Flagship Institutions Research Articles

Contradictory aims: How state flagship institutions undermine equity in undergraduate admissions.

Contradictory aims: How state flagship institutions undermine equity in undergraduate admissions.

Do College Applicants Respond to Changes in Sticker Prices Even When They Don't Matter?

Abstract Do students respond to sticker prices or actual prices when applying to college? These costs differ for students eligible for financial aid. Students who do not understand this may not apply to some colleges because of the perceived high cost. We test for this form of “sticker shock” using College Board data on SAT scores sent, as a proxy for applications, to leading public institutions for students entering college in 2006–13. Some of these institutions guarantee financial aid will meet full financial need. Sticker price increases at those schools would not affect the actual cost after factoring in financial aid and should not affect decisions for those eligible for aid. We exploit the large and variable increases in sticker prices during the Great Recession of 2008. We also control for local labor market conditions to abstract from the recession's impact on individual educational decisions. We find evidence of sticker shock—students unaffected by virtue of institutional aid policies still apply less often. Using data from the National Student Clearinghouse, we also find that price increases at public flagship institutions reduce enrollment of high-achieving students, regardless of financial aid status, who often choose private colleges instead.

Uniform admissions, unequal access: Did the top 10% plan increase access to selective flagship institutions?

The Top 10% Plan admissions policy has now been in place in Texas for over two decades. We analyze 18 years of post-Top 10% Plan data to look for evidence of increased access to the selective Texas flagship campuses among all Texas high schools. We describe new sending patterns from high schools that did not have a history of sending students to the flagship campuses. Our analysis reveals an increase in the likelihood that high schools in non-suburban areas sent students to the flagship campuses, but ultimately little to no equity-producing changes over this 18-year period in terms of regular attendance at flagships by students who attended high schools without a previous sending history. Thus, the purported high school representation benefits of the policy may not go as far as advocates might have hoped in terms of generating equity of access to the flagship campuses in the state.

The Organizational Ecology of State Support for Public Flagship Universities

Background/Context: Several studies have investigated state political and economic factors that explain differences in levels of state appropriations for colleges and universities. Few studies have considered how stakeholder beliefs or taken-for-granted assumptions about various institutions may impact budgeting decisions for specific campuses. A gap in the literature remains in understanding how normative agreements about various institutional types—such as public flagship universities—may influence levels of state appropriations for these institutions. Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study: This study investigates how levels of state support for research universities might relate to their formal, informal, or even contested status as public flagship institutions. The research question guiding this study is: How might flagship identity relate to differences in levels of state appropriations for public research universities across states? Research Design: This multicase study examines differences in levels of state support for four flagship universities between 1984 and 2004. Case institutions were generated from an analysis of outlier institutions that received lower- or higher-than-predicted levels of appropriations during the two-decade period. Outliers analyzed for this study include the University of Massachusetts-Amherst and University of Virginia (lower-than-predicted support) and the University of Connecticut and the University of Maryland-College Park (higher-than-predicted support). Qualitative data were collected and analyzed to investigate disparities in state support among these four institutions. Findings/Results: This study found that a “flagship ideal” exists across the four cases, which provides meaning for stakeholders as they consider levels of state funding for these institutions. Idealized views of flagships provided advantages to some institutions and disadvantaged others in state budgeting processes during the study period. In addition, normative beliefs about the case institutions were mediated by state culture, politics, and powerful regional influences. Higher education governance structure was less important than cultural and political context in making sense of variations in state support across the institutions. Conclusions/Recommendations: The study suggests that flagship university leaders must be mindful about taken-for-granted assumptions held by key stakeholders and resource providers as they create appeals for state support. Across all institutional types, leaders must be attuned to the historical, cultural, economic, or political factors that shape understandings about their institutions. In addition, leaders must evaluate the influence of allies or foes in shaping the narrative about the institution’s unique identity and need for funding. Strategic leaders leverage their institutional identities and unique governing arrangements in ways that expand resource opportunities.

