Search

The Congressional Research Service (CRS) is the nonpartisan research and analytical arm of the U.S. Congress and is physically and structurally located within the Library of Congress. Despite the role of CRS as a critical information provider and technical assistant to actors crafting and implementing federal policy, CRS reports, which serve as a key mechanism of information dissemination and influence by the organization, only became widely available to the public following the adoption of the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2018. This study uses content analysis to examine CRS's education-related reports from the 115th Congress to explore what sources are directly and indirectly informing federal policymaking based on references in CRS reports. Findings offer insights into research utilization in the federal education policy process and contribute to the growing literature on intermediary organizations and knowledge brokering.

Through an exploratory comparative case study of two U.S. states (Georgia and Nevada), this study investigates how the selection mechanism to state higher education governing agency boards influences the responsiveness of board members to stakeholders and their role in the policy-making process. Framed around the recent national policy agenda to improve postsecondary degree attainment and college completion, findings suggest that state agency board members in both states prioritized the opinions, insights, and goals of the state governor and governing agency staff, regardless of selection mechanism. However, for more localized issues and on-the-ground decision-making, stakeholders formally involved in the day-to-day operation of higher education, such as administrators, faculty, and students, serve a larger role, though this influence can be mediated by the selection mechanism of board members.

This paper used data from a multi-institutional study of community colleges developing and implementing degree reclamation strategies (adult reengagement and reverse credit transfer) to understand and unpack the factors that influence implementation and capacity development. The data come from seven colleges that are implementing equity-focused degree reclamation strategies aimed to reduce the population of "some college, no degree." The research team used an interdisciplinary lens to identify these factors drawing from literature on capacity-building. Prior to the start of implementation, researchers surveyed institutions and institutional stakeholders to assess baseline capacity, and they tracked institutional participation and engagement in the strategy development and implementation process. This paper highlights findings from this research to identify which factors are most related to implementation variation and strategy outcomes.

Intermediary organizations play an increasingly important role in public policy related to higher education, particularly related to the completion agenda. This study addresses strategies employed by intermediary organizations to communicate to policymakers regarding college completion. Using rhetorical analysis, we examine 72 documents to deconstruct their arguments. Findings show that intermediaries employ the rhetorical elements of ethos, pathos, delivery, and idiom to present information and advocate preferred policy solutions. Importantly, organizations communicate messages differently based on their orientation toward the researcher or policymaker communities. Intermediary organizations aligned more closely with researchers rely more on empirical evidence and neutral tones, whereas organizations aligned more closely with policymakers utilize more idiomatic language, visually engaging document design, and nonempirical sources of evidence. Rhetorical analysis can enable researchers, intermediaries, and policymakers all to work more clearly and carefully in the higher education policy arena and, in so doing, strengthen the bridge between the two communities.

The United States has faced stagnant postsecondary education degree completion rates for over a decade. When coupled with improved educational outcomes in other nations, the one-time world leader in higher education attainment has precipitously declined in standing internationally. Coupling this reality with the need for a more educated workforce domestically led President Barack Obama to proclaim improving higher education completion rates a national imperative in 2009. Despite input from the federal government, due to the decentralized nature of American postsecondary education, individual states maintain primary responsibility for governance and policy decisions. Consequently, there has been a range of state responses to improving college completion. Through a comparative case analysis, this study considers a putatively homogenous region to investigate state-level factors that "filtered" the national college completion agenda to distinct responses in Georgia, South Carolina, and Texas.

State higher education governing agencies in the United States are uniquely positioned between the state government and public postsecondary sector. However, few studies have considered how this organizational characteristic influences these agencies' role in the policy process. The current study seeks to contribute to this gap in the literature by investigating the use of information in the policy process and the potential role of statewide agencies as knowledge brokers. Through an examination of the state higher education governing agencies in Georgia, Tennessee, and Texas, findings highlight the influence of these organizations' multi-facing position on the supply and demand of information regarding statewide college completion-related policies. Grounded by principal--agent theory, this analysis also contributes an emergent conceptual framework of the information flow process around state-level higher education policymaking in the United States.

Established in 2009, Complete College America (CCA) has emerged as one of the leading single-issue intermediary organizations advocating policy solutions to improve college completion in the USA. Although other entities that influenced the policy conversation at that time have ceased operation, CCA has maintained and, in fact, expanded its role in US higher education policy. Through a collective case study developed from archival data and interviews with CCA officials and respondents from three member states (Georgia, Tennessee, and Texas), this study examines the evolution of CCA as an organization and investigates how it has been able to challenge other actors within the higher education field. Findings suggest that CCA created and strengthened its influence through strategic identification of members, pointed communication, and intentionally aligning themselves with power brokers in both the completion sphere and targeted states. This study highlights the growing role and influence of intermediary organizations in higher education policy conversations and offers insights into how these types of organizations influence decision-making in state and national strategic action fields.

