education and on the increased role of external stakeholders and indicators.

The federal bureaucratic role -- The procedural process -- Policy actors' influence -- Strategies and powers of influence -- The role of policy actors' beliefs -- Higher education rulemaking in context -- The use and influence of technology

An almost universal driving force for contemporary change in universities is the shifting view of higher education as more of a private than a public good. Towards the Private Funding of Higher Education presents a contemporary global picture of this move towards the privatisation of higher education, and examines how these shifts in ideology and funding priorities have significant policy implications. The resulting developments, such as the imposition and escalation of student tuition fees and the emergence of online providers of higher education, emerge out of a combination of economic, political and ideological pressures, further enhanced by technological changes. By using multiple international and regional examples to analyse the various pressures for privatisation, this book examines the different forms privatisation has taken, whilst offering an analytical interpretation of why the privatisation drive emerged, why it has been resisted in some instances and what forms it is likely to assume in the future. Towards the Private Funding of Higher Education illustrates and challenges the emergence of a new relationship between the university, government and society. It is an essential read for higher education professors, university managers and higher education policy makers across the world.

This crucial book addresses newer practices of resource allocation which tie university funding to indicators of performance. It covers the evolvement of mass higher education and the associated curtailment of funding, the public management reform debate within which performance-based budgeting or funding evolved, and sketches alternative governance and management modes which can be used instead. Four appendices cover more technical matters.