Performance Funding for Higher Education by Kevin J. Dougherty etal.

Abstract

Reviewed by: Performance Funding for Higher Education by Kevin J. Dougherty etal. James Dean Ward Kevin J. Dougherty, Sosanya M. Jones, Hana Lahr, Rebecca S. Natow, Lara Pheatt, and Vikash Reddy. Performance Funding for Higher Education. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2016. 276 pp. Paperback: $40.00. ISBN: 9781421420820 In Performance Funding for Higher Education, Dougherty and colleagues provide an in-depth examination of an increasingly common phenomenon: performance funding (PF). While PF policies have been part of the higher education funding landscape since Tennessee implemented its version in the 1970s, these policies have evolved, as well as come into and out of fashion. In initial PF 1.0 policies, performance metrics were used to allocate “bonus” funding to colleges and universities that were successful in given areas. These policies often comprised small levels of an institution’s total funding and were thus deemed ineffective. This allowed a new wave of PF 2.0 policies to rise over the last 15 years. These newer policies tie an institution’s base funding from the state to performance metrics. In some cases, these metrics comprised up to 90 percent of an institution’s total funding, thus making PF 2.0 more high stakes for colleges. This well-written book provides novel qualitative analyses of PF 2.0 policies, an important contribution given the significant role these policies play in how state colleges are funded. The authors seek to understand the policy instruments, immediate and intermediate effects of the instruments on institutional behavior and student outcomes, the process by which colleges decide on an organizational response to PF policies and the potential challenges faced with these responses, and the potential unintended consequences of PF policies. The breadth of research questions enables a holistic assessment of performance funding that avoids treating any singular outcome as an isolated effect. The comparison of three states—Tennessee, Ohio, and Indiana—allows for an analysis of variations of PF 2.0 policies. Dougherty and colleagues provide a thoughtful introduction in the first two chapters that outline the current research related to performance funding, the gaps in our collective knowledge, and the theoretical underpinnings of PF policies and their outcomes. While the review of performance policies in higher education is somewhat brief at the outset of the book, chapter six is dedicated to an indepth discussion of the current quantitative work discussing performance funding in higher education. That discussion puts a particular emphasis on studies involving Indiana, Ohio, and Tennessee, as well as those evaluating PF 2.0 policies. The authors also extensively review the literature, with a focus on the theoretical implications, related to performance funding policies in areas other than higher education. This discussion provides useful content to frame the reader’s understanding of PF policies and also supports the conceptual framework used in the book’s study. The authors rely on five theories to frame their analysis: performance management, policy design, organizational learning, policy implementation, and principal-agent theories. Although these theories span an array of phenomena, the authors aptly use these five theories in order to examine performance funding in a holistic manner. They argue that in order to fully understand the impacts of PF policies, one must consider the design and implementation of such policies, the organizational responses, and the policy tools used to control these responses. In order to provide an in-depth and comprehensive understanding of PF policies in the three states, the authors use qualitative methods and take advantage of triangulation from multiple sources to bolster the study’s trustworthiness. A total of 261 state- and institutional-level informants were interviewed, including state higher education officials, legislators and their staff, senior institutional administrators, and faculty. This range of interviewees provides an array of views that produce a well-articulated understanding of campus responses to PF policies. State-level officials were primarily asked “how did [they] envision that the performance funding would work… [and] how did the program actually work” (p. 39). Institutional administrators and faculty were asked about how their college responded to the policies, how any changes to institutional processes were decided upon, what impact these changes had on student outcomes, and any obstacle that may have arisen. As...