Human Movement Forms as Meaning-Structures: Prolegomenon

Economic downturns are sudden and sharp reminders that public universities must shift their reliance on state appropriations to other sources of revenue. The recent economic crisis is another reminder that many sources of revenue must be sought for the continued vitality of public higher education in the United States. The ways and means for producing needed revenue encompass freeing up funds internally through a variety of approaches and creating new revenue streams. Prosperity depends on the creativity of our collective approach to the notion of revenue.     

Tuition Discounting for Revenue Management

Over the past decade, institutionally-funded financial aid (or “tuition discounts”) have been the fastest-growing item within most public four-year college and university operating budgets. One explanation for this trend is due to the changing structure of public colleges’ revenue streams, as tuition and fees have replaced state appropriations as a viable and predictable source of funding. This analysis explores the extent to which expenditures on institutionally-funded financial aid generates additional revenue for public four-year colleges and universities. Using institutional data (n = 174) from 2002 to 2008, the analysis implements a generalized method of moments (GMM) technique and concludes that aid indeed can be leveraged for revenue generation. However, this relationship is only sustainable to a certain point. When unfunded tuition discount rates exceed approximately 13%, institutions may experience diminishing revenue returns to this financial aid investment.     

Conflicting logics of online higher education

Abstract

The advent of massive open online courses and online degrees offered via digital platforms has occurred in a climate of austerity. Public universities worldwide face challenges to expand their educational reach, while competing in international rankings, raising fees and generating third-stream income. Online forms of unbundled provision offering smaller flexible low-cost curricular units have promised to disrupt this system. Yet do these forms challenge existing hierarchies in higher education and the market logic that puts pressure on universities and public institutions at large in the neoliberal era? Based on fieldwork in South Africa, this article explores the perceptions of senior managers of public universities and of online programme management companies. Analysing their considerations around unbundled provision, we discuss two conflicting logics of higher education that actors in structurally different positions and in historically divergent institutions use to justify their involvement in public–private partnerships: the logic of capital and the logic of social relevance.     

Understanding Higher Education Institutions’ Publicness: Do Public Universities Produce More Public Outcomes than Private Universities?

Higher education institutions produce a broad array of public outcomes. However, little is known about the varying levels of their contribution to the public good and what explains the variation among institutions. This study uses the theory of organisational publicness and examines how these institutions’ ownership status and resource publicness explain their outcome publicness, focusing on the expenditure for teaching, research and public service activities. The analysis of four‐year public and private universities in the 2012 Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System shows that universities’ reliance on federal funding is positively associated with the percentages of the expenditure on all three activities and their reliance on state funding is positively associated with the percentages of teaching and public service expenses. The findings reveal that the proportion of tuition and fees revenue is negatively associated with the percentage of public service expenditure. The results suggest that declining state funding and increasing reliance on tuition and fees weaken these institutions’ public service function, especially in the area of community engagement.     

Dramatic Declines in Higher Education Appropriations: State Conditions for Budget Punctuations

Public colleges and universities depend heavily on state appropriations and legislatures must decide how much to fund higher education. This study applies punctuated equilibrium theory to characterize the distribution of annual changes in higher education appropriations and defines the threshold for a dramatic budget cut. Using data for the 50 states from years 1980 to 2009, this study investigates the relationship between such unique policy events and state characteristics using a Cox proportional hazards model. Results show that economic and political conditions are most predicative of dramatic budget cuts. High unemployment rates increase the probability of cuts while rapid increases in tax revenue and wider income inequality are protective against cuts. Unified Republican and unified Democratic governments are both more likely to cut spending compared to a divided government. Sensitivity analyses of state characteristics associated with small budget cuts demonstrates that large cuts are indeed unique events catalyzed by different conditions.     

公立高等学校的经营观

公立高等学校应该成为市场经济社会中的产业组织，在参与现代教育服务市场和教育资源市场的竞争中转变办学观念，由传统的学校管理走向现代学校经营，采取学校资产经营策略，提高办学的经济效益和社会效益。     

The development and current status of market mechanisms in United States postsecondary education

Market forces are powerful in U.S. postseeondary education. Such forces were employed when the first postsecondary institutions were established in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and many present day forms can be traced to these early beginnings. Over recent years public university revenue shares in block-grants from state governments have declined, thereby destabilizing the institutions. The universities have compensated by increasing shares from grant and contracting organizations and from students. The end result has been that expenditure shares for instruction have declined while shares for research and for administration have increased. Internally, these changes in “resource dependencies” have lead to the redistribution of internal university power, loss of “community”, and ever-higher charges to students.     

