Performance funding in higher education 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 it has been both popular and unstable. Between 1979 and 2007, 26 states enacted it, but 14 of those states…

Higher education must tell legislatures how the state should raise the money the colleges want to spend--even if it means higher taxes--and then lobby on behalf of those proposals. This also means addressing new and potentially controversial issues about the role of colleges in state politics. (MLW)

Individual members of state legislatures wield the greatest influence in state level policy formation. This was one of the findings of a study that identified the power and influence context of state-level policymaking. Data were gathered from six states (Arizona, California, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Wisconsin, Illinois) using an instrument…

State regulation of postsecondary education institutions has been ever-increasing; this leads to greater efficiency in education and acts to stabilize the educational system in the state in such a way that system-wide problems and difficulties are handled in an orderly and routine fashion. This study reviews state regulation of community colleges…

A study was undertaken of federal and state secondary and higher education policy research design that used a new approach. It systematically used the parties interested in policy development to identify the specific policies within their domain that are in current contention and also identify the arguments and claims on all sides of the policy in…