Performance Funding and Organizational Learning in Higher Education

Session Type: Symposium

Abstract

The national higher education landscape has converged in recent years around an agenda to improve the completion rates of public institutions and the efficiency with which institutions educate and graduate students. Within the completion policy regime, state policymakers are increasingly revisiting performance funding as a strategy to achieve political and economic aims for higher education. This symposium explores how policymakers and colleges learn to respond to state performance funding policies by examining organizational learning at state and institutional levels. Each paper provides a different perspective on using organizational learning as a theoretical lens to identify the tacit processes by which individuals learn how to design or implement accountability policies to improve outcomes in postsecondary education.

Sub Unit

• Division J - Postsecondary Education / Section 5: Policy, Finance, and Economics

Chair

• Monica Reid Kerrigan, Rowan University

Papers

• Redesigning Accountability for Equity: Policy Making as Organizational Learning - Keith Witham, Temple University; Estela M. Bensimon, University of Southern California

• Performance Funding and Organizational Learning in Three States: Forms, Hindrances, and State Support - Kevin J. Dougherty, Teachers College, Columbia University; Sosanya M. Jones, Southern Illinois University - Carbondale; Hana Lahr, Teachers College, Columbia University; Rebecca S. Natow, Teachers College, Columbia University; Lara Pheatt, Teachers College, Columbia University; Vikash Reddy, Teachers College, Columbia University

• Reframing Data-Driven Decision Making as Organizational Learning - Monica Reid Kerrigan, Rowan University

Discussant

• Adrianna Kezar, University of Southern California