Kevin J. Dougherty

Undocumented Immigrants and State Higher Education Policy: The Politics of In-State Tuition Eligibility in Texas and Arizona

Every year about 65,000 undocumented students graduate from U.S. high schools. A major obstacle to their attending college is not being eligible for in-state tuition. Today, nine states permit it while four prohibit it. Even if the federal DREAM Act passes, state policy decisions will continue to strongly shape college opportunities for undocumented students. This situation makes the contrasting policies of Texas and Arizona—one permits in-state tuition eligibility; the other prohibits it—highly instructive. To analyze the political origins of their divergent responses, we draw on the advocacy coalition framework and policy entrepreneurship theory of policymaking.

Performance Funding for Higher Education

Since the 1970s, federal and state policy-makers have become increasingly concerned with improving higher education performance. In this quest, state performance funding for higher education has become widely used. As of June 2014, twenty-six states were operating performance funding programs and four more have programs awaiting implementation. This article reviews the forms, extent, origins, implementation, impacts (intended and unintended), and policy prospects of performance funding. Performance funding has become quite widespread with formidable political support, yet it has also experienced considerable implementation vicissitudes, with many programs being discontinued and even those that have survived encountering substantial obstacles and unintended impacts. Although evidence suggests that performance funding does stimulate colleges and universities to substantially change their policies and practices, it is yet unclear whether performance funding improves student outcomes. The article concludes by advancing policy recommendations for addressing the implementation obstacles and unintended side effects associated with performance funding.

The New Economic Development Role of the Community College

For many years, community colleges have been involved in workforce preparation and economic development in the form of the occupational education of students. But in the last two decades, community colleges have greatly broadened their economic development role to include contract training, small-business development, and local economic planning. These new activities promise to take the community college in a new direction: from an institution focused on educating students to one centered on meeting the needs of business and the local economy. This Brief analyzes the new role of the community college vis-a-vis five different industries: auto manufacturing, apparel-making, construction, banking, and auto repair. For each industry, we studied at least four community colleges with wellknown programs serving that industry. Information was drawn from interviews, site visits, and analysis of documents.

The Evolving Role of the Community College: Policy Issues and Research Questions

Community colleges are much in the policy limelight these days. State and federal policymakers are looking especially at community colleges as a cost-effective way to serve the increasing number of students wishing to go to college (Phelan, 2000). Moreover, community colleges recommend themselves as key institutions to meet the training demands of the increasing sub-baccalaureate sector of the occupational structure (Grubb, 1996). And those concerned about remedial education and distance education naturally focus on community colleges since they are major purveyors of both forms of education (Spann, 2000).

The Impacts of State Performance Funding Systems on Higher Education Institutions: Research Literature Review and Policy Recommendations

Over the past three decades policymakers have been seeking new ways to secure improved performance from higher education institutions. One popular approach has been performance funding, which involves use of a formula to tie funding to institutional performance on specified indicators. This report reviews findings from studies on performance funding programs in a multitude of states. The studies suggest that tying funding to outputs has immediate impacts on colleges in the form of changes in funding, greater awareness by institutions of state priorities and of their own institutional performance, and increased status competition among institutions. Because of these immediate impacts, performance funding produces intermediate institutional changes in the form of greater use of data in institutional planning and policymaking and in changes in academic and student service policies and practices that promise to improve student outcomes. However, claims that performance funding does indeed increase ultimate outcomes—in the form of improved rates of retention, completion of developmental education, and graduation—are not validated by solid data. In the face of this finding, this report identifies obstacles to the effective functioning of performance funding, as well as unintended impacts. The report closes by providing recommendations for overcoming the many obstacles to the effective functioning of performance funding and addressing the unintended impacts documented by the studies reviewed.

The Demise of Higher Education Performance Funding Systems in Three States

Over the past three decades, policymakers have sought ways to secure better performance from higher education institutions, whether in the form of greater access and success for less advantaged students, lower operating costs, or improved responsiveness to the needs of state and local economies. As a result, great effort has gone into designing incentives for improved college performance. One of the key incentives that state governments have tried is performance funding, which ties state funding directly to institutional performance on specific indicators, such as rates of retention, graduation, and job placement. One of the great puzzles about performance funding is that while it has been popular, it has also been very unstable (Dougherty & Hong, 2006; Erisman & Gao, 2006). States that have enacted performance funding have often and sometimes substantially changed the amount of funding they devote to it and the criteria by which they award that funding. Moreover, the number of states enacting performance funding has waxed and waned. Between 1979 and 2007, 26 states enacted performance funding, but 14 of those states dropped it over the years (with 2 reestablishing it recently) (Burke & Minassians, 2003; Dougherty & Reid, 2007). We are now entering a period of renewed interest. In the past few years, a variety of prominent higher education commissions and researchers have called for greater focus on performance accountability, though often taking forms different from past practice (Blanco, Jones, Longanecker, & Michelau, 2007; Shulock & Moore, 2005, 2007). Moreover, several states have recently enacted or readopted performance funding, including Virginia (in 2005) and Washington (in 2007), and other states, such as Texas and Arizona, have been considering it. Despite its apparent popularity, however, performance funding has experienced only limited and unstable institutionalization in the years since it was first introduced. This Brief, which draws on a longer report, examines this instability. Based on an analysis of three states that enacted and then eliminated performance funding systems, we identify factors that may lead states to let their performance funding systems lapse. To understand the experiences of the three states — Florida, Illinois, Washington — we drew upon interviews and documentary analyses that we conducted in these states. We carried out interviews with state and local higher education officials, legislators and staff, governors and their advisors, and business leaders. The documents we analyzed included state government legislation, policy declarations and reports, newspaper accounts, and analyses by other investigators.

