Abstract This study performs a comparative quantitative assessment of the financial status of 107 public research libraries and 39 private academic research libraries in the United States. By deploying The University of Alabama Education Policy Center's Mission-Driven Classification (MDC) System and the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching's Basic Classification of Institutions of Higher Education, this research explores the 146 private and publicly funded doctoral-granting universities with very high research activity (R1) and their library budgets from fiscal years 2012 and 2021. The study examines any differences between research university revenues and the major components of research library expenditures, staffing expenses, materials expenses, and operations and maintenance expenses. The study also examines any library differences based on the institutional type and size, library collections and scope, and per-student library expenditures. The secondary data for this study were compiled from the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) Academic Library Trends and Statistics Survey and the U.S. Department of Education's Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) data. This study found that the most disadvantaged research libraries are those at the 28 smaller research universities, which could be identified using the MDC system. It also advocates for research libraries to receive federal funding from the Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR), a National Science Foundation program whose mission is to strengthen the nation's research infrastructure. The library budgets of the smaller flagships declined 29% over ten years, more than any other research libraries studied, and 17 of these smaller research libraries are in EPSCoR-eligible states.

The assumption that honors programs are more academically challenging is rarely interrogated. Using multi-institutional, longitudinal quantitative data from a larger study, we use quasi-experimental methods to examine students’ experiences of course rigor, including workload and cognitive challenge, for honors participants compared to non-participants. Honors students perceive greater workload but not cognitive challenge in their first year, especially in terms of the amount of reading and writing they are asked to do. In their fourth year, honors participants experience less cognitive challenge than non-participants. Results of subgroup analyses suggest that these differences are likely driven by students who participate in centralized honors programs rather than departmental honors as well as those attending more selective institutions, with implications for honors program instructors and administrators.

Noel Keeney, Research Associate, Education Policy Center, The University of Alabama; Stephen G. Katsinas, Professor and Director of the Education Policy Center, The University of Alabama, Senior Fellow, College Promise; Nathaniel Bray, Associate Director, Education Policy Center, The University of Alabama, Senior Fellow, College Promise. Local Funding and Tuition and Fee Charges at U.S. Community Colleges

The chapter considers the importance of wraparound services for college students, and their use with College Promise programs in particular. Beginning with how the student debt crisis arose, the chapter explains various College Promise models and funding structures and how they link to and work with Pell grants. First‐dollar, last‐dollar, and middle‐ or last‐dollar‐plus programs are explained. The chapter then addresses what constitutes wraparound services, and why they are critical for students in College Promise programs or receiving Pell grant funding. The chapter then provides some specific examples from both rural (for example Kalamazoo) and urban (such as Baltimore) settings to highlight key elements of College Promise goals, structures, and outcomes.

Nathaniel Bray, Associate Director, Education Policy Center, The University of Alabama, Senior Fellow, College Promise; Garrett A. TIll, Research Associate, Education Policy Center, The University of Alabama; Mark M. D'Amico, Professor, University of North Carolina Charlotte; Stephen G. Katsinas, Professor and Director of the Education Policy Center, The University of Alabama, Senior Fellow, College Promise Emerging from COVID-19: The 2022 Report of Finance and Access Issues Nathaniel J. Bray, Garrett A. TIll, Mark M. D'Amico, and Stephen G. Katsinas

University of Alabama, Senior Fellow, College Promise; Noel Keeney, Research Associate, Education Policy Center, The University of Alabama; Nathaniel Bray, Associate Director, Education Policy Center, The University of Alabama, Senior Fellow, College Promise; F. King Alexander, Professor, Florida Gulf Coast University, Senior Faculty Fellow, Education Policy Center, The University of Alabama, Faculty Affiliate, Cornell University Higher Education Research Institute, Senior Fellow, College Promise; Garrett A. TIll, Research Associate, Education Policy Center, The University of Alabama.

F. King Alexander, Professor, Florida Gulf Coast University, Senior Faculty Fellow, Education Policy Center, The University of Alabama, Faculty Affiliate, Cornell University Higher Education Research Institute, Senior Fellow, College Promise; Stephen G. Katsinas, Professor and Director of the Education Policy Center, The University of Alabama, Senior Fellow, College Promise; Nathaniel Bray, Associate Director, Education Policy Center, The University of Alabama, Senior Fellow, College Promise. Introduction to the Special Edition on U.S. Public Community College Finance Issues and Challenges Co-Editors F. King Alexander, Stephen G. Katsinas, and Nathaniel Bray

This article explores how well bibliometrics and altmetrics reflect research impact in relation to Boyer’s Model of the Scholarship. Indices used for both types of metrics are explored and discussed while including an analysis on primary methodological works performed on each in the literature to date. As confirmatory in nature, we chose as our focus of analysis the most highly cited, solo-authored, peer-reviewed article from each of two scholars at an R1 institution in the field of higher education: a rising junior scholar and a well-established senior scholar. In addition to analysis of bibliometric and altmetrics, extensive textual analysis was conducted on the works ( n = 165) of both scholars to determine how substantitive in-text citations were from authors citing these scholars’ research. Different authors coded each of the citing works, and both inter-rater reliability ( k < 0.001, σ_χ = 0.055) and intraclass correlation tests ( r = .000) were conducted at the nominal and interval levels to provide strong reliability measures of the rubric with each showing a confidence interval of 95

Stephen G. Katsinas, Professor and Director of the Education Policy Center, The University of Alabama, Senior Fellow, College Promise; Noel Keeney, Research Associate, Education Policy Center, The University of Alabama; Nathaniel Bray, Associate Director, Education Policy Center, The University of Alabama, Senior Fellow, College Promise; Patrick J. Kelly, Research Officer, The Alabama Commission on Higher Education and East Tennessee State, EPC Fellow. Declining Pell Support at Community Colleges Since the Great Recession Stephen G. Katsinas, Noel E. Keeney, Nathaniel J. Bray, and Patrick J. Kelly

