Lobbying for Higher Education
Lobbying for Higher Education

Author: Constance Ewing Cook

Publisher: Vanderbilt University Press

Published: 1998

Total Pages: 282

ISBN-13: 9780826513175

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Historically, many faculty and administrators in higher education have regarded themselves as above the fray--part of the national interest, not a special interest--and considered lobbying a dirty business unworthy of their lofty enterprise. Now that academia no longer enjoys all the respect and good will that federal policy makers once afforded it, that attitude has changed. The Republican sweep of the 1994 Congressional elections served as a wake-up call for the higher education community. In response, it made a spirited effort to gain attention for its own policy preferences. Lobbying for Higher Education is about how the major higher education associations and the constituent American colleges and universities try to influence federal policy, especially congressional policy. In clear prose Cook explains how the higher education community organizes itself in Washington, how it lobbies, and how its major interest groups are perceived both by their own members and by public officials. The book focuses on the crucial development in 1995-1996 of a new lobbying paradigm, which included the greater use of campus-based resources and ad hoc coalitions. The most engrossing part of its story is higher education's creative response to the policy turmoil and disruption of the status quo that resulted from the shift in congressional party control. The author, Constance Cook, uses sources unique to this project: over 1,500 survey responses from college and university presidents (a 62% return rate) and nearly 150 interviews with institutional and association leaders. Fortuitously, the 1994 electoral upheaval provided her with an opportunity to capture, analyze, and interpret the responses of her subjects in a period of unusually sweeping change. Lobbying for Higher Education is a timely book with an interesting and important story at its core.

Reexamining the Federal Role in Higher Education
Reexamining the Federal Role in Higher Education

Author: Rebecca S. Natow

Publisher: Teachers College Press

Published: 2022

Total Pages: 257

ISBN-13: 0807766763

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This book provides a comprehensive description of the federal government's relationship with higher education and how that relationship became so expansive and indispensable over time. Drawing from constitutional law, social science research, federal policy documents, and original interviews with key policy insiders, the author explores the U.S. government's role in regulating, financing, and otherwise influencing higher education. Natow analyzes how the government's role has evolved over time, the activities of specific governmental branches and agencies that affect higher education, the nature of the government's influence today, and prospects for the future of federal involvement in higher education. Chapters examine the politics and practices that shape policies affecting nondiscrimination and civil rights, student financial aid, educational quality and student success, campus crime, research and development, intellectual property, student privacy, and more. Book Features: Provides a contemporary and thorough understanding of how federal higher education policies are created, implemented, and influenced by federal and nonfederal policy actors. Situates higher education policy within the constitutional, political, and historical contexts of the federal government. Offers nuanced perspectives informed by insider information about what occurs behind the scenes in the federal higher education policy arena. Includes case studies illustrating the profound effects federal policy processes have on the everyday lives of college students, their families, institutions, and other higher education stakeholders.

Interest Groups, Lobbying, and Participation in America
Interest Groups, Lobbying, and Participation in America

Author: Kenneth M. Goldstein

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 1999-08-13

Total Pages: 176

ISBN-13: 9780521639620

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Understanding why individuals participate in politics demands attention to more than just individual attributes and attitudes. Similarly, understanding how interest groups influence policy-making demands attention to more than just the financial donations and direct activities of Washington-based lobbyists. To answer fundamental questions about what determines when and why people participate in politics and how organized interests go about trying to influence legislative decision-making we must understand how and why political leaders recruit which members of the public into the political arena. Looking from the bottom up with survey data and from the top down with data from interest group interviews, Kenneth Goldstein develops and tests a theory of how tactical choices in a grass-roots campaign are made. In doing so, he demonstrates that outside lobbying activities deserve a place in any correctly-specified model of interest group influence, political participation, or legislative decision-making.

University, Inc
University, Inc

Author: Jennifer Washburn

Publisher: Basic Books (AZ)

Published: 2005-02-15

Total Pages: 356

ISBN-13: 9780465090518

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A sobering examination of the corporate funding of universities reveals the compromises being made in exchange for sponsorship, the ways in which teaching is slowly being devalued, and the changes being wrought on the futures of students everywhere. 15,000 first printing.

From Campus to Capitol
From Campus to Capitol

Author: William McMillen

Publisher: JHU Press

Published: 2010-07-01

Total Pages: 191

ISBN-13: 0801897424

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From Campus to Capitol takes a comprehensive look at how governments affect institutions of higher learning, in the process illuminating the role of the government relations officer. All institutions of higher learning, from large state universities to community and private colleges, benefit from strong relationships with local, state, and federal governments. This book examines the importance of government relations officers and discusses how they can most effectively negotiate a tangled web of political entities—from community associations to mayors to lobbyists—while ensuring that their institution's best interests are met. In an era of declining state appropriations, increasing economic instability, and surging enrollments, successful interaction with government representatives is crucial. Whether securing a million-dollar federal earmark or helping to support the local economy, the government relations officer's influence is essential, both where it shows and behind the scenes. Drawing on more than thirty years of experience, William McMillen offers an insider's account of this major player in American higher education. Anecdotes and interviews with other government relations officers illustrate the challenges they face on and off campus.

Degrees of Inequality
Degrees of Inequality

Author: Suzanne Mettler

Publisher: Basic Books (AZ)

Published: 2014-03-11

Total Pages: 274

ISBN-13: 0465044964

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America’s higher education system is failing its students. In the space of a generation, we have gone from being the best-educated society in the world to one surpassed by eleven other nations in college graduation rates. Higher education is evolving into a caste system with separate and unequal tiers that take in students from different socio-economic backgrounds and leave them more unequal than when they first enrolled. Until the 1970s, the United States had a proud history of promoting higher education for its citizens. The Morrill Act, the G.I. Bill and Pell Grants enabled Americans from across the income spectrum to attend college and the nation led the world in the percentage of young adults with baccalaureate degrees. Yet since 1980, progress has stalled. Young adults from low to middle income families are not much more likely to graduate from college than four decades ago. When less advantaged students do attend, they are largely sequestered into inferior and often profit-driven institutions, from which many emerge without degrees—and shouldering crushing levels of debt. In Degrees of Inequality, acclaimed political scientist Suzanne Mettler explains why the system has gone so horribly wrong and why the American Dream is increasingly out of reach for so many. In her eye-opening account, she illuminates how political partisanship has overshadowed America’s commitment to equal access to higher education. As politicians capitulate to corporate interests, owners of for-profit colleges benefit, but for far too many students, higher education leaves them with little besides crippling student loan debt. Meanwhile, the nation’s public universities have shifted the burden of rising costs onto students. In an era when a college degree is more linked than ever before to individual—and societal—well-being, these pressures conspire to make it increasingly difficult for students to stay in school long enough to graduate. By abandoning their commitment to students, politicians are imperiling our highest ideals as a nation. Degrees of Inequality offers an impassioned call to reform a higher education system that has come to exacerbate, rather than mitigate, socioeconomic inequality in America.

Total Lobbying
Total Lobbying

Author: Anthony J. Nownes

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2006-10-02

Total Pages: 7

ISBN-13: 1139457861

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This book offers a scholarly yet accessible overview of the role of lobbying in American politics. It draws upon extant research as well as original data gathered from interviews with numerous lobbyists across the United States. It describes how lobbyists do their work within all branches of government, at the national, state, and local levels. It thus offers a substantially broader view of lobbying than is available in much of the research literature. Although tailored for students taking courses on interest group politics, Total Lobbying offers an indispensable survey of the field for scholars and others concerned with this important facet of American politics.