The African Methodist Episcopal Church: A History

On 17 June 2015 a white supremacist invaded Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina, and opened fire on a Bible study group. Nine members were killed, including the pastor, Clementa Pinckney. Pinckney had been a member of the South Carolina House of Representatives and of the State Senate, as well as an AME minister, and the eulogy at his funeral was given by President Barack Obama. The story of the Charleston atrocity and its aftermath says much about the history of the AME, the largest of the black Methodist denominations, capturing its courageous and risky witness against injustice, its role in giving institutional expression to black aspirations, and its success in claiming a recognized place in the polity and public life of the United States. These themes, and more besides, are explored in Dennis Dickerson's magisterial history of the denomination.Professor Dickerson is well qualified to write the history of the AME Church. As the substantial bibliography to the present volume shows, he has been publishing on related subjects for more than two decades, and he has amassed an extensive knowledge of the primary and secondary sources. Here he presents a chronological account, beginning with the development of African Methodism in North America and the Caribbean, and describing the origins of the AME in the work of Richard Allen (1760–1831). Allen's departure from St George's Methodist Episcopal Church in Philadelphia in 1787 rooted the AME in an Exodus narrative that continued to be significant as a new denomination gradually took shape. Formally constituted in 1816, with Allen as its first bishop, the AME grew steadily through the nineteenth century, seeing itself as ‘a Creole church for the Atlantic world’ (106).Dickerson shows how building the infrastructure of the denomination, including flagship institutions like Wilberforce University in Ohio, could sometimes sit uncomfortably with the AME's ‘insurgent’ emphases, with commentators like Frederick Douglass criticizing the AME leadership, albeit unfairly, for failing to prioritize the cause of abolition. During the era of Reconstruction the AME grew rapidly in the southern states of the United States; thereafter, economic pressures and the impact of ‘Jim Crow’ segregation led to a massive migration to the industrial and urban north in the decades around World War I. Both developments posed challenges and opportunities for the denomination in ministering to new populations and addressing deep human needs. The narrative here weaves together the broad themes of political, social, and ecclesiastical history with case studies of individuals like Winfield H. Mixon, of Alabama, Bishop Henry M. Turner, the Social Gospellers Reverdy and Emma Ransom, and the Garveyite R. H. Tobitt. The final chapters discuss the civil rights years and the AME's sense of being a global church by the closing decades of the twentieth century.The tension between institution and insurgency surfaces in each chapter: over abolitionism before the Civil War and Tuskegee-style strategies in the ‘Jim Crow’ era; over responses to Garvey's Universal Negro Improvement Association and proto-apartheid in South Africa; over civil rights and equal rights. But other themes emerge: pressure for indigenous rather than African American leadership in AME churches in Africa, the Caribbean, and Central America; challenges to episcopal autocracy and occasional abuses of power; the call to recognize and fully affirm the ministry and leadership of women. Dickerson acknowledges that ‘respectable’ AME congregations sometimes proved less than welcoming to southern migrants and African musical traditions, and that the AME lost ground to Pentecostal and neo-Pentecostal denominations at the beginning and end of the twentieth century, although he records the success of AME megachurches like Allen Cathedral in Jamaica, New York. He also notes that the United Methodist Church had a far better record of appointing black women bishops than the AME, although twenty-first-century General Conferences worked hard to redress this situation.Threaded through this history is an insistence that those nurtured in the AME Church remembered their heritage, and that the denomination continued to draw on its African and Methodist origins. AME heritage mattered to Shirley Graham Du Bois and to Dave Chappelle, and the AME retains its place within the structures of World Methodism. How the Wesleys' Methodism and its later expressions are inflected in a worldwide denomination that is nonetheless predominantly African American in membership and ethos remains a fascinating phenomenon.Grateful thanks are due to Dennis Dickerson for this thoroughly researched and beautifully written study of one of World Methodism's most significant branches.

Uniform Admissions, Unequal Access: Did the Top 10% Plan Increase Access to Selective Flagship Institutions?

The Top 10% Plan admissions policy has now been in place in Texas for over two decades. We analyze 18 years of post-Top 10% Plan data to look for evidence of increased access to the selective Texas flagship campuses among all Texas high schools. We provide a detailed description of changes in enrollment patterns at the flagship campuses from Texas high schools after the implementation of the Top 10% Plan, focusing on whether the policy resulted in new sending patterns from high schools that did not have a history of sending students to the flagship campuses. Our analysis reveals an increase in the likelihood that high schools in non-suburban areas sent students to the flagship campuses, but ultimately little to no equity-producing effects of the Top 10% Plan over this 18-year period. In fact, the representation of traditional, always-sending, feeder high schools on the flagship campuses continued to dwarf the population of students from other high schools. Thus, the purported high school representation benefits of the policy appear to be overstated and may not go as far as advocates might have hoped in terms of generating equity of access to the flagship campuses in the state.

