This dissertation addresses the consequences of political influence on state higher education funding at the committee level. The State of South Carolina has a long history of using a formula to determine the appropriate amount of funding that is to be allocated to its colleges and universities. I use the funding level implied by the South…

The California Legislature's Joint Committee on the Master Plan for Higher Education made a restudy of the 1960 Master Plan. The process used by the committee is examined. The process is unusual in that it was undertaken by the legislature itself rather than by an independent commission, and also in that it strove for fairly widespread…

The views of state legislators and agencies that govern higher education must be considered along with institutional perspectives on approaches to assessment of student learning outcomes. This chapter provides a review of performance indicators from twenty-nine recent state reports and discusses their implications for the assessment of student…

Presentations are on the five topics of functional models of institutional research: (1) and the political scene; (2) at public and private colleges and universities; (3) for improving communications between institutional researchers and data processors; (4) for deriving qualitative decisions from quantitative data; and (5) for special interest…

The Legislative Environmental Advisory Group (LEAG) is an experimental program whose purpose is to produce public policy research on environmental issues for Iowa state legislators. LEAG's membership, selection of six manageable research areas, evaluation of projects, scheduling, and dissemination of results are briefly discussed. (MLW)