Community College Mission: Re(S)ources Make a Difference

Community colleges are unique among higher education institutions in their potential access to local appropriations as well as state funding. A total of 26 states reported to the Education Commission of the States in 2001 that community colleges in their states received some share of local funding. Using data for 781 public community colleges, we explored the implications of resource dependency theory for mission differentiation between dual-funded and state-funded colleges. Significant differences were observed in their student bodies, programming, expenditures, and outcomes. These differences have implications for the increasing dependence on state funding for community colleges and the roles these institutions play.     

Hail to Thee, Our Alma Mater: Alumni Role Identity and the Relationship to Institutional Support Behaviors

With the decline in state and federal support for higher education continuing to plague colleges and universities across the U.S., many institutions are looking to increase the levels of support annually received from alumni and other constituencies. Research on alumni relations in American colleges and universities has historically focused on different factors related to charitable giving. Although this study has resulted in some valuable information for institutions to use for alumni involvement purposes, most of the research has not been able to produce a meaningful look into how alumni identify with their college or university after graduation. The purpose of this study is to assess how college and university alumni view their role with these institutions after graduation and how that perception relates to behaviors of support. An online survey was constructed to assess three dimensions of alumni role identity based upon previous research on the identification process of blood donation. This study took place through the alumni association at a large, public research university in the Midwest and found that those who displayed increased alumni role identity were more likely to support the university through joining the alumni association, attending university sponsored events and charitable giving. This study breaks ground for a new method of measuring the role of alumni within colleges and universities in efforts to increase support and ease the financial pressures of today’s institutions.     

Market-Based Higher Education: Does Colorado’s Voucher Model Improve Higher Education Access and Efficiency?

In 2004, Colorado introduced the nation’s first voucher model for financing public higher education. With state appropriations now allocated to students, rather than institutions, state officials expect this model to create cost efficiencies while also expanding college access. Using difference-in-difference regression analysis, we find limited evidence that these outcomes occurred within the 4-year sector; however, the policy increased cost efficiencies among community college and reduced college access for some underrepresented groups. The paper discusses the challenges of applying market-based reforms to public higher education.     

Community universities in the South of Brazil: prospects and challenges of a model of non-state public higher education

In recent years, higher education institutions have been encouraged to engage more strongly with their local communities, and address their historically weak links with their surrounding populations. In the latter part of the twentieth century, a number of community universities were established in the South of Brazil, characterised by democratic local community involvement, expansion of access in non-metropolitan regions, and close ties with local industry. This article analyses these innovative institutions in relation to the complex demands of the so-called knowledge economy and multifaceted relationships between public and private, exploring the ways in which the public good role of universities manifests itself in relation to the local. Given their hybrid nature – independent from the state but with a public good mission – these institutions can be seen to represent a new model of non-state public higher education. Implications are drawn out for the potential role of these institutions in the current policy context of Brazil, and internationally, in light of their context-specificity and the significant challenges from the highly commercialised for-profit sector.     

印第安纳大学网络教育的开展及其启示

印第安纳大学是美国一所典型的公立研究型大学,其网络教育开展具有如下特征:不同院系在网络教育开展时"各自为政";普通院系更倾向于在硕士层次开展网络教育,且与校园教育存在一定程度的整合;学校层面构建有完善的技术支持和教学咨询服务体系;网络教育发展呈现出国际化特征等。这些特征可为我国研究型大学发展网络教育提供借鉴。     

From state to market coordination: the Chilean case

Chile's higher education system has moved a long way from state and professional towards market coordination. Presently, market oriented policies predominate across the system, based on a loosely regulated private provision of higher education and the use of a set of “para market” mechanisms designed to enhance competition between state supported universities. The effects of these policies on the number and differentiation of higher education institutions, on enrollment, on the evolution of professional careers and academic degree programs, and particularly on the funding of the higher education system are here analyzed. A balance is drawn, specifically with respect to the nature and quality of private institutions and their public regulation, and to the competition for funding between state supported universities.     

Funding and Focus: Resource Dependence in Public Higher Education

Utilizing resource dependence theory, this study investigates the relationship between institutional reliance on net tuition dollars as a source of revenue and institutional expenditures for education and related activities at public, four-year institutions of higher education in the United States. Drawing on an 11-year panel of university-level data and utilizing an instrumental variables approach which acknowledges the potential endogeneity of institutional revenue structure, I find that institutional expenditures are quite responsive to changes in revenue patterns. This is a finding that is discussed within the context of the longstanding trend of decreased state support for public higher education, as well as the increasing popularity of market-oriented approaches to the management of public higher education systems observed in the United States and abroad.     

