The economic meltdown has hit U.S. college campuses, and higher education is on the chopping block in state budgets, with cuts totaling hundreds of millions of dollars already approved and hundreds of millions in more cuts on the way. As veteran legislators, the authors have seen this story play out before in previous recessions. The mindset on…

The task of developing and validating planning criteria for evaluating statewide master planning was studied. Through a review of literature on statewide planning in higher education, statewide planning purposes were identified, and criteria for evaluating statewide planning process, product, and outcomes were established. The criteria were…

Members of the Tennessee General Assembly, the Tennessee Higher Education Commission and its staff, the State Board of Regents and its professional staff, and members of the Presidents' Council and Sub-Councils (N=237) were surveyed to identify the most critical issues facing Tennessee public community colleges and to develop implications for…