Performance funding in public higher education: Determinants of policy shifts

Abstract

The study examines the determining factors that drive states to adopt and terminate performance funding policies for public higher education. I use four theoretical frameworks—the Electoral Connection, Political Environment, Policy Diffusion, and Principal-agent frames—to study the entire performance funding policy lifecycle across 47 states from 1979-2009. I employ the Cox proportional hazards model modified to account for multiple repeatable events. I find that the following state-level factors determine the evolution of performance funding: increases in public enrollment; the extent of the Republican presence in the state legislature; the number of, and distance to, sustainable policy examples in other states; the type of state governance arrangements for higher education; and the mode of the policy initiation.