Funding US higher education: policy making theories reviewed.

Higher education policy and politics in the United States (US) has been an issue of studies for several decades. Since the 1960s, researchers have been attempting to understand, explain and extrapolate on the relationships between higher education funding and political institutions. This review attempts to assess recent studies concerned with US higher education funding policies. Specifically, research undertaken for this paper followed McLendon’s (2003) suggestion for organising research studies according to four areas of contemporary political science research lines: (a) principal–agent theory, (b) policy process theories, (c) policy innovation and diffusion theory, and (d) comparative perspectives on government political systems. The studies selected for this review advance our knowledge of the forces that drive policies as well as address the issues that higher education institutions are facing: accountability, affordability and access. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]