Sustaining Strategic Transitions in Higher Education

Citation:

Ward, D. (2013). Sustaining strategic transitions in higher education. EDUCAUSE Review, 48, 13-22.

Abstract:

• The second half of the twentieth century was a time of great creativity in the kinds of public policies that were put into place for higher education in the United States after the end of World War II. These policies, which opened up access to education and research funding, gave U.S. colleges and universities an enormous competitive and comparative advantage for at least fifty years. But those underpinnings are shifting in this new century. As a chancellor who has led the same public land-grant university during two very different funding environments and who served as president of the American Council on Education for eight years, I am often asked: "How can we sustain strategic innovation and transitions in higher education?"

Special Issue: The Global Growth of Private Higher Education

Citation:

Kinser, K., Levy, D. C., Casillas, J. C. S., Bernasconi, A., Slantcheva-Durst, S., Otieno, W., . . . LaSota, R. (2010). Special issue: The global growth of private higher education. ASHE Higher Education Report, 36(3), 1-158.

Abstract:

• This volume begins its global tour with the case of Mexico. The Mexican case is significant because of its original importance in defining the primary types of private higher education. It shows trends that reflect rapid transformations in the country and tensions in developing countries at the intersection of resource constraints, relatively weak regulations, and educational demand. Chile forms the next case. The South American country exhibits what might be termed a private dominant higher education system, with an arguably elite core, some of it with operational support from the government. Privatization is a dominant theme, as all institutions, public and private, increasingly rely on nongovernmental sources of income. The third case presents Bulgaria. As part of postcommunist Europe, Bulgaria shows the swift development of a private sector, the regulatory responses, and responses of the public sector to new competition. Significant also is the challenge of regional harmonization with a still largely public-oriented European Union educational system...

State Capital Expenditures for Higher Education: "Where the Real Politics Happens"

Citation:

Tandberg, D. A., & Ness, E. C. (2011). State capital expenditures for higher education: "where the real politics happens". Journal of Education Finance, 36(4), 394-423.

Abstract:

• Little empirical attention has been paid to state capital expenditures for higher education. While some anecdotal evidence exists that the process of appropriating capital dollars to higher education institutions is a particularly political process, no study has systematically examined the determinants of higher education state capital spending. This study counters this scholarly oversight by employing a longitudinal analysis of the factors associated with state capital expenditures for higher education. Panel data is used including political, higher education sector, and economic and demographic variables from 1988-2004 on all 50 states. Our fixed effects analysis reveals that the process is indeed political. Numerous political factors were significantly associated with capital expenditures for higher education, including political culture, electoral competition, budgetary powers of the governor, higher education governance structures, interest groups, legislative professionalism, and voter turnout. Although some higher education sector factors, such as private giving and tuition rates, proved to have a significant influence on state capital expenditures for higher education, the results provide substantial evidence that politics matters in the appropriation of these capital dollars. These findings suggest that more research is needed to understand how the determinants of state capital spending differ from other state expenditures on higher education. (Contains 3 tables and 3 footnotes.)

Higher Education for Economic Advancement and Engaged Citizenship: An Analysis of the U.S. Department of Education Discourse

Citation:

Suspitsyna, T. (2012). Higher education for economic advancement and engaged citizenship: An analysis of the U.S. department of education discourse. Journal of Higher Education, 83(1), 49-72.

Abstract:

