Category: Funding and Finances

Few things drive me crazier than when people claim higher education is a public good, and then claim that, on that basis, it deserves either: a) more public funding, or b) needs to be funded exclusively on a public basis.  This argument represents a fundamental misunderstanding of what the term “public good” actually means. When most people hear the phrase “public good”, they’re probably thinking something like, “it’s good, it’s publicly funded; therefore, it’s a public good”.  But  that rationale is

I’ve been talking about performance-based funding all week; today, I’ll try to summarize what I think the research and experience actually says. Let’s return for a second to a point I made Tuesday.  When determining whether PBF “works”, what matters is to be able to show that incentivizing particular outcomes actually changes institutional behaviour, and leads to improvements in outcomes. However, no study to date has actually bothered to link quantifiable changes in funding with any policy outcomes.  Hillman and Tandberg –