The Competition of An American Public Good: Performance-Based Funding and Other Neoliberal Tertiary Effects in Higher Education

My colleagues Drs. Shelley Price-Williams, Roger “Mitch” Nasser, and I recently published our most recent book chapter in Leadership Strategies for Promoting Social Responsibility in Higher Education. We previously authored chapters about educational equity in bridge programs and living learning communities. In this recent publication, we (the authors), explore the issues related to performance-based funding which has negatively impacted American higher education. Its implementation has further marginalized smaller institutions with less resources with a preference for institutions which have resources to engage in competition for such incentive based funding. Furthermore, we argue that performance-based funding further inoculates the system of academic capitalism across American higher education. Performance-based funding is a carrot and stick approach to incentivize economic and workforce efficiencies when implemented at state-supported institutions. We acknowledge that higher education is a marketplace and make suggestions to revivify the social contract through corporate social responsibility.

The article is available through Emerald Publishing.