Platte Institute Executive Director, Jim Vokal, will be joined by educational scholar Dennis Jones to release “Getting it Right: Public Policy & Nebraska Higher Education,“ on Wednesday at the State Capitol. The study reviews historical trends in funding and outcome measures for institutions of higher education.
The study delineates how emphasis in public policymaking in relation to higher education has historically been, and still is in Nebraska, on creating capacity in the state with the specifics of the nature and use of that capacity being left to the education “experts” inside the institutions. Over the past decade, the policy emphasis has shifted considerably in many states – away from capacity building to capacity utilization, to ensuring that the higher education enterprise is responsive to the high priority needs of the state. This is made possible in many states (Nebraska among them) because the population of young people is not growing. Funding increases can’t be justified on the basis of enrollment increases.
The states that have embraced this “capacity-utilization” perspective on public policymaking have 1) established clear goals regarding the desired future conditions of the state and its citizens, 2)aligned policies, particularly resource allocation policies, with these goals, 3)created accountability mechanisms that emphasize institutional and system performance rather than the manner in which resources were allocated or expended.
WHO: Jim Vokal of The Platte Institute, Educational Scholar Dennis Jones
WHAT: Release of “Getting it Right: Public Policy & Nebraska Higher Education”
WHEN: Wednesday, March 13, 2013, 3:00pm
WHERE: Nebraska State Capitol Rotunda
