Abstract
Do academic administrators make decisions about resource allocation differently depending on the discipline receiving the funding? Does an administrator's academic identity influence these decisions? This study explored those questions with a sample of 1,690 academic administrators at doctoral-research universities. Participants used fictional summaries of academic program reviews. The summaries had scenarios of increased-resources and shrinking-resources involving hard versus soft and pure versus applied disciplines. Administrators were forced to choose among them for funding decisions. Results showed that a hard-applied discipline, mechanical engineering, was evaluated as significantly more likely to receive additional resources and to be exempted from cuts than examples from other disciplinary groups: physics, English, and elementary education. Decisions varied significantly with participants' home disciplines, but not their longevity in academe or in administration.
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