Description
Book SynopsisExploring the current state of relationships between public universities, government leaders, and the citizens who elect them, this book offers insight into how to repair the growing rift between higher education and its public. Higher education gets a bad rap these days. The public perception is that there is a growing rift between public universities and the elected officials who support them. In What's Public about Public Higher Ed?, Stephen M. Gavazzi and E. Gordon Gee explore the reality of that supposed divide, offering qualitative and quantitative evidence of why it's happened and what can be done about it. Critical problems, Gavazzi and Gee argue, have arisen because higher education leaders often assumed that what was good for universities was good for the public at large. For example, many public institutions have placed more emphasis on research at the expense of teaching, learning, and outreach. This university-centric viewpoint has contributed significantly to the discon
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments
Introduction
Chapter 1. Opportunities and Threats to Higher Education
Chapter 2. What Citizens Think about Their State's Public Universities: Steps toward Ground Truthing
Chapter 3. Public Funding for Teaching, Research, and Community Engagement
Chapter 4. Focusing Attention on Rural and Urban Communities
Chapter 5. Global Footprint versus Closer to Home
Chapter 6. Merit-Based Aid and Needs-Based Aid for Students
Chapter 7. National Rankings: The Scourge of Higher Education
Chapter 8. Jobs and Politics and Sports, Oh My!
Chapter 9. Disdain the Beaten Path: The Year 2020 as a Turning Point for the American Public University
Appendixes
1. Study Survey
2. Multivariate Tests
3. Tests of Between-Subjects Effects
4. Multiple Comparisons
Notes
Index
