David Longanecker wrote an article in "Change", "A Tale of Two Pities," that described the colliding perspectives of two communities--those who provide higher education and those who create and sustain the policy environment in which it functions. Each of these communities is committed to ensuring that Americans have broad…

What happens to public colleges and universities when confidence in the value of public institutions wanes? Nothing good, to judge from two new books whose titles telegraph the tale: "The Great Mistake," by Christopher Newfield and "Austerity Blues," by Michael Fabricant and Stephen Brier. This article discusses how the authors…

Greater accountability in public higher education systems is a fact of life in the current political climate. Increasingly, one form this accountability takes is performance funding, which arises from elected officials' need for assurance that taxpayer funds are not only being invested and used properly but are resulting in desired outcomes at…

Institutions of higher education lament the fact that policymakers have lost faith in them, particularly public higher education. One proof of such loss of faith is the substantial, steady, and sustained decline of share of public resources devoted to higher education. One unfortunate consequence of this decline in funding has been increased…

During the last quarter of a century, public higher education institutions have found themselves buffeted by a perfect storm. This storm has led to discussions about the privatization of those institutions, which has implications for their ability to improve, or at least maintain, their quality and their accessibility to students from all…

In 2005, Colorado lawmakers radically changed the state's higher education funding system. Until this point Colorado, like other states, had supported higher education by appropriating operating revenues to the institutions and providing some financial aid to low-income students. But in 2005, instead of giving the state's general funds for…