Research Development and Its Workforce: An Evidence-Based Compendium for Higher Education and Other Environments

Research development (RD) is a relatively new area of professional practice in and outside higher education for which “the full extent of practitioner purposes and practices is yet to be delineated” (Preuss, Eck, Fechner Walker, 2018, p. 2). To address this gap, data was compiled from 442 position descriptions, two surveys that asked about the background, experience, employers, roles, responsibilities, and salaries of RD professionals, and the membership roll of the National Organization of Research Development Professionals (NORDP). Quantitative and qualitative analyses were completed as well as comparisons of findings from each of the sources. The result was an overview of the field and the persons who work in it. The average research development professional was a middle-aged, White, female with six or less years of experience in RD who held an advanced degree, who worked full time in a position she had occupied for four years or less and for an entity where she had been employed for longer than four years. More than 75% of the RD professionals were women but minorities were underrepresented as in many other areas of higher education and in STEM-related fields. More than half of the informants were recruited to, grew into, or had positions created for them in RD by their employer rather than being recruited from outside the organization. Approximately 72% of research development professionals in the United States worked at public colleges or universities in 2017, with the same percent working for doctorate-granting institutions. Their employers were located in 49 US states and one territory but there was a group of 14 states in which two-thirds of all known RD professionals could be found. There was also a tendency for large state and private universities that have more selective admission policies and a strong and extended focus on conducting research to employ groups of five or more RD professionals. RD professionals hold positions with a wide range of responsibilities, 62 were demonstrated to be part of the field. The data substantiated that these can be grouped in four categories already used by practitioners, strategic research advancement, communicating about research and research priorities, enhancing collaboration, and support of proposal production. Evidence of employment tiers and development of areas of specialization was found with statistically significant differences in responsibilities demonstrated between persons with the title Director and Proposal Developer/Grant Writer. RD offices tended to be small, most commonly staffed by one to two persons. Centralized offices were the type most frequently reported, 37.6% of respondents, but seven other organizing patterns existed. RD offices with five or more employees occurred at larger, flagship institutions that have had an historic focus on externally-funded research yet, over half of research development offices were reported to have existed for six years or less. Compensation reported for research development professionals was comparable to that noted by McDonald and Sorensen (2015) for Assistant and Associate Professors. Combined, the data facilitated formulation of the first detailed definition of research development that is fully evidence-based including identifying RD’s contribution to the mission of higher education and an operational description of how RD is practiced.

Internationalization of Higher Education

Internationalization of Higher Education

Uniform Admissions, Unequal Access: Did the Top 10% Plan Increase Access to Selective Flagship Institutions?

Uniform Admissions, Unequal Access: Did the Top 10% Plan Increase Access to Selective Flagship Institutions?

Pathways to Racial Equity in Higher Education: Modeling the Antecedents of State Affirmative Action Bans

Eight states currently have bans on affirmative action, yet little research has focused on the characteristics of states that predict ban adoption. To begin filling this gap in the literature, I conduct discrete-time survival analysis on an aggregated data set of 47 states from 1995 to 2012 to investigate the extent to which various characteristics of a state predict its likelihood of adopting a statewide affirmative action ban. Results show that scarcity of access to state public flagship institutions and policy diffusion are associated with ban adoption. Aligning with the racial threat literature, the findings suggest that these bans are associated with concerns about the scarcity of access to selective higher education institutions (operationalized as state public flagships) for White students.

Multi-institutional study of GRE scores as predictors of STEM PhD degree completion: GRE gets a low mark.

