Stylus Publishing (VA) The Science of Higher Education: State Higher Education Policy and the Laws of Scale

Among other commonly held beliefs about the drivers of postsecondary policy and financing, this book questions the current use of funding per student as the dominant indicator of the adequacy of state investment in higher education, and as a key driver of the costs of college.State legislators balance the competing needs of education, health, transportation, and public safety budgets, and increasingly ask what return (ROI) they get for the funding they provide, including from higher education. This question means the forty-year era of advocating for higher education by comparing funding per student to a national average or last year’s result is no longer an effective gauge of funding adequacy for state policymakers.The Science of Higher Education is an introduction to a new paradigm that explores state higher education funding, enrollment, completion, and supply (the number and type of institutions in a state) through the lens of what are commonly known as power laws. Power laws explain patterns in biological systems and characteristics of cities. Like cities, state higher education systems are complex adaptive systems, so it is little surprise that power laws also explain funding, enrollment, completion and supply.The scale relationships uncovered in The Science of Higher Education suggest the potential benefits state policymakers could derive by emphasizing enrollment, completion or capacity policies, based on economies of scale, marginal benefits, and the return state’s get on enrollment and completion for the funding they provide.The various features of state higher education systems that conform to scale patterns do not alone provide definitive answers for appropriate funding levels, however. As this book addresses, policy makers need to take into account the macro forces, from demography to geography and the economy, that situate the system, as well the interactions between government and market actors that are at the core of every state higher education system and influence the outcomes it achieves. Review From the Foreword: The context of higher education has changed, and Martinez is no longer content with incremental approaches to evolving our thinking and work in higher education finance. Adapting methods used to model dynamic systems, he offers scale analysis as a new way of capturing public benefits. His is not aminor attempt to advance our thinking. Throughout the book, Martinez provides a wealth of examples, analyses, and comparisons to demonstrate this approach's utility. While admittedly oversimplified, his approach does represent a genuine shift in our paradigm--one that is likely to cause discomfort and controversy among many in the field. More important is the work he has put into the conceptualization, the logic, and warrant for reframing our approach to the analysis of finance policy. By design, Martinez is provoking the reader. He is challenging our purchase on traditional assumptions about policymaking and policy analysis. Along with the challenge, we get a well-developed conceptual rationale, a new set of measures, and results to stimulate debate in the field. The framing almost ensures that this debate will necessarily revolve around equity and context. Do the contents of this book constitute the beginning of a Science of Higher Education? I leave that to the reader to decide. Regardless of your opinion on that count, I hope you will agree that this book offers morescience than this area has seen since Berdahl and his contemporaries laid the foundation of our current knowledge base in the 1970s.--Scott L. Thomas "John P. "Jack" Ellbogen Dean of the College of Education, University of Wyoming"It is increasingly clear that states and the federal government must undertake major reforms in how they finance higher education to meet the challenges of excessive college costs and reliance on loans as well as insufficient attention to equity and quality concerns. Mario C. Mart