Partisanship, White Racial Resentment, and State Support for Higher Education

We Want You Back: Uncovering the Effects on In-Person Instructional Operations in Fall 2020

“…Political polarization has divided Americans along party lines (Iyengar et al, 2012 ) and eroded trust in well-cemented systems like higher education, which has led to policy decisions such as reducing appropriations to public institutions (Dar & Lee, 2014 ; Taylor et al, 2020 ). Often, political polarization has less to do with an attachment to an ideology or policy preference and more to do with social identity (Grossman & Hopkins, 2016 ) that encourages individuals to curate closed social networks, attack “out-group” members (Chen & Rohla, 2018 ; Iyengar et al, 2012 , 2019 ), and trust the power structures associated with “in-group” leaders (Krupenkin, 2020 ).…”

“…Before tensions surrounding COVID-19 arose, political partisanship had been linked with eroding trust in higher education (Doherty et al, 2017 ), adjustments to state-based financial support (Dar & Lee, 2014 ; Taylor et al, 2020 ), and responses to emergent higher education policies, such as tuition-free college (Collier et al, 2019 ). State and local governments have generally bent to the will of the national party platforms (Hopkins, 2018 ).…”

“…Furthermore, partisanship forcefully guides policymaking and sets the terms for subsequent victories (Miller & Morphew, 2017 ). Given those parameters, we should expect to see a link between partisanship, institutional support (Dar & Lee, 2014 ; Taylor et al, 2020 ), and institutional decision-making (Collier et al, 2020b ).…”

Internationalization, Whiteness, and Biopolitics of Higher Education

“…White racial resentment at that perceived injury has a documented negative impact on a wide array of higher education issues ranging from funding (Taylor, et al, 2019) to college admissions (Moses et al, 2017) and college athletics (Wallsten et al, 2017). That speaks both to the importance of higher education in maintaining white supremacy and the opportunity for higher education institutions to engage in dismantling it.…”

Policies to Ensure Equitable Access to Well-Resourced Colleges and Universities

“…Recent research also suggests that increasing racial and ethnic minority enrollment in public higher education is linked with a steady divestment from state governments. 104 These troubling funding trends stand to exacerbate inequity in postsecondary opportunities and access to wellresourced colleges. A commitment to funding a range of institutions sufficiently to create a parity in resources would be an important step towards improving access to well-resourced institutions for historically underserved students.…”