The Impact of State Appropriations on Curricular Change at Public Colleges and Universities
Open Access
- Author:
- Choi, Junghee Hee
- Graduate Program:
- Higher Education
- Degree:
- Doctor of Philosophy
- Document Type:
- Dissertation
- Date of Defense:
- June 27, 2021
- Committee Members:
- John Cheslock, Chair & Dissertation Advisor
Kelly Rosinger, Major Field Member
Karly Ford, Major Field Member
Kevin Kinser, Program Head/Chair
Douglas Wrenn, Outside Unit & Field Member - Keywords:
- Higher education finance
State appropriations
Curricular change - Abstract:
- State appropriations for public higher education has significantly declined over the past few decades, and in response, public colleges and universities have intensified their efforts to pursue alternative sources of revenue or adjust cost. This study examines how public colleges and universities have altered their curriculum in response to growing scarcity of financial support from the state. First, I examine whether declines in state appropriations are associated with expansion or contraction of degree program offerings. Second, I explore how declines in revenue from state appropriations are associated with changes in the composition of the curriculum based on curricular content, average earnings of graduates, gender of graduates, and program type. Lastly, I explore how the impact of state appropriations on the curriculum varies by institutional type. I utilize institution-level longitudinal data on public four-year institutions from the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) between 2000 and 2019. I employ panel fixed effects regression to estimate the association between state appropriations and curricular change, reflected through changes in the annual number of programs offered. More specifically, I estimate how changes in revenue from state appropriations, averaged across the previous three years, are associated with the overall number of degree programs offered, number of degree programs offered in academic and occupational fields of study, number of degree programs offered in ‘high-earning, high-cost’ and ‘low-earning, low-cost’ occupational fields, number of non-degree certificate programs, and the number of programs in fields with relatively high proportion of women graduates and high proportion of men graduates. The study produces a number of important findings regarding how curricular changes occur in response to changes in revenue from state appropriations. First, curricular adjustments vary by institutional type. While public research universities with the highest research intensity (“R1 universities”) contract their curriculum, public baccalaureate colleges expand their curriculum in response to state appropriation declines. Such differences may be attributable to differences in fiscal and educational circumstances. Second, with the exception of R1 universities, state appropriation declines are associated with an increase in curricular emphasis toward occupational fields of study, either through program declines in academic fields or program increases in occupational fields. At public R1 universities, on the other hand, state appropriation declines are associated with declines in occupational fields, but not academic fields. Third, state appropriation declines are significantly associated with increases in the number of non-degree certificate programs, which generally emphasize occupational education. Fourth, some analyses hint at the existence of gendered patterns of curricular change for programs in academic fields of study. Among academic fields of study, state appropriation declines tend to be associated with declines in fields that have relatively higher proportions of women graduates. Lastly, the association between state appropriations and the curriculum are more evident during the post-2008 financial crisis period compared to before.