Commentary: Funding and Performance in Public Colleges and Universities: The Presidential Perspective

• Date: 01 November 2014
• Author: Madeleine Wing Adler
• Published date: 01 November 2014
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/puar.12283

Public Administration Review,

Vol. 74, Iss. 6, pp. 775–776. © 2014 by

The American Society for Public Administration.

DOI: 10.1111/puar.12283.

Funding and Performance in Public Colleges and Universities: The Presidential Perspective 775

Commentary

Madeleine Wing Adler is president

emerita of West Chester University of

Pennsylvania and senior associate with the

American Association of State Colleges and

Universities, Penson Center for Professional

Development.

E-mail: madeleinewingadler@gmail.com

Madeleine Wing Adler

Funding for public higher education in the

American states is a mess.  e golden age ended

some 40 years ago. With the reluctance of state

legislatures, especially, to fully fund both access and

quality in public colleges and universities, the burden

has shifted toward student-paid tuition and fees.

Students, parents, and public of‌f‌i cials know this, and

their gut reaction is to seek more bang for the buck.

Public Administration Review readers will recognize

this as a familiar problem in public administration.

As government-sponsored and -supported institutions

of higher education compete with other state func-

tions (such as K–12 education, health care, and cor-

rections) and among themselves, new approaches to

higher education funding have been tried. Typically,

university budgets have been based on some sort of

base allocation, traditionally centered on student

enrollments and, perhaps, the mix of f‌i elds and levels

of instruction. State and local funding for higher

education today is about $80 billion.

In the last two decades, new pressures have emerged

for public universities: student success, typically

def‌i ned as student retention and college completion;

arbitrary but widely publicized college rankings;

recognition of the fundamental link between post-

secondary education, good jobs with higher income,

and the twenty-f‌i rst-century American economy; two

recessions; and, perhaps inevitably, support based on

performance. Performance-based funding in one form

or another has already been initiated in about half the

states.

College and university presidents have a unique van-

tage point in budgeting for higher education.  ey are

the principal advocates for their institutions, regu-

larly dealing with governors and state budget of‌f‌i ces,

legislative committees and individual legislators, and

state and institutional boards. At the same time, they

look inward, leading institutional administrators, fac-

ulty, and staf‌f in actually delivering higher education

services—instruction, research, and public service.

As someone who has been a university administra-

tor in three quite dif‌f erent states—with and without

performance funding—I f‌i nd the research reported in

 omas Rabovsky’s article “Support for Performance-

Based Funding:  e Role of Political Ideology,

Performance, and Dysfunctional Information

Environments” most welcome.

I come to this commentary as a former president

at a regional comprehensive university in a state

system without “performance funding” for my f‌i rst

eight years as a president and then with performance

funding for eight years while I was still a university

president. So I view this article through the lens of a

president who lived through this change in policy.

Performance funding for higher education is here to

stay.  e pressures from public of‌f‌i cials and our other

stakeholders persuade me. So public colleges and

universities must get on board.

As a supporter of “performance-based accountability,”

I was heartened to learn from Professor Rabovsky that

most responding presidents supported some kind of

performance funding. I was impressed by the f‌i ndings

that there were “no statistically signif‌i cant dif‌f erences

in the levels of dysfunction ascribed to performance

information use between respondents in performance-

funding states versus those in non-performance-

funding states.” He correctly argues that without

presidential support, performance-based reforms will

fail. But there are caveats.

Rabovsky is correct in suggesting that performance-

funding policies in public higher education have not

been accompanied, for the most part, by an increase

in autonomy, much to the frustration of presidents. I

felt that frustration keenly. I was in a system that used

a performance-funding policy that provided add-on

dollars. My university was strong on all the measures.

But when it came to adding dollars for improvement,

my university sometimes could not claim those dol-

lars. For example, the system rewarded universities

Funding and Performance in Public Colleges

and Universities:  e Presidential Perspective