The process of selecting students likely to complete science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) doctoral programs has not changed greatly over the last few decades and still relies heavily on Graduate Record Examination (GRE) scores in most U.S. universities. It has been long debated whether the GRE is an appropriate selection tool and whether overreliance on GRE scores may compromise admission of students historically underrepresented in STEM. Despite many concerns about the test, there are few studies examining the efficacy of the GRE in predicting PhD completion and even fewer examining this question in STEM fields. For the present study, we took advantage of a long-lived collaboration among institutions in the Northeast Alliance for Graduate Education and the Professoriate (NEAGEP) to gather comparable data on GRE scores and PhD completion for 1805 U.S./Permanent Resident STEM doctoral students in four state flagship institutions. We found that GRE Verbal (GRE V) and GRE Quantitative (GRE Q) scores were similar for women who completed STEM PhD degrees and those who left programs. Remarkably, GRE scores were significantly higher for men who left than counterparts who completed STEM PhD degrees. In fact, men in the lower quartiles of GRE V or Q scores finished degrees more often than those in the highest quartile. This pattern held for each of the four institutions in the study and for the cohort of male engineering students across institutions. GRE scores also failed to predict time to degree or to identify students who would leave during the first year of their programs. Our results suggests that GRE scores are not an effective tool for identifying students who will be successful in completing STEM doctoral programs. Considering the high cost of attrition from PhD programs and its impact on future leadership for the U.S. STEM workforce, we suggest that it is time to develop more effective and inclusive admissions strategies.

Affirmative action challenges keep on keeping on: responding to shifting federal and state policy

ABSTRACT In response to disparities in postsecondary access, governments have enacted policies to facilitate the admission of traditionally underrepresented students. Known as affirmative action in the United States, the legal justification of this approach has varied. This article describes the legal and political history of affirmative action, the social justice and then diversity rationales, and the importance of state policies and institutions. The article focuses attention on the responses of three highly diverse US states – Texas, California, and Florida – to postsecondary affirmative action bans affecting their public flagship institutions. Each developed race-neutral achievement-oriented percentage plans intended to promote socioeconomic and racial diversity in their states' institutions; these approaches did not meet their intended aims. While inequality shows no sign of shrinking, US institutions and administrators must continue to adapt to a shifting landscape of state and federal policies poised to further curtail these diversity and social justice efforts.

Laissez-faire localism: Features and emergent themes presented in a case study University Technical College

Education policy reform in England, as enabled by successive governments, has supported the liberalization and supply of an increasing number and diverse range of provision with varying structures and governance models. As such, these reforms have generated a portfolio for parents to exercise school choice. This article explores the discourses surrounding the liberalization of education provision and its implications for technical education, by adopting Hodgson and Spours’ (2012) conceptualization of localism as a lens through which to empirically research one of the former government’s flagship technical institutions – the University Technical College (UTC). Drawing on a series of interviews, the study examines and analyses the concept of localism within the context of a UTC and identifies emergent themes. Importantly, the study’s findings challenge the assumption that institutions will, of their own volition, come together and put aside institutional self-interest for the greater good of the learner and the local and regional skills agenda. The study concludes with recommendations for further research to determine whether the tensions, competitive practices and competition identified at a single institution may be indicative of those experienced more widely across UTCs.

Educational Flagships as Brokers in International Policy Transfer: Learning from the Experience of Kazakhstan

In this article we analyze a recent development in educational reform in Kazakhstan, which presents interest to researchers of policy transfer/borrowing. We argue not only that international policy transfer has become the main approach to educational reform, but also that the approach has been institutionalized by the establishment of a specialized organizational structure, represented by a system of flagship institutions at different levels of education, which were assigned the role of identifying, adapting, testing, and disseminating the best international practices. Reconsidering policy transfer at the organizational level as knowledge transfer, we use ideas from interorganizational learning theory to interpret the narrative data from interviews with the employees of the flagships and of the educational organizations, to which they disseminate best practices. In doing so, we attempt to explore the factors which may influence the success of institutionalized policy transfer from brokers to downstream adopters of innovation.

The Small Easy: Budget-Neutral Digital Projects at Small Libraries

Small museum libraries with one or two staff members are inspired by the large-scale digital projects of bigger flagship institutions. How can one translate this inspiration to action with small means and few staff? Over the past year the Menil Collection Library has embarked on small-scale digitization projects that are budget-neutral but provide access to information and resources generated by the museum that were previously found only in the archives. From repackaging born-digital gallery guides and ephemera to capturing and cataloging finding aids and foundation documents, library staff are beginning to make the entire exhibition history available globally for the first time. Full surrogates of some Special Collections materials are now part of the scholarly record as well. This has not only made valuable information more accessible but also helped raise the library’s profile within the broader digital initiatives of the museum.[This article is a revision of a paper presented at the “Digitization and Preservation” session at the ARLIS/NA conference held in New Orleans, Louisiana, in February 2017.]

