Politics, Budgetary Tradeoffs, and State Funding of Public Higher Education
Open Access
- Author:
- Tandberg, David A.
- Graduate Program:
- Higher Education
- Degree:
- Doctor of Philosophy
- Document Type:
- Dissertation
- Date of Defense:
- April 20, 2007
- Committee Members:
- Donald E Heller, Committee Chair/Co-Chair
Patrick T Terenzini, Committee Member
Roger Lewis Geiger, Committee Member
Michael Barth Berkman, Committee Member - Keywords:
- Higher education
politics
budgetary trade-offs
finance
state support of higher education - Abstract:
- While state support of public higher education has garnered considerable attention in scholarly literature and the popular media, no study designed to explain state support has attempted to develop a theory-driven, comprehensive conceptualization of the state political system within a larger theoretical framework that consists of state economic and demographic factors, and higher education system attributes. Furthermore, no study has adequately addressed the issue of competing state budgetary areas, or how budgetary trade-offs affect higher education funding. This study attempts to fill this gap in the literature. This study has two primary goals: 1) To examine the theoretical and empirical connections between state support for public higher education (measured as both state appropriations per $1,000 of personal income and higher education’s share of state general fund expenditures), and the various political attributes of the U.S. States; and 2) to elucidate, both theoretically and empirically, budgetary trade-offs between higher education and other state budgetary areas. This study presents an original framework based on theory and research drawn from political science, higher education, public administration, public policy, and economics. The Fiscal Policy Framework describes state support for higher education as a product of the attributes of the policymakers and the attributes of the decision situation. Interest group activity, mass political attributes, governmental institutions, state higher education factors, the previous year’s appropriation, economic and demographic factors of the state, political culture, and other budgetary demands are all presumed to shape those attributes. Original and secondary data on the political, economic, demographic, and higher education characteristics of the U.S. states spanning several decades were collected from twenty six sources. Based on the Fiscal Policy Framework, cross-sectional time series analyses were conducted to predict state appropriations for public higher education per $1,000 of personal income, higher education’s share of state general fund expenditures, and budgetary trade-offs between and among higher education and other state general fund expenditure areas. These analyses provide strong empirical evidence that interest groups, mass political attributes, governmental institutions, political culture, and personal attributes of policymakers all shape how states support public higher education, and that compared to other budgetary areas, higher education is uniquely susceptible to such political forces. The evidence also shows not only that elected officials make trade-offs between higher education and other budgetary areas, but also that higher education is uniquely susceptible to trade-off behavior. More specifically, higher education governance structure, higher education interest groups, political ideology, legislative professionalism, the parties of the governor and the legislature, voter turnout, and uniparty legislature are all significant factors influencing higher education appropriations and that interest group density, the budgetary power of the governor, legislative professionalism, term limits, political culture, and the party of the governor also significantly affect the share of state general fund expenditures higher education receives. This study also reveals the significant conditioning affect state higher education governance structures have on other political forces, namely interest groups, the legislature, and the governor. Furthermore, This study found that Medicaid, public assistance, K-12 education and public assistance all engage in trade-off behavior with higher education. The inclusion of politics in the explanatory model produces a more robust and pragmatically useful model. It is more pragmatically useful in that many of the political variables may be impacted by those concerned with state support of higher education. This study clearly shows that the higher education appropriations process does not occur within a vacuum immune to politics and other budgetary forces. Indeed, higher education funding appears to be particularly susceptible to such forces. Because of its susceptibility to political influences and budgetary trade-offs, higher education may stand to benefit the most from its involvement—or lose the most by refusing to engage—in political and budgetary appropriations processes.