Higher Education Policy

Restructuring Public Higher Education Governance to Succeed in a Highly Competitive Environment by James A. Hyatt

James A. Hyatt
2015

Given diminished governmental support, competition from private counterparts, and public demands for access to services, public universities need to respond in an effective manner to take advantage of opportunities and meet the challenges of today’s highly competitive environment. A critical factor in meeting these challenges is the manner in which these institutions are governed. Today’s governance structures must enhance institutions’ ability to generate resources from multiple sources - tuition and fees, gifts from donors, governmental support, and partnerships with the private...

All Globalization Is Local: Countervailing Forces and the Influence on Higher Education Markets

John Aubrey Douglass
2005

Globalization trends and innovations in the instructional technologies are widely believed to be creating new markets and forcing a revolution in higher education. Much of the rhetoric of "globalists" has presented a simplistic analysis of a paradigm shift in higher education markets and the way nations and institutions deliver educational services. This essay provides an analytical framework for understanding global influences on national higher education systems. It then identifies and discusses the "countervailing forces" to globalization that help to illuminate the complexities...

How California Determined Admissions Pools: Lower and Upper Division Student Targets and the California Master Plan for Higher Education, by John Aubrey Douglass

John Aubrey Douglass
2001

The 1960 California Master Plan for Higher Education made a number of recommendations in the area of admissions. Key was a proposed target of at least 60% of all undergraduate students being at the upper division level at the University of California and what became the California State University system. At the time, approximately 51 percent of the instruction at both UC and the State Colleges (CSU) were at the upper division. It was assumed that there was a high correlation between upper division instruction and the status of undergraduates as Juniors and Seniors. The plan,...

Igor Chirikov

Senior Researcher and SERU Consortium Director

Igor Chirikov is the Director of the Student Experience in the Research University (SERU) Consortium and Senior Researcher at CSHE. SERU Consortium is an academic and policy research collaboration based at Center for Studies in Higher Education at the UC Berkeley working in partnership with Etio and member universities. The Consortium is a group of leading research-intensive universities that increase student success by generating and analyzing comparative data on the student experience.

As SERU Consortium Director Igor Chirikov has broad responsibilities for overall SERU Consortium...

John Aubrey Douglass

Senior Research Fellow

John Aubrey Douglass is Senior Research Fellow -- Public Policy and Higher Education at the Center for Studies in Higher Education (CSHE) at the University of California - Berkeley. He is the author of Neo-Nationalism and Universities (Johns Hopkins Univeristy Press 2021), Envisioning the Asian...

No College Student Left Behind? by Steven Brint

Steven Brint
2008

Today we face a challenge to the organization of higher education that will transform the enterprise, however it is resolved. That challenge goes under the name “learning outcomes,” or sometimes “accountability.” It is a challenge brought largely by those outside higher education, and it is based on criticisms of the performance of college and university instructors in the face of heightened public expectations. One resolution to the challenge may be the adoption of standardized testing for learning outcomes; another may be to bring greater professionalism to the role of college teaching...

Reflections on a Century of College Admissions Tests

Richard C. Atkinson
Saul Geiser
2009

Standardized testing for college admissions has grown exponentially since the first administration of the old “College Boards” in 1901. This paper surveys major developments since then: the introduction of the “Scholastic Aptitude Test” in 1926, designed to tap students’ general analytic ability; E.F. Lindquist’s creation of the ACT in 1959 as a competitor to the SAT, intended as a measure of achievement rather than ability; the renewed interest on the part of some leading colleges and universities in subject-specific assessments such as the SAT Subject Tests and Advanced Placement...

The Growing Correlation Between Race and SAT Scores: New Findings from California by Saul Geiser

Saul Geiser
2015

This paper presents new and surprising findings on the relationship between race and SAT scores. The findings are based on the population of California residents who applied for admission to the University of California from 1994 through 2011, a sample of over 1.1 million students. The UC data show that socioeconomic background factors – family income, parental education, and race/ethnicity – account for a large and growing share of the variance in students’ SAT scores over the past twenty years. More than a third of the variance in SAT scores can now be predicted by factors known at...

Back to the Future: Freshman Admissions at the University of California, 1994 to the Present and Beyond, by Saul Geiser

Saul Geiser
2014

The past five years have seen unprecedented changes in freshman admissions at the University of California, reflecting steep cuts in state funding that UC sustained during that period as well as changes in UC’s definition of who is eligible to enter the university. The number of California applicants who were not admitted to the UC system more than doubled between 2010 and 2012, although part of that increase also reflected a change in admissions policies and procedures. The number of “no shows” – applicants who were admitted but did not attend – increased...

Affirmative Action, the Fisher Case, and the Supreme Court: What the Justices and the Public Need to Know, by John Aubrey Douglass

John Aubrey Douglass
2013

Once again, the U.S. Supreme Court will decide on the contentious issue of Affirmative Action, and specifically the use of race in admissions decisions in public universities. Despite differences in the details, seasoned veterans of affirmative action debates are experiencing déjà vu. In this case, Abigail Noel Fisher claims overt racial discrimination when the highly selective University of Texas at Austin (UT) rejected her freshman application in 2008. The Court’s ruling could range from upholding the legal precedent of allowing race to be one of many factors in admissions; to a...