ABSTRACT Research on higher education policy in the United States often seeks to understand commonalities across state contexts to understand broader concepts influencing decision‐making. However, this minimises the importance of abstract and distinct factors impacting policy processes within a state. While researchers in other fields attribute these non‐tangible characteristics to a state's culture, a similar concept has yet to emerge within the higher education policy context. By considering gaps within the literature, the current exploratory case study considers two statewide postsecondary sector changes in Utah that occurred in 2019–2020 and the distinct state‐level values that were commonly influential during these processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Much of the student loan literature focuses on institutional, individual, and family-level characteristics associated with indebtedness, default, and other undesirable post-graduation outcomes; however, relatively little research examines the role that federal policy has played in student borrowing. This study addresses this gap by analyzing the effects of a change in Stafford loan limits that impacted one subgroup of borrowers. Findings consistently revealed that increases in federal loan limits did not result in students borrowing more. Instead, students utilized newly available Stafford loan dollars to substitute away from other loan sources with less favorable terms, such as private and parent PLUS loans.

Abstract\nPlain language summaryU.S. higher education is facing an ongoing assault via state legislation targeting divisive concepts, such as teaching critical race theory and initiatives supporting diversity, equity, and inclusion across campus. Although attacks to foundational aspects of postsecondary education in the U.S. are not new in the history of the sector, the current policy trend offers an opportunity to gain insights into how institutions and various stakeholders respond to these events and the ethical tensions these individuals may face. Using qualitative content analysis, this study examines publicly available statements and other responses by stakeholders of public 4-year institutions in the Southern United States, as defined by membership in the Southern Regional Education Board. This region of the country has become an epicenter for the introduction and adoption of these types of policies; the region also encompasses a diverse group of states politically and regarding institutional representation within public postsecondary sectors. Ultimately, this study seeks to understand how characteristics of higher education influence responses by institutional stakeholders in this regional context.Anti–higher education sentiment has been increasingly vocal across the United States, particularly from conservative politicians and media since President Trump’s Administration took office in 2017. While anti–higher education commentary is not a new phenomenon, the particular focus of this most recent wave centers on practices and programs aligning with critical race theory (CRT) and diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) and has resulted in a growing number of proposed and enacted state policies targeting these areas. A fundamental question, however, centers on how public institutions and their institutional stakeholders respond to these policies. This study reviews 82 publicly available responses by institutional presidents, faculty, staff, students, alumni, and trustees from public 4-year institutions located in the Southern United States. These data were systematically collected and analyzed through the theory of stakeholder saliency, and several themes emerged. For example, despite expectations that state contexts, such as partisan state politics or number of postsecondary institutions, might influence the number, content, or character of responses, findings suggest that the seriousness of these attacks may have superseded many of these differences, with many responses focused on reacting to active bills and adopted policies rather than proactively voicing concerns about national and regional trends. Students, faculty, and staff were often more vocal in their opposition to these policies, whereas presidents and other institutional leaders attempted to remain more neutral, potentially because of their role and position in relation to the policymakers. Given the use of publicly available responses, findings highlight the potential disconnect in media coverage of key stakeholders as well as the representative institutions included in the coverage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Prior studies have documented the pattern of decreased state funding for higher education in periods of economic contraction (i.e., the balance wheel phenomenon). This qualitative case study examines how policymakers in California and Texas made decisions about funding higher education at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, when policymakers faced an economic downturn. Data comprise 28 interviews with key state actors and 69 documents. The analysis expands prior understandings of how state policymakers make budgeting decisions that affect higher education by exploring how they perceive certain target populations as deserving or undeserving of state support. The study also sheds light on the tenuous relationship between policymakers' views of higher education and their funding decisions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Building on research examining state financing for higher education, our qualitative comparative case study investigates state policymakers' decisions for funding public higher education during the COVID-19 crisis in California and Texas. These states were purposively selected based on the size of their postsecondary sector, state partisanship, and higher education funding responses during the pandemic. Moreover, these states represent two of the largest public postsecondary enrollments nationally and serve a racially and ethnically diverse student population. Guiding our study is the Hearn and Ness (2018) framework investigating the ecology of state higher education policymaking, which offers four contextual categories that influence state policy decisions: socioeconomic context, organizational and policy context, politico-institutional context, and external context. This framework suggests underlying factors influencing the state funding process, while also providing an opportunity to expand on this theory through the unique COVID-19 context. We used deductive and inductive techniques to analyze 28 interviews with a range of actors, including state elected officials, state government staff, and higher education officials. We also examined 69 documents (state budgets, news articles, and state executive orders) to triangulate and verify our interview data. Two areas served as key events that ultimately influenced higher education funding decisions in California and Texas: (1) the preference of certain higher education institutions and (2) the availability and application of federal dollars. Furthermore, the organizational and policy context and the politico-institutional context, as defined by the Hearn and Ness framework, provided additional state-level factors that resulted in distinct responses. This study offers practical and theoretical contributions to higher education policy and practice, including highlighting the decision-making and prioritization processes of state policymakers when facing an unprecedented pandemic and crisis, and discussing common and unique factors influencing higher education policymaking in two different state contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]