In response to the 2015 Minnesota legislative debate focused on increasing access to early education, this brief proposes a new policy approach that would prevent opportunity and achievement gaps and social, economic, and educational inequities.

This Spotlight explores critical issues related to DE&I, as well as strategies to address disparities in access and opportunity. From targeting funding for low-income students to improving access to AP courses and using technology equitably, these articles offer valuable insights. Discover how school leaders can foster a culture of belonging…

Racially segregated schools influence the distribution of educational opportunity. When students of different races enroll in separate schools, systematic differences in access to school resources and exposure to high levels of student need can emerge. Using recently available national school-level finance data, we find that typical Black and…

The popularity of distance education has increasingly led universities to consider expanding their online offerings. Remarkably few financial models have been presented for online courses, however, and fewer still have investigated the economic consequences of the migration, or cross-over, of students from traditional classes within the…

The funding of public education in America has been a primary concern for government officials at the federal, state, and local levels for several generations. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, this expenditure accounts for the single largest allocation in most state and local government operating budgets (Stanley and…

Urban community colleges face a myriad of convergent challenges, including the loss of state funding and local property tax support, increased demands for better performance and greater accountability, and record-high enrollment by the most underprepared students in higher education. Sometimes to make sense of it all, it helps to think of an onion.

In this article, Robert M. Gates, former Secretary of Defense and chancellor of the College of William & Mary, makes three observations about public higher education: (1) Over the past generation we have seen a gradual abandonment of the principle that higher education is a public good and the emergence of a view that it is a private consumer…

We investigate the relative merits of unconditional cash transfers (UCT), conditional cash transfers (CCT), and the effects of improvements in education quality on efficiency and welfare. In our setting, some parents underinvest in their children's education because capital market imperfections prevent them from borrowing. Under sufficiently…

Traditionally, public funding of higher education has been viewed as cyclical, where support falls during times of economic downturn and then recovers as the economy improves. This view, however, is being challenged as budgetary shortfalls are becoming more common for states, even in times of economic growth, due to structural constraints. Using…

The purpose of this study was to explore the relationship of brand identification and supportive behaviors for alumni of a medium-sized state-run public institution of higher education in the mid-Atlantic region of the US. The research examined the perceptions of donor and non-donor alumni of a state-run public institution of higher education to…

The purpose of this exploratory longitudinal case study was to examine how the implementation of an Incentive Based Budgeting (IBB) system (i.e., Responsibility-Centered Management [RCM]) affected selected institutional performance indicators at the campus level and two comparable schools at a large Mid-Western public University. The value of…

Budgeting--i.e. the decision on the level of expenditures and on the repartition of resources among organizational subunits--can be conceived as a critical organizational process, which is closely related to key choices concerning strategic priorities and to resources acquisition strategies. Overall, it is increasingly being recognized as one of…

School districts across the United States are often forced into situations where limited public funds must be distributed among multiple districts. These are often reliant on distribution rates negotiated by district leadership and elected officials. An example of this is Georgia's 1% Education Local Option Sales Tax (ELOST). The tax is collected…

This article presents a sampler of notable developments in the world of higher education. Among them are: (1) At the University of Southern Maine, faculty leaders and President Theo Kalikow are working together to address the challenges that stand in the way of economic sustainability. In the spring, after announcing a plan to fire a dozen tenured…

Some higher education leaders have suggested that colleges and universities could generate state support if they were more productively engaged in addressing societal needs. This multi-case study examines how community engagement is expressed and understood at institutions that vary in their expected levels of state appropriations. The findings…