PART TWO-- Book Reflection-- State Postsecondary Education Research

Four-- Tracking How Ideas become Higher Education Policy and Practice

-- How policy implementation is now and important part of policy research.  Difficulties in putting together a database to truly understand policy implementation across six states (pg. 7)

pg. 77- "the ideas that drive higher education policy are often not ideas with which higher education practitioners are actively engaged"-- powerful forces like institutional beliefs developed at a federal or state level that are enacted at the local level, are often ignored

Implementation is often disconnected from literature and research.  For example, policies like financial aid and affirmative active have strong, direct effects on colleges BUT there is little know how this happens with implementation across states.

Importance of ideas of policy implementation

• law and incentives
• role as focal points and signals

Higher education can be seen as a private rather than a public good....with this, there are shifting dynamics with merit, diversity, and financial aid

The author pushed for building a comprehensive database that would allow for cross-state comparisons of policy implementations

-one of the concerns with changes as college has become more of a private good is access-- and understanding how college access had changed for the poor under the welfare reform-- with the idea of putting poor people directly to work would lead them out of poverty, rather than providing them access to higher education  BUT each state does things a little bit differently

Workforce Investment Act (WIA)-- should be a good way with data collection across states

BUT states are not consistent and it is very decentralized between states

Question that I thought about was meaning making and what does college mean to different people, things, agencies, and states??

Looking at actual implementation

high level of access-- Rhode Island

medium-- FL, MA, WA

low-- IL, PA --IL surprising because it is said and appreciated for having liberal policies for educational access to poor-- my question-- they how is it low in actuality?? liberal policy does not translate into liberal practice

Barriers to College Access

• Devil is in the details-- recognizing that some people need more support than others (like single women with children), helping to eliminate struggles for people to gain access-- class differences
• Triumph of Work-First Idea-- "the consistent message they get is caseload reduction, enter employment, and everything else is bullshit" (pg. 91)

Lessons to learn!

- designing a study should be selected based on available data

- collaboratively create definitions!

- attention to detail!!!

Five-- Challenges to Designing Cross-state Measures on State Resources for Higher Education

-- Analysis Measuring Up:  The National Report Card on Higher Education

Using this information, policy makers can make some objective decisions!  The study asked the question of how much it cost per year to education an undergraduate student?

Finances- questions and complexities

-undergrad, grad education and research are tightly linked, especially with funding

-establishing college costs nearly impossible is fungibility of funding

Levels of Measure-- State vs. Institution
-- Jones & Paulson wanted to provide assistance to provide accurate comparative data for state policy makers to make decisions in their own states
A take away from all of this is to use good, comparable data in order to make decisions!
-Performance measures-- preparation, participation, completion
-Resource measures- K-12 resources, state and local resources
-total resources (tuition, state and local)

Because it state does things differently, finding comparable data is difficult.  State to state comparisons is hard to do with differences in emphasis across states, especially with sources of revenue.
--also, different types of institutions within states-- public vs. private and varying tuition revenues.  States with more private institutions will generally require lower levels of state funding (My thoughts-- there is more reliance on private funding since public is become less and less each year-- in order to keep state higher ed afloat for the long-term, need more private funding and grant money).

How can there be consistent measurement?  A key is participation!!! and sharing resources.
How do things relate to K-12 funding-- the more states spend on students in K-12, the more they will spend per undergrad within higher education!
-- there needs to support from start to finish :)

Agenda for future-- better data needs to be collected, and more sophisticated analysis to answer where is the money going

Six-- Developing Public Agendas for Higher Education

-- Collaborative effort of three policy organizations

Quote to start the chapter (pg. 121)-- "ask not what your state can do for your institution, but what your institution can do for your state" - G. Davies.  This quote is awful!  The state should be supporting higher education and not using higher ed to provide revenue for other expenditures!

National Collaborative for Higher Education Policy-- purpose is to test a model in developing and implementing a state public agenda for higher education-- great learning experience for future research....

State's relationship with higher ed
-- maintain assets of higher ed
-- balance and shifting with the benefits of citizens and larger society with the price of services

Higher ed is increasing becoming a factor for quality of life and well-being-- for example-- Goals VA and having 100,000 college grads-- idea is to prepare more people for economy, job market, global market, etc-- not just individually but each state and the country as a whole.

pg. 123- "building a strong, high-status system of higher education- the purely institution-centered approach of the past-- does not necessarily result in production of services and benefits most needed by the state."  BUT do the ends justify the means?
--for example- with Kentucky, the higher ed system was not at a level sufficient to best serve Kentuckians...and CA is another example
--also, regional differences within a state can disguise what the state isn't doing broadly-- Virginia an example-- NOVA versus other parts of state like SW VA

Certainly limitations but the author of chapter six found that when working with states and stakeholders, they are able to get good preliminary data....is this data self-reported from the states?  how much sharing and cooperation is really happening?
--Their solution-- a policy audit to help remove barriers both real and perceived-- real versus perceived is not a small point!

Four step process recommended

1. collecting and analyzing data
2. engaging broad range of stakeholders
3. policy audit
4. developing an action plan

Final Thoughts

The chapters in the book did a good job is presenting different information from different viewpoints but still keeping the messaging consistent...importance of engaging all stakeholders, getting "good" data to provide commonalities, and to express the importance of higher education and how it is being mitigated for a variety of reasons (work instead, higher ed used for revenue versus a common good).  This tied into what we discussed in class but also providing additional lenses to look at policy in higher education.