Michael K. McLendon

Called to Account: Analyzing the Origins and Spread of State Performance-Accountability Policies for Higher Education

Employing a theoretical framework derived from the policy innovation and diffusion literature, this research examines how variations over time and across state sociopolitical systems influence states’ adoption of accountability policies in higher education. Specifically, factors influencing the adoption of three kinds of performance-accountability policies for public higher education in the period 1979–2002 were investigated. Findings from the event history analysis supported the authors’ original hypotheses only in part; the primary drivers of policy adoption were legislative party strength and higher-education governance arrangements, but the direction of these influences varied across the policies studied.

Partisans, Professionals, and Power: The Role of Political Factors in State Higher Education Funding

Despite real growth in total appropriations of state tax funds for postsecondary operating expenses, state investment in higher education has substantially declined in recent years relative to changes in enrollment, state wealth, and the growth of institutional budgets. What factors are associated with state investment in higher education over time? In this paper, we report the results of a longitudinal analysis of factors associated with state funding effort for higher education. Using a panel data set and a fixed-effects analysis that we conducted on the drivers of state appropriations to higher education from 1984 to 2004, we find that population, postsecondary enrollment patterns, and economic conditions affect funding levels. Our analysis also points, however, to political influences shaping public choice. Notably, we find strong empirical evidence that partisanship, legislative professionalism, term limits, interest groups, and gubernatorial power influence appropriations levels. Less than a decade ago, the evidence for these kinds of relationships was tenuous; today, the empirical record has accumulated in support of the claim that politics “matters” in helping shape public choice for higher education. We explore some of the implications of these relationships, both for scholarship and for policy making in the states.

The Politics of Higher Education: Toward an Expanded Research Agenda

The politics of higher education as a field of study suffers from acute underdevelopment. The challenge confronting politics of higher education researchers is one of stimulating a systematic and sustained scholarship that is topically, theoretically, and methodologically multidimensional. The purpose of this article is to suggest prospective research directions that correspond with each of three broad recommendations for organizing future research in this important area of inquiry: the need for a wider range of issue coverage, the need for a broadened and enriched theoretical perspective, and the need for improved analytic sophistication and rigor. Substantial emphasis in the article is placed on comparative approaches to research so as to take maximal advantage of the multiple political and policy “laboratories” afforded by American federalism.

Setting the Governmental Agenda for State Decentralization of Higher Education

State decentralization of higher education emerged as a significant governance trend of the 1980s to 1990s. Yet little is known about how or why decentralization first became an issue to which state governments paid serious attention. This study employs multiple theories to analyze the agenda-setting stage of policy formation in three states that enacted decentralization legislation.

State Governance Reform of Higher Education: Patterns, Trends, and Theories of the Public Policy Process

The American campus-state relationship typically is cast in terms of a fundamental, even paradoxical, tension between the dual demands of institutional autonomy and public accountability, or between the university’s right to regulate its affairs from within and the state’s authority (and responsibility) to regulate the university’s affairs from without (Bailey, 1975; Berdahl, 1971; Carnegie Foundation, 1982; Glenny and Schmidtlein, 1983; Graham, 1989; Hines, 1988; Millet, 1982; Mortimer and McConnell, 1982; Newman, 1987; Volkwein, 1987). Because neither absolute autonomy of the campus from the state nor complete accountability of the campus to the state is likely to be feasible, the vexing question confronting policymakers is where, precisely, the line should be drawn between campus and state. The dominant pattern of the twentieth century was one of increasing involvement and intervention by state governments in the higher education sector. A large volume of literature has amassed, around, the interactions between higher education and state governments, focusing particularly on the development and functioning of different governance arrangements for higher education and on the effects of these different arrangements upon various institutional and state policy outcomes.