• The steadily growing body of literature on universities' contribution to democracy and civil society has repeatedly called for a re-examination of the nascent purposes of higher education and the nature of higher education's compact with society. Although more faculty and administrators explore ways to produce public scholarship, infuse their curricula with service learning, and build stronger links between campuses and communities, their efforts remain secondary to the universities' preoccupation with producing competitive graduates for the job market and cutting edge research for industry. Scholars have well studied the causes and outcomes of this emphasis on the economic function of higher education, tracing it back to the neoliberal economic policies in the late 1970s (Davies & Bansel, 2007), supply-side higher education in the 1980s (Rhoades & Slaughter, 1997), and the decline of the social welfare state in the 1980s and 1990s (Fallis, 2007). What remains little examined, however, is how the market role of higher education is supported by the government rhetoric and what the consequences are of that support for the ability of colleges and universities to prepare students for engaged citizenship. In this study of government rhetoric, the author draws on Foucault's concept of governmentality to argue that the officially endorsed neoliberal perspective cannot envision higher education outside economic rationality and proposes an agonistic model of democracy as a framework for conceptualizing and practicing citizenship on campus. This paper is organized in five parts. The author begins with a brief discussion of two competing conceptualizations of higher education as an industry and a social institution. She then outlines the poststructuralist theoretical framework of the study and proceeds with an overview of the analytical methods and findings. She concludes with a broader discussion of the findings in relation to different models of democracy and citizenship in the context of higher education. (Contains 2 tables.)

Research and Data Services for Higher Education Information Technology: Past, Present, and Future

Citation:

Grajek, S. (2011). Research and data services for higher education information technology: Past, present, and future. EDUCAUSE Review, 46(6), 46-48.

Abstract:

• Those in the higher education community live in interesting times. For decades, higher education has occupied a relatively stable, trusted position in society, as a place to invest the most precious resources: (1) youth; (2) minds; (3) future; and (4) values. Today, the purpose and value of higher education is under question and under transformation. What was once seen as requisite for completing the intellectual journey to maturity is now increasingly viewed as a necessity for employment and financial security. The value proposition is now more about economic security than self-actualization. But with rising costs and student debt, and shifts in enrollment patterns, the public is questioning the affordability of a college education at the same moment a college degree has begun to be viewed as a necessity for job security. With imperiled endowments, cuts in federal and state support, burgeoning costs of regulatory compliance, and the resulting institutional budget shortfalls, higher education leaders are hard-pressed to respond to calls for lowering the costs of higher education. The business model of higher education is broken. Within higher education, information technology is experiencing its own challenges. Enter data. Enter research. Enter analytics. Analytics, and the data and research that fuel it, offers the potential to identify broken models and promising practices, to explain them, and to propagate those practices. Information technology now supports and enables all aspects of higher education. Information technology is paradoxically—and rightly—viewed both as an added expense and as a source of potentially transformational efficiencies. The great challenge for IT leaders and managers is to successfully resolve this paradox for their institutions. To do so, they will require the external models and internal evidence that data and research can provide. Higher education IT data now needs to go beyond descriptive analysis—reports, queries, and drill-downs—to new ways of using data and research in order to align IT strategy with institutional strategy, plan new services and initiatives, manage existing services, and operate the IT organization on a daily basis. Higher education itself needs expanded access to high-quality data and analysis about information technology and its relationship to institutional efficiency, learning effectiveness, and college completion. (Contains 9 notes.)

People Who Study Higher Education

Citation:

Harland, T. (2009). People who study higher education. Teaching in Higher Education, 14(5), 579-582.

Abstract:

• The study of higher education can seem extraordinarily complex because what counts as knowledge is contestable and the higher education research community is, like Hemingway's Paris, a moveable feast. A lack of epistemological precision and field uncertainty is partly due to the fact that those who study higher education tend to work in higher education and effectively study their own social situations. They may do this with years of research training or as novices, and they may be from the field of higher education or from another discipline or even from outside the typical disciplinary structures found in our institutions. In the author's role as an academic developer, he finds himself mentoring colleagues who want to study higher education but have no background in this area and this experience has led him to question who his fellow researchers are, what he is trying to achieve with his research and whether or not an inclusive higher education community undermines its own disciplinary status. To help him make sense of such a diverse community, he divides his world into three. There are those who make their living from researching in higher education and who regard this as their primary subject, there are others who are part-time researchers and there are those who simply have an interest in the field. If a research community is difficult to identify, then it must be difficult to know the audience for one's work. When he writes, he does this with his university colleagues in mind and they can be from any discipline and may or may not be researchers in higher education. He makes this choice because he is an academic developer who regards research simply as another form of teaching. This utilitarian value guides his practice and in particular his writing.