Executive Summary
The purpose of this comparative study is to relate the organization
of state higher education systems to the achievement of state
policy objectives. While previous explorations of statewide governance
have focused primarily on the impact of coordinating structures
on institutional autonomy, this study asks more overarching questions,
such as: How do existing state higher education structures accomplish
state public policy objectives? What are the mechanisms for establishing
state priorities and for assessing higher education's performance
on these priorities? What strategies do elected leaders use to
influence the performance of the state's higher education system,
and how are these strategies affected by the higher education
governance structure? What is the relationship between performance
and the governance structure?
The seven state systems in this research differ in the way they
link institutions to one another and to state government, and
the way they use the four key work processes identified by this
study: information management, budgeting, program planning, and
articulation. We place the states into four distinct categories
to represent differences in the design of their state governance
structures:
- Federal Systems are those with institutional and multicampus system governing
boards, anda coordinating board with both responsibility for all higher education
and substantial authority for the four major work processes. Of
the seven states studied, Illinoisand Texasare in this category.
- Unified Systems are those in which a single governing board is responsible for
all degree-granting, public institutions. Georgiais in this category.
- Confederated Systems are those that have a planning or coordinating agency with some
authority for the work processes, but that also have two or more
governing boards of multicampus subsystems in which the board
or its chief executive negotiates budgets directly with elected
officials. California, Florida and New Yorkare in this category.
- Confederated Institutions are those systems that have institutional or multicampus governing
boards, but that lack an agency with substantial responsibility
for all higher education. Michigan is in this category.
This classification is more likely than traditional classifications
to explain, among other facets of governance, the extent to which
colleges and universities respond to public policy objectives
as these are articulated by elected officials.
The character and history of state governments clearly affect
the choice of governance structures and the ways that they function.
Historical and contextual factors such as the constitutional strength
of the Governor, the presence of a strong private higher education
sector, constitutional status for public institutions, the existence
of a well developed, two-year college sector, collective bargaining,
and voter initiatives are all highly important in the ways these
systems operate.
Our research suggests that differences in governance structures
do influence the performance of higher education systems. We found
one of the most important questions to be whether the system exhibits
the capacity to recognize and respond in some organized and efficient
way to state needs and contextual changes. Federal and unified
systems have the capacity to identify priorities, to shape institutional
responses through all four of the work processes, and to use information
to communicate progress. Confederated systems and confederated
institutions lack mechanisms for using several or all of these
strategies, unless they exist in the legislative arena.
System design and governance structures determine the range of
strategies available to elected officials in their relationships
with higher education institutions as well as the likelihood of
the officials' use of such strategies. In federal systems, elected
leaders identify priorities because they have the mechanisms for
pursuing them, and they have credible information on which to
judge institutional performance. Systems with a unified or small
number of subsystem governing boards seem to invite management
by strong governors and legislatures unless protected by constitutional
autonomy. Despite this direct involvement, elected officials typically
lack the information needed to assess institutional performance,
fail to communicate priorities, and typically have few mechanisms
for planning on a systemwide basis at their disposal. In confederated
institutions, particularly those that have constitutional autonomy,
the only strategy available to elected leaders is the annual budget
process.
We draw several specific conclusions with regard to system performance
from this analysis:
- In the case of affordability there appears to be a strong link
between governance structures and performance. Families in states
that have a systemwide mechanism for representing the public interest
in budget decisions pay a smaller percentage of institutional
operating costs than those that lack such a mechanism.
- There is no evidence in our data that one type of system necessarily
has a lower cost per student than another.
- Absent some preconceived theoretical notion of what constitutes
"strong institutional leadership," it is not reasonable on the
basis of our data to suggest that some governance structures attract
stronger leaders than others. However, some leadership styles
seem to work better within some types of structures, and some
structures (unitary systems in particular) are affected more extensively
by changes in leadership than other structures.
- State boards that are both part of higher education and part of
state government do a better job of balancing the public interest
against professional values and institutional concerns than do
subsystem or institutional governing boards.
Taken together, the answers to the five research questions in
this report present one explanation for the ways in which historical
factors, system design and governance structures influence higher
education performance. It is an explanation that must now be tested
elsewhere for its applicability to other states.
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