Traces the rise of the "new accountability" in higher education and describes the policy responses of outcomes assessment, performance funding and budgeting, and performance reporting. (EV)

Examines the coverage, content, and customers of higher education performance reports, along with their purposes, priorities, initiation methods, and emerging changes in their style and substance. (EV)

The performance types, concerns, policy values, and models of excellence implied in higher education performance reporting indicators are identified, and the use of performance measures by two- and four-year campuses are compared. (EV)

Summarizes results of an opinion survey of governors' aides, legislative chairs of education committees, higher education finance officers, and campus institutional researchers on the use, effects, and future of performance reporting. (EV)

Provides state and campus policymakers' views on the importance and appropriateness of the most common indicators used in state and campus performance reports. (EV)

Compares the results from the National Center for Public Policy in Higher Education's state report cards and state performance reports, and notes that the states with performance reports received no better grades than those without them. (EV)

Reviews the prospects, problems, and possibilities of performance reporting in higher education and discusses two fundamental flaws in performance reporting. (EV)

Performance funding for public colleges is attractive to state policymakers but volatile and difficult to implement. It requires levels of collaboration, cooperation, patience, and persistence unusual in state government and a commitment to institutional goals, performance standards, and coordinated activities rare in academic governance. However,…

Summaries of the design, planning, and implementation of performance funding programs in Arkansas, Colorado, Florida, Kentucky, Louisiana, Minnesota, Missouri, Ohio, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Washington reveal the challenges and opportunities of this reform approach. Performance measures and objectives and the history of the program in each…

Performance indicators used for state funding, past and present, of public colleges in Arkansas, Colorado, Florida, Kentucky, Louisiana, Minnesota, Missouri, Ohio, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Washington are reviewed to explore their intent and implications and to provide information for policymakers considering introducing or revising…

Eight common objections to performance funding of public colleges are presented and answered. The arguments focus on the complexity of higher education's goals, diversity of institution type, subjectivity of educational quality, relative power of the allocation amounts linked to performance measures, politics of resource allocation, cost of…