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England and the United States provide a very interesting pairing as countries with many similarities, but also instructive dissimilarities, with respect to their policies for higher education access and success. We focus on five key policy strands: student information provision; outreach from higher education institutions; student financial aid; affirmative action or contextualisation in higher education admissions; and programmes to improve higher education retention and completion. At the end, we draw conclusions on what England and the US can learn from each other. The US would benefit from following England in using Access and Participation Plans to govern university outreach efforts, making more use of income-contingent loans, and expanding the range of information provided to prospective higher education students. Meanwhile, England would benefit from following the US in making greater use of grant aid to students, devoting more policy attention to educational decisions students are making in early secondary school, and expanding its use of contextualised admissions. While we focus on England and the US, we think that the policy recommendations we make carry wider applicability. Many other countries with somewhat similar educational structures, experiences, and challenges could learn useful lessons from the policy experiences of these two countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Neoliberal theories—whether the new public management, principal-agent theory, or performance management—have provided the rationale for sweeping reforms in the governance and operation of higher education. This paper expands our understanding of neoliberal theory and practice by examining a leading neoliberal reform: performance-based funding (PBF) for higher education in the USA, Europe, Canada, Australia, and elsewhere. Our analysis of PBF examines not only its impacts but also its origins and implementation. Neoliberal theory has been used not only prospectively to design and argue for certain public policies but also retrospectively to analyse the origins and implementation of neoliberal policy. Hence, this paper examines this retrospective neoliberal analysis in order to determine how well neoliberal theory helps us understand the origins and implementation of neoliberal policy: in this case, the socio-political forces that gave rise to PBF; and the political and organizational features of the processes by which PBF was implemented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background/Context: Performance funding in higher education ties government funding to institutional performance on indicators such as retention, graduation, and job placement. Performance funding can also be found in state K-12 funding policies and higher education quality assurance programs abroad. One of the puzzles about higher education performance funding is that half of the states establishing it later abandoned it. Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study: This study examines the factors that have led many states to drop performance funding for higher education. Research Design: This qualitative case study contrasts the experiences of three states that dropped performance funding in whole or in part (Missouri, Washington, and Florida) and a fourth (Tennessee) that has retained it more than 30 years. Discussion: Our analysis is based on documentary records and extensive interviews with higher education officials, legislators and staff governors and advisors, business leaders, minority group leaders, researchers, and outside consultants. Our findings concur with but also go beyond prior analyses of the demise of state performance funding systems. We concur that higher education opposition played a key role in this demise, stimulated by a perception of inadequate consultation with higher education institutions, use of performance indicators that institutions found invalid, high implementation costs to institutions, and erosion of campus autonomy. At the same time, our analysis turned up other causes of higher education opposition to performance funding that were not discovered by previous studies. A major cause of higher education opposition was the downturn in state finances in the early 2000s, which led institutions to focus on preserving their core state funding and giving up performance funding, Higher education opposition was also provoked if performance funding took the form not of adding to existing state funding but instead holding back a portion of the state appropriation and requiring institutions to earn it back through improved performance. These findings agree and disagree with theories and findings in the research literatures on polio), termination and program sustainability. Conclusions/Recommendations: If its advocates are to create a sustainable basis, for state performance funding, they must find ways to insulate its funding from the ups and downs of the state revenue cycle, better secure the support of public institutions, and expand its breadth political support by reaching out, for example, to business and to social groups driven primarily by the values educational equality rather than educational efficiency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines various commonalities and divergences between the English further education system and its nearest US equivalent, the community college system. In terms of commonalities, the article discusses the reliance on sub-university institutions to provide access to higher education, persistent dilemmas attendant to that reliance and conflicts over efforts to make non-university post-secondary institutions become more specialised in their missions. With regard to divergences, this article examines differences between the two types of institution in the strength of transfer arrangements, the ability to award the baccalaureate degree, the competitive environment and the balance between national and sub-national governance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This chapter describes the evolution of the workforce development mission and its current crisis in the face of changing training demands, shriveling government support, and rising competition. Two alternative future paths are outlined: a baccalaureate degree-oriented new vocationalism and a renewed emphasis on serving the training needs of low-income adults. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A hallmark of recent higher education policy in developed economies is the move towards quasi-markets involving greater student choice and provider competition, underpinned by cost-sharing policies. This paper examines the idealizations and illusions of student choice and marketization in higher education policy in England, although the overall conclusions have relevance for other countries whose higher education systems are shaped by neoliberal thinking. First, it charts the evolution of the student-choice rationale through an analysis of government commissioned reports, white papers, and legislation, focusing on policy rhetoric and the purported benefits of increasing student choice and provider competition. Second, the paper tests the predictions advanced by the student-choice rationale—increased and wider access, improved institutional quality, and greater provider responsiveness to the labour market—and finds them largely not met. Finally, the paper explores how conceptual deficiencies in the student-choice model explain why the idealization of student choice has largely proved illusionary. Government officials have narrowly conceptualized students as rational calculators primarily weighing the economic costs and benefits of higher education and the relative quality of institutions and programs. There is little awareness that student choices are shaped by several other factors as well and that these vary considerably by social background. The paper concludes that students' choices are socially constrained and stratified, reproducing and legitimating social inequality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]