At Attention: What Student Veteran Mission Statements Say About Public Flagships

Expanding Wilson, Meyer, and McNeal’s (2012) work focusing on university mission statements, this study further explicates the values expressed by public flagship institutions (n = 50) through the linguistic examination of student veteran services mission statements disseminated by student veterans services offices, representing a gap in the literature. A quantitative linguistic analysis reveals only 24% of student veteran services offices feature official mission statements on their websites, these mission statements do not support extant research or the U.S. Department of Education’s guidelines for supporting student veterans, and mission statements do not directly address student veterans, evidenced by first- and third-person pronouns. Implications for student veteran support and adult learning are addressed.

A global blueprint for enhancing opportunities for people with disabilities to access and succeed in higher education

This presentation will share the intercultural learning from the SWING project (Sustainable Ways to Increase Higher Education Students’ Equal Access to Learning Environments). This was a two-year project funded by EU Tempus, involving partnership between four European (EU), one Egyptian and two Moroccan higher education (HE) institutions. The overarching aim of the project was to bring together partner expertise to share best practice to support students with disabilities in accessing and optimizing their chance of succeeding in HE through the use of assistive technologies (AT). Research illustrates that there is still much work to be done in levelling higher education experiences for disabled students (Vickerman & Blundell, 2010). The project team investigated the current state of accessibility for disabled people in the EU and the partner countries in terms of national and international legislation, HE policy and practice. The International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF) (WHO, 2001) was adopted which is the WHO's framework for health and disability that emphasises health and functioning, rather than disability. This conception of disability when applied in an HE context suggests the need to focus holistically on the education experience in its widest sense, thus enabling students to enjoy the full benefits of involvement in student life. An appreciative inquiry approach was adopted in line with a collaborative action research style ethos. The project aimed to capture the perspectives and alter attitudes and practice at all levels including students, academic and administrative staff, technical experts and senior managers. Having provoked change there is commitment in the partner countries to sustaining and building on what has been achieved. Partners are keen to disseminate the project outcomes nationally and internationally, and to become flagship institutions within their own countries. Mutual benefit for the EU universities has been felt through challenging taken-for-granted practice that might have lulled universities into thinking they had levelled the field for students with disabilities. For instance, the use of IT and AT had not been optimised in our own institution prior to this project, throwing local challenges into sharp relief.

Lessons of Experience: Reform Initiatives in African Universities

white paper is indeed aiming at a moving target in trying to keep the upper end of U.K. higher education institutions competitive in income terms with even the best of the U.S. publics, let alone the top private institutions, where annual fees are already nearing $30K. And, indeed, there is also a trend toward the semiprivatization of state flagship campus institutions (now being called “the public Ivies”), which may push fees yet higher than the ca.$7K per annum referred to above. If U.K. and U.S. higher education systems continue to diverge on funding, they will then share certain features. The politics of affordability of higher education for “Middle America” during the 1990s trumped the politics of access to higher education for “Poor America,” which is not surprising given the relative voting power of the two constituencies. This scenario potentially will be echoed in the United Kingdom, where in response to New Labour’s white paper and its proposed £3K per annum tuition fee for “Middle England” the Conservative Party has focused on affordability, asserting that it would avoid the need to increase fees (or even levying them at all) by reducing the size of the higher education system and hence its accessibility to “Poor England” as a means of saving money.

Athlete Graduation Rate Gaps at Division-I State Flagship Universities: An Exploratory Analysis Emphasizing Black Males

Discrepancies in Black male graduation rates at NCAA Division-I state flagship institutions have raised questions about claims of unilateral academic progress among certain revenue sport athletes. Researchers have identified gaps in NCAA and federal graduation rates between athletes and non-athletes based on race and type of sport participation. This exploratory study examines the degree to which graduation rates vary between football and male basketball athletes and male undergraduates at state flagship institutions. We pay particular attention to gaps in graduation rates for Black male athletes. We then seek theoretical explanations for these gaps by drawing on the athletic role-engulfment and key-player hypothesis, the mismatch education hypothesis, and the institutional isomorphism theory.

Heritage and Conflict Situations

Today, museums fulfil various roles: as flagship institutions playing an active part in the economy, society and education within a given community; as traditional establishments whose vocation is ...