Uniting Secondary and Postsecondary Education: An Event History Analysis of State Adoption of Dual Enrollment Policies

This study, as the first empirical test of P–16 policy antecedents, reports the findings from an event history analysis of the origins of state dual enrollment policies adopted between 1976 and 2005. First, what characteristics of states are associated with the adoption of these policies? Second, to what extent do conventional theories on policy adoption help explain the rise of dual enrollment? We find state political characteristics, organizational structures, and policy conditions are associated with the spread of dual enrollment policies. Also, some states appear to have a climate for reform activity, resulting in a tendency to engage in innovative education policy making.

Legislative Agenda Setting for In-State Resident Tuition Policies: Immigration, Representation, and Educational Access

Few recent issues in higher education have been as contentious as that of legislation extending in-state college tuition benefits to undocumented students, initiatives now known as in-state resident tuition (ISRT) policies. Building on several strands of literature in political science and higher education studies, we analyze the effects of demographic, economic, political, and policy conditions on the likelihood of these initiatives becoming positioned for legislative action during the period 1999–2007. In particular, we develop and test a theoretical framework distilled from research on “descriptive and substantive representation” in U.S. politics. Our event history analysis finds that the percentage of female legislators (an indicator of descriptive representation), the percentage of the population that is foreign born, the level of unemployment, and the type of higher education governance in a state are associated with the likelihood of an ISRT initiative achieving the legislative agenda. To conclude, we explore several conceptual and policy implications of our findings.

Direct Democracy and Higher Education: The State Ballot as an Instrument of Higher Education Policy Making

A topic to which students of higher education politics and public policy have paid no attention is the resurgent direct democracy movement in the American states. This article seeks to clarify the nature and scope of the statewide ballot phenomenon as it affects the higher education policy domain. The article embeds the issue of higher education balloting in historical context by examining the conceptual origins and contemporary debate surrounding the direct democracy movement in the United States. The article then defines the boundaries of higher education ballot activity by analyzing ballot trends affecting higher education over the past decade. Results reveal that although voters recently have decided a range of important campus governance questions, the two most significant areas of ballot activity over the past decade involve money and morality. The authors explore a variety of theoretical implications of the research.

Introduction: The Politics of Higher Education

Now, 30 years later, the same assessment can still be made: As a subject of social scientific inquiry, politics of higher education research remains in a state of perpetual infancy, prone to periodic lurches but lacking in sustained and systematic conceptualization and analysis. That politics of higher education scholarship should remain so scattered and irregular is somewhat curious given the richness of the parent political science discipline and the rather steady advances of K-12 specialists in developing a politics of education literature in their own field. This 2003 edition of the Politics of Education Association Yearbook and special issue of Educational Policy represent an effort to invigorate politics of higher education scholarship, an important but longneglected area of inquiry likely to be of interest to many social scientists, particularly higher education researchers.

Financing College Opportunity Factors Influencing State Spending on Student Financial Aid and Campus Appropriations, 1990 through 2010

Some states invest relatively heavily in financial aid programs that benefit lower-income citizens, while other states concentrate their investment in programs that benefit students from higher-income backgrounds. States also vary in their levels of direct appropriations to campuses, a form of public subsidy that has long been viewed as benefitting middle-income citizens. What factors influence states to allocate higher education subsidies in a more or a less redistributive manner? This article reports on a study that examined sources of variation in state spending on need-based aid, merit-based aid, and appropriations over the period 1990–2010. Findings document relationships among spending patterns and structural and political conditions of states, indicating a “trade-off” between spending on merit- and need-based aid; as states invest more in the former, they reduce spending on the latter. We also show that the presence of a Republican governor and the strength of Republican representation in statehouses each is associated with increased state spending on need-based financial aid. Our results further show that increased wealth is positively associated with state spending on merit-based financial aid programs and state appropriations for higher education, but not need-based financial aid. We also find distinctive patterns of state support for higher education depending on the degree of centralization of a state’s governance arrangement for higher education; namely, the presence of a highly centralized structure is associated with decreased spending on merit-based aid programs and increased state appropriations to colleges and universities.