College students in prison are ineligible for state-funded financial aid in most states. This is because state policymakers adopted policies that explicitly ban incarcerated students from receiving aid. How and why did state policymakers do this? This study explores this question through qualitative case studies of two states where incarcerated…

Researchers have shown renewed interest during the past decade in the relationships among politics, policy, finance, and governance of higher education at the state level. Little attention, however, has been paid to state higher education executive officers (SHEEOs), the individuals responsible for leading the agencies that oversee higher…

Over the past two decades, state governments have increasingly invested in programs to recruit accomplished scientists from elsewhere to university positions. This event history analysis suggests that an intriguing mix of comparative state disadvantage and leveragable existing research resources is associated with the likelihood of states adopting…

Despite the scholarly attention on the effects of merit aid on college access and choice, particularly on the significant effect that states' varied eligibility criteria play, no studies have examined the policy process through which merit aid criteria are determined. This is surprising given the recent attention to state-level policy dynamics and…

Over the past several decades, state officials and various interest groups and civic organizations have increased their level of direct involvement in the affairs of public higher education. The increase in external attention toward the academy would likely be accompanied by the development of oversight mechanisms to ensure that societal…

This article presents findings from a study examining the similarities and differences between Native American student perceptions and the perceptions of state representatives, university presidents, and faculty about persistence factors and barriers to degree completion specific to Native American students at three land-grant universities in…