A Conceptual Analysis of State Support for Higher Education: Appropriations Versus Need-Based Financial Aid

In this paper, we use economic concepts to examine the choice that states make between giving appropriations to public colleges or need-based financial aid to students. We begin by reviewing the economic justification for state support for higher education. Next, we introduce a simple economic model for comparing and contrasting appropriations and need-based aid for supporting higher education. We then provide a graphical depiction of the model and simulate the effects of each policy on access to higher education. We show that it is in the best interest of states to provide need-based aid and not appropriations. Finally, we conclude with a discussion of the factors that complicate the reallocation of state funding away from appropriations and towards need-based aid.     

Business cycles and state governmental finances: Implications for higher education

The national economy has been increasingly subject to macroeconomic fluctuations in the 1970s. This paper demonstrates that these fluctuations have an important impact on state public finance. Tax revenues for these governments are directly related to the aggregate level of economic activity. However, the uncontrollability of such expenditure components as welfare, and the inflationary pressures in all program areas may increase expenditure levels in the face of declining revenue.Since public institutions of higher education rely heavily on financial support from state governments, the cyclical budgetary conditions of these governments have important implications for higher education. Historically, a financial crunch in higher education has resulted in most program areas being restricted to a similar extent, which reflects the fact that administrators have not adjusted expenditure levels to effectively deal with cyclical financial problems. This paper documents the severity of cyclical fluctuations in higher education finance and suggests ways to cope with these problems.     

Higher education marketisation and its discontents: the case of quality in Kenya

This study addresses the implications of higher education marketisation for quality in Kenya. It focuses on full fee-paying programmes, the de facto market source of revenue for Kenya’s public universities. The study argues that Kenya’s public universities were precipitately subjected to diminished public capitation, and so was their plunging into marketisation. These institutions started enrolling full fee-paying students at a time when they were strained in terms of institutional capacity. There were not enough physical facilities, and most of those available were suffering decay following many years of neglect. They did not have enough teaching staff, a problem, which the marketisation agenda has made worse. The desire to claim a bigger share in the student market has seen the introduction of many new courses in advance of capacity to offer them. The study concludes that by seeking economic self-determination through full fee-paying programmes, in advance of a well-developed institutional capacity, the subsequent pressure seems to have made the quality situation worse.     

Corporatization of higher education through internationalization: the emergence of pathway colleges in Canada

Through increased international student tuition revenue, internationalization provides public Canadian higher education institutions opportunities to offset the effects of stagnant provincial operating grants or earmarked governmental allocations. Pathway colleges, institutions that are either operated by host institutions or as private corporations, offer international students alternative routes to bachelor’s degrees, pathways that are intended for students who do not meet the entrance criteria of Canada’s public sector universities. While beneficial for some students, our analysis shows that pathway colleges tilt the public university towards an academic model that eschews collegial governance structures, privileges a consumerist vision of education, and relies on contract and precarious academic labor.We presenta typology of pathway colleges, providing examples of this trend across Canada. Our study examines the potential increase of human vulnerability that these colleges both produce and rely upon for staff and student recruitment.

     

Considerations for Faculty Preparing to Develop and Teach Online Criminal Justice Courses at Traditional Institutions of Higher Learning

Criminal justice programs at traditional institutions of higher learning have been moving toward offering courses online and, in some cases, placing entire programs online for the better part of the past decade. In competition with for‐profit institutions, many traditional colleges and universities have expanded their distance education programming to include online courses and programs to attract students. As a result, the number of criminal justice students has increased, as have the profits for home institutions. With this growth in the online education market, the criminal justice faculty member has been thrust, willingly or unwillingly, into the world of online teaching—a method of instruction foreign to many instructors. From the authors’ experience at their current (and in the case of the lead author a second) institution, this paper addresses many issues that must be considered by faculty members before embarking on this type of time‐intensive initiative.     

Great Business Training is Just Enough,Just in Time,and Just for Me

Retrenchment practices in the 1980s represented a new challenge to institutions of higher education. The literature encompassing higher education within the past 10 years has revealed limited information concerning retrenchment policies in public community colleges in Texas. This study investigated the presence or absence of retrenchment policies and their relation to fluctuations in enrollment and state funding. All 49 public community‐junior college districts in the state of Texas were included in the study. Twenty (41%) of these community colleges had a retrenchment policy. This study indicated that administrative decisions regarding the development and adoption of retrenchment policies are based on state revenue declines as opposed to enrollment fluctuations.