The State Of Higher Education

First Published in 1994. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Perennial conclusions from state-by-state funding-per-student analyses of underfunding and weak state commitment have become so common that they have diluted the potency of the argument to state policymakers for more higher education funding. In addition, there has been little in the way of testing or questioning the assumptions embedded in traditional funding per student analysis and its accompanying conclusions.As state legislators balance the competing needs of education, health, transportation, and public safety budgets, they increasingly ask what return on investment (ROI) they get for the funding they provide, including from higher education. The ROI language, while potentially unsettling for its corporate-like and neoliberal connotation, will persist into the foreseeable future. We must ask questions both of adequacy (How much funding should the states provide?) and benefit (What benefits do states receive for the higher education funding they provide?). The focus on traditional funding per student analysis has remained static for over forty years, indicating the need for new ideas and methods to probe questions of adequacy and benefit.The Science of Higher Education is an introduction to a new paradigm that explores state higher education funding, enrollment, completion, and supply (the number and type of institutions in a state) through the lens of what are commonly known as power laws. Power laws explain patterns in biological systems and characteristics of cities. Like cities, state higher education systems are complex adaptive systems, so it is little surprise that power laws also explain funding, enrollment, completion, and supply.The scale relationships uncovered in the Science of Higher Education suggest the potential benefits state policymakers could derive by emphasizing enrollment, completion, or capacity policies, based on economies of scale, marginal benefits, and the return state’s get on enrollment and completion for the funding they provide.The various features of state higher education systems that conform to scale patterns do not alone provide definitive answers for appropriate funding levels, however. As this book addresses, policymakers need to take into account the macro forces, from demography to geography and the economy, that situate the system, as well the interactions between government and market actors that are at the core of every state higher education system and influence the outcomes it achieves.

The dream of public higher education in America is to provide opportunity for many and to offer transformative help to American communities and the economy. Expanding Opportunity in Higher Education explores the massive challenges facing California and the nation in realizing this goal during a time of enormous demographic change. The immediate focus on California is particularly appropriate given the size of the state—it educates one out of every nine students in the country—and its checkered political record with respect to civil rights and educational inequities. The book includes essays not only by academics looking at the state's educational system as a whole, but also by those within the policy system who are trying to keep it going in difficult times. The contributors show that the destiny of California, and the nation, rests on the courage of policymakers, both within the universities and within the government, to move aggressively to reclaim the hope of millions of students who can make enormous contributions to this society if only given the chance.

A series of near-riots on campuses aimed at silencing guest speakers has exposed the fact that our universities are no longer devoted to the free exchange of ideas in pursuit of truth. But this hostility to free speech is only a symptom of a deeper problem, writes John Ellis. Having watched the deterioration of academia up close for the past fifty years, Ellis locates the core of the problem in a change in the composition of the faculty during this time, from mildly left-leaning to almost exclusively leftist. He explains how astonishing historical luck led to the success of a plan first devised by a small group of activists to use college campuses to promote radical politics, and why laws and regulations designed to prevent the politicizing of higher education proved insufficient. Ellis shows that political motivation is always destructive of higher learning. Even science and technology departments are not immune. The corruption of universities by radical politics also does wider damage: to primary and secondary education, to race relations, to preparation for the workplace, and to the political and social fabric of the nation. Commonly suggested remedies—new free-speech rules, or enforced right-of-center appointments—will fail because they don’t touch the core problem, a controlling faculty majority of political activists with no real interest in scholarship. This book proposes more drastic and effective reform measures. The first step is for Americans to recognize that vast sums of public money intended for education are being diverted to a political agenda, and to demand that this fraud be stopped.

Beginning with the earliest efforts to regulate schools, the author reveals the rationale behind accountability and outlines the historical development of how US federal and state policies, accreditation practices, private-sector interests, and internal requirements have become so important to institutional success and survival

In recent decades, the Canadian post-secondary education system has evolved to become more inclusive, now welcoming groups historically excluded from its many opportunities. Inviting the reader to explore the consequences of a rapidly changing student population, Serving Diverse Students in Canadian Higher Education presents new thinking about how education in general, and student services in particular, should be designed and delivered. A follow-up to Donna Hardy Cox and C. Carney Strange’s Achieving Student Success (2010), this volume focuses on the best programs and practices in Canadian colleges and universities to improve the educational experiences of students who are Indigenous, people of colour, francophone, LGBTQQ, disabled, and adult learners, as well as international and first-generation students. Presenting findings obtained from both personal insight and relevant research, higher education practitioners and scholars from across the country detail the characteristics, concerns, and specific needs of each diverse group, to conclude that the success of these new students and the future of Canadian society depends on its post-secondary institutions’ capacities to acknowledge students’ differences, capitalize on their gifts, and accommodate them accordingly. Exploring the enriching breadth of university communities, Serving Diverse Students in Canadian Higher Education focuses on a new paradigm of individual differences and student success.

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.

"The economics of American higher education are driven by one key factor--the availability of students willing to pay tuition--and many related factors that determine what schools they attend. By digging into the data, economist Nathan Grawe has created probability models for predicting college attendance. What he sees are alarming events on the horizon that every college and university needs to understand. Overall, he spots demographic patterns that are tilting the US population toward the Hispanic southwest. Moreover, since 2007, fertility rates have fallen by 12 percent. Higher education analysts recognize the destabilizing potential of these trends. However, existing work fails to adjust headcounts for college attendance probabilities and makes no systematic attempt to distinguish demand by institution type. This book analyzes demand forecasts by institution type and rank, disaggregating by demographic groups. Its findings often contradict the dominant narrative: while many schools face painful contractions, demand for elite schools is expected to grow by 15+ percent. Geographic and racial profiles will shift only slightly--and attendance by Asians, not Hispanics, will grow most. Grawe also use the model to consider possible changes in institutional recruitment strategies and government policies. These "what if" analyses show that even aggressive innovation is unlikely to overcome trends toward larger gaps across racial, family income, and parent education groups. Aimed at administrators and trustees with responsibility for decisions ranging from admissions to student support to tenure practices to facilities construction, this book offers data to inform decision-making--decisions that will determine institutional success in meeting demographic challenges"--