The value of articles published in journals devoted to the scholarship of teaching and learning constitutes a relatively unexplored topic of inquiry within the broader field of inquiry on the scholarship of teaching and learning. This article addresses this topic using citations and four types of altmetrics as indicators of value. We used a sample of 100 articles published in four SOTL focused journals: two high consensus journals ( BioScience: Journal of College Biology Teaching and The Journal of Chemical Education ) and two low consensus journals ( Teaching History and Teaching Sociology ). In addition to the level of consensus of the discipline of these journals, we also measured the institutional type of the first authors of these articles and the type of study of the article. We advanced three conclusions from our data analysis with the first one being of particular significance to SOTL work. This conclusion is that the pattern of findings of this study cry out fairly loudly that articles published in SOTL-focused journals hold value to users of the articles as expressed through citations of them, as well as mentions of them through various altmetrics. Moreover the similar magnitudes of this value transpires regardless of the institutional type of the article’s first author and whether the article recommended a practice or recommended content. However, the value ascribed to articles differ according to the level of consensus of the field of the SOTL journal, which show a difference in article views, Twitter mentions and Mendeley uses.

Differences in funding mixtures across the United States create widely variant levels of unmet need for students. This research examines gaps of unmet need between 2003-4 and 2013-14, particularly considering the presence of any local funding provisions and Pell Grant funding changes. These findings are also considered across state, community college type by both size and setting. Data were collected from the National Center for Education Statistics' (NCES) Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS). Results show that the change in the cost of attendance and the average amount of financial aid to students over the decade this study examines has been steady. Increase in Pell Grant aid have helped ameliorate some of the differences in unmet need across states. However, national averages mask stark differences in unmet need across the subsections listed above. Implications for policy and practice are discussed.

The focus of this work is to examine the relationship between subjective and objective measures of prestige of journals in our field. Findings indicate that items pulled from Clarivate, Elsevier, and Google all have statistically significant elements related to perceived journal prestige. Just as several widely used bibliometric metrics related to prestige, so were altmetric scores.

AbstractHow should we account for and assess the work of the public intellectual? This chapter unpacks approaches to the assessment of the public intellectual to broadly consider the roles and functions of the academic public intellectual, examine how their roles fit within Boyer's domains of scholarship and how institutional structures both support and impinge upon intellectual activities. It then discusses how the assessment of public intellectuals can be more appropriately and objectively conducted using alternative metrics and clearer expectations for evaluation.

Research has shown that linear relationships do not adequately represent publication and citation measurement behavior. They are much more curvilinear than that. However, we tend to try to look to citation counts linearly to draw outcomes about productivity. This study examines bibliometric and altmetric measures for emerging and senior scholars to see if power law behavior helps explain patterns for both of these groups. Findings indicating the presence of the power law for both groups suggests the majority of work receives few references while a select few works receive the majority of references. Alternative best fit transformations of the data are also detailed.

In this article, we consider faculty perceptions of journal prestige specific to the field of higher education administration research. Findings indicate stability in journal prestige rankings over time, and highlight journal criteria that faculty find most important to prestige.

In his 1982 book, Why Teachers Organize?, education historian Wayne Urban suggested that the emergence of collective bargaining among local teacher organizations was an important development that helped faculty work together to establish employment guidelines and increase their overall compensation through the expansion of shared fringe benefits.The impact of collective bargaining has not diminished since its emergence and, in fact, continues at institutions to this day.As the U.S. continues to recover from the Great Recession that began in late 2007, and higher education institutions continue to face financial difficulties of persistently decreasing state funding as a portion of their operating budgets, collective bargaining serves an important role in determining the compensation and benefits awarded to employees at higher education institutions.Recent studies have examined the number of higher education institutions and their employees who utilize collective bargaining.The 2012 Directory of U.S. faculty contracts and bargaining agents in institutions of higher education (Berry & Savarese) found that, since 2006, two-year colleges added 50,000 members under unionized contracts, as the overall number of agreements increased.These agreements included part-time faculty and graduate student employees.In 2014, Sproul, Bucklew, and Houghton utilized the Union Membership and Coverage Database developed from the Current Population Survey (Hirsch & Macpherson,

abstract: This secondary data analysis of federal budget data sought to understand the impact of U.S. Senate reconciliation measures on higher education funding. Reconciliation is a process by which the U.S. Senate passes budgetary measures by only requiring a simple majority. Using data from federal budgets that stretched from the end of the Carter administration to the end of the Obama administration, this study shows that higher education receives more overall funding from the federal government when a budget is passed, rather than through a reconciliation bill. In the 30 years where a budget was passed, higher education mandatory spending saw an increase of 242 percent. In the seven years a conciliation bill was passed, mandatory spending for higher education decreased by 346percent. There appears to be no connection between American political party and the decision to use reconciliation in higher education, as Democratic controlled Senates have passed reconciliation bills three times, with two increasing higher education funding and one decreasing. Republican controlled Senates have passed reconciliation twice, with one increasing and one decreasing funding to higher education. Our analysis shows that advocates for higher education should seek policy reform in the traditional budget passage process, rather than through reconciliation.

In recent years, transfer and articulation has become a hot topic within the higher education research and policy literature. This is evidenced by the myriad of terms whose roots trace to the broad...

This chapter reviews multiple variables across all public community colleges, and unveils marked disparities in public funding between and within the states at community colleges of different sizes and geographical settings.