Policy and Performance in American Higher Education : An Examination of Cases Across State Systems

by Richardson, Richard, Jr.; Martinez, Mario

• ISBN13: 9780801891618
• ISBN10: 0801891612
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2009-05-05
• Publisher: Johns Hopkins Univ Pr

Summary

Policy and Performance in American Higher Education presents a new approach to understanding how public policy influences institutional performance, with practical insight for those responsible for making and implementing higher education policy.Public institutions of higher learning are called upon by state governments to provide educational access and opportunity for students. Paradoxically, the education policies enacted by state legislatures are often costly and complex to implement, which can ultimately detract from that mission. Richard Richardson, Jr., and Mario Martinez evaluate the higher education systems of five states to explain how these policies are developed and how they affect the performance of individual institutions.The authors compare the higher education systems of New Mexico, California, South Dakota, New York, and New Jersey. They describe how practitioners struggle to enforce state policies amid increasing demands for greater efficiency and accountability. In the process they identify the "rules in use" -- rules that are central to the coherence and performance of higher education systems -- that administrators apply to meet organizational goals within the constraints of changing, sometimes conflicting state policies.Incorporating rich data from seven years of observations, interviews, and research, Richardson and Martinez offer a clear comparative framework for understanding state higher education.

Author Biography

Richard Richardson, Jr., is a professor of higher education at New York University and senior author of Designing State Higher Education Systems for a New Century. Mario Martinez is an associate professor in the Department of Educational Leadership at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and author of Postsecondary Participation and State Policy: Meeting the Future Demand.

Table of Contents

Foreword	p. vii
Preface	p. xi
Strengthening the Policy-Performance Connection	p. 1
Rules in Use and Performance	p. 21
New Mexico	p. 39
California	p. 70
South Dakota	p. 119
New York	p. 145
New Jersey	p. 187
New Ways of Thinking about Policy and Performance	p. 223
Appendix: Rules Observed, Including Those Not Associated with Differences in Performance	p. 243
References	p. 249
Index	p. 257
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