A strategy for allocating merit-based awards and need-based aid is critical to a university. Such a strategy, however, must address multiple, sometimes competing objectives. We introduce an approach that couples a gradient boosting classifier for predicting outcomes from an allocation strategy with a local search optimization algorithm, which…

The relative incidence of across-the-board cuts in higher education for all institutions that experienced decreasing revenues between 1976-1977 and 1980-1981 was studied. Factors that affect the extent to which administrators employed across-the-board cuts versus selective cuts were also assessed. Attention was focused on the effects of the…

Federal statistics form the foundation and are the standard for private statistics. Reliable and accurate statistics are increasingly used in complex models of the economy and society that have become important tools for management of large business concerns and for policy planning in governmental bodies. Reductions in government funding threaten…

Budgeting by the states to improve quality in higher education is discussed. Among the quality issues, the following are important in a number of states: a need for stronger programs in engineering, computer science, and technology fields; a need for better preparation of public school teachers; and concern with lowered admissions standards and…

A discussion is presented of the process of resource allocation and the use of performance indicators in public sector higher education in Britain. First, background is presented on the method of providing resources to institutions of advanced further education (AFE) and non-advanced further education (NAFE) on the basis of pooled recurrent…

The main purposes of this study are to investigate through national income elasticities the amounts of governmental expenditure in 30 countries on total governmental service and on selected services of education, defense, health, and social welfare over the period from 1950 to 1967. Analysis of data available from various statistical sources, such…

This paper describes resource allocation in Australian universities including the broader context of national restructuring and a case study of one university's attempt to restructure resource allocation within the university. The 1987 restructuring of the Australian system from a binary system to a unified national system and the associated…

Formula funding in Illinois reflects decisions on value choices which can be grouped in the categories of enrollment linkage, mission and diversity recognition, equity and fair share, and quality and program improvement. The enrollment linkage of the Illinois formula ties credit hour grants and categorical programs directly to full-time equivalent…

Factors for discrepancies between budgeting ideals and actual implementation are discussed. The basic problem lies in the different orientations of budget establishers and implementors, or between product and process, which results in a separation of productivity and resource allocation issues. A recommendation is that the budgeting process must…

This paper examines some general principles affecting the timing, extent, and direction of fiscal changes in public school finance systems. To develop a framework that is applicable to a wide variety of states, the analysis concentrates on two dimensions: allocation and distribution. The median voter model and the fiscal neutrality model of state…

This paper reconceptualizes the purposes of education's budget envelope. Citing numerous examples of how policymakers consider resource allocations apart from the main concerns of individual programs, the people reallocations affect, and education's most important programs, it suggests that policymakers and finance officers reemphasize program and…

The future of instructional research, at least in the present economic climate, is indistinct. This report considers the option of combining within a single study the needs of policy makers and the commitment to academic research. The papers in this report, through illustration of research conducted within a policy framework, identify problems…

A national project designed to examine issues of budget reform and quality improvement in higher education is described. The focus is state-level budget practices and their impact on institutions. Most of the funding for quality improvement has been categorical: a small percent of the budget is set aside to achieve particular quality or…

This study outlined an approach for analyzing the impact of changing resource levels on schools. The effects of declining resources in New York City high schools and the implications of the findings for school systems facing similar situations are investigated. The focus of the impact analysis was in the organizational domain: the services…

Issues in educational finance in elementary-secondary education for the 1990s are examined in this paper, which asserts that demographic and economic changes have increased the need for additional resources in education. Recent fiscal trends include an increase in resource inequities among the states and a mismatch between resource needs and…