Called to Account: Analyzing the Origins and Spread of State Performance-Accountability Policies for Higher Education

Abstract

OVER the past 20 years, the concept and practice of accountability in U.S. public higher education have undergone marked change. In an earlier era, accountability often referred to the design of statewide governance structures capable of accommodating the simultaneous need for institutional autonomy and external oversight of campus decision-making. The central question before policymakers in this earlier era was: Precisely which activities and functions of public colleges and universities (e.g., academic programs, budgets, tuition setting, and so forth) should be dictated by the state and which should be left to the discretion of campuses? The accountability focus, therefore, was on the design of governance systems capable of effectively and efficiently regulating the flow of campus resources and the decisions of campus officials (Berdahl, 1971;McLendon, 2003;Volkwein, 1987). In the past two decades, however, accountability Employing a theoretical framework derived from the policy innovation and diffusion literature, this research examines how variations over time and across state sociopolitical systems influence states' adoption of accountability policies in higher education. Specifically, factors influencing the adoption of three kinds of performance-accountability policies for public higher education in the period 1979-2002 were investigated. Findings from the event history analysis supported the authors' original hypotheses only in part; the primary drivers of policy adoption were legislative party strength and higher-education governance arrangements, but the direction of these influences varied across the policies studied.

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