The Uneven Distribution of Employee Training by Community Colleges: Description and Explanation

Community colleges have recently attracted great attention because of their important role in supplying employee training to many business establishments. But despite this major role, there is surprising variability in community colleges’ supply of, and employers’ demand for, employee training. While a few community colleges supply a lot of employee training, many provide little. Moreover, although large employers and ones in industries such as manufacturing tend to utilize the community college heavily, smaller employers and ones in industries such as retail trade use it much less. This article analyzes the causes of this variability in the demand for and supply of employee training and suggests policy responses. Public policy, while encouraging broader community college and industry partnership in employee training, must also move to counteract the harmful impacts of extensive employee training on other missions of the community college such as transfer preparation, remedial education, and general education.

Continuity and Change in Long-Lasting State Performance Funding Systems for Higher Education: The Cases of Tennessee and Florida

One of the key ways that state governments pursue better higher education performance is through performance funding. It ties state funding directly to specific indicators of institutional performance, such as rates of graduation and job placement. This report considers the ways that performance funding systems in states with longlasting systems have changed over time and what political and social conditions explain the changes. We analyze the experiences of two states: Tennessee, which pioneered performance funding in 1979; and Florida, which launched it in 1994. Funding for Tennessee’s system has steadily increased over the years, whereas Florida’s funding history has been more volatile and now provides much fewer dollars than when it was at its peak. Both Tennessee and Florida have changed their performance indicators substantially. But Florida added nine and dropped two in 12 years, while Tennessee added only six and dropped four over 31 years. Moreover, in Tennessee, performance indicators are added at the end of a regular five-year review, whereas in Florida they have been added irregularly, with no tie to a cyclical process of program reappraisal. Overall, Tennessee’s performance funding system has been considerably more stable than Florida’s because its initial policy design delineated much more clearly how the system was to be governed and changed over time, and provided for regular and systematic evaluation. Moreover, Tennessee’s state legislature has played a smaller role in the ongoing development of performance funding than Florida’s. These differences in policy process carry important implications. A system where funding levels do not oscillate greatly and indicators change more gradually and systematically is more likely to allow institutions to plan effectively. Further, such a system will have a more secure base of consent from institutions if it comes under attack.

Unintended Impacts of Performance Funding on Community Colleges and Universities in Three States

This paper identifies and analyzes the types and numbers of unintended impacts— actual or potential—of state performance funding policies on higher education institutions. These impacts—which were not intended by the framers of the performance funding policy—were ones mentioned in the course of telephone interviews with over two hundred college personnel at nine community colleges and nine public universities in three states: Indiana, Ohio, and Tennessee. The respondents were senior administrators, middle-level administrators, academic deans, and department chairs at these institutions. This paper discusses each type of these reported impacts, making a distinction between impacts that we judge as actually occurring and ones that were stated as possibilities. The unintended impacts most frequently mentioned by interviewees were restrictions in admissions to college and a weakening of academic standards. Besides describing overall patterns, the paper also analyzes how interviewee responses varied by state, by type of institution (community college or university), by college capacity to respond to the demands of performance funding, and by position the interviewee held in the institution. The paper closes by providing policy recommendations to address these unintended impacts.

Envisioning Performance Funding Impacts: The Espoused Theories of Action for State Higher Education Performance Funding in Three States

This study reviews the theories of action espoused by state-level performance funding advocates and implementers in Indiana, Ohio, and Tennessee. The study found that these espoused theories of action are incompletely articulated, with significant gaps in the specification of policy instruments, desired institutional changes, and possible obstacles and unintended impacts that need to be countered. Performance funding is conceived largely as stimulating changes in institutional behavior and student outcomes by providing financial inducements and securing institutional buy-in. Less attention is paid to other policy instruments, such as providing information on institutional performance to the colleges and building up the capacity of institutions to engage in organizational learning and change. The states’ espoused theories of action for performance funding are, thus, narrower than those for state and federal K-12 accountability programs, which put much more emphasis on information provision and capacity building. Moreover, the espoused theories of action for performance funding in the three states miss important possible obstacles to and unintended impacts of performance funding. This report argues that insufficiently articulating the theories of action for performance funding makes it less likely that it will be successful and avoid undue harm.