Origins of Federal and State Oversight: Higher Education

Many of you already know about the different models of statewide postsecondary governance across the U.S. Even so, we would like to write a series of blogs that build on shared information. This blog entry discusses the history of state and federal governmental control in higher education. Please feel free to connect with us if you have any questions or different thoughts about what we present here and in the future.

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Higher Education Oversight Origins

In the United States, the state (public) governmental authority has had oversight and responsibility for education, including postsecondary. The first colleges (e.g., Harvard, Yale, William and Mary, Dartmouth) struggled to maintain independence from first the English Crown, then the colonial-, and subsequently the state-governments. State governments use boards of trustees to oversee higher education institutions. These boards and other statewide governing or coordinating bodies are further discussed after a brief description about the federal role in higher education governance.

Federal Oversight History

The federal government established oversight primarily through its provision of funding and policy beginning with land grants enacted from late in the eighteenth Century through the Morrill Land-Grant College Acts of 1862 and 1890. Early in this period the funding had very few conditions. Increased conditions of funding, primarily to stimulate agriculture, mechanical, and vocational areas, came through Acts such as Hatch in 1887, Adams in 1906, Smith-Lever in 1914, and Hughes in 1917. By the beginning of the twentieth Century, the federal government added conditions on research, access, and quality, along with the requirement that states provide matching, and supervision of, funds.

Later in the twentieth Century, the federal government began efforts to oversee the states’ supervision as funding began to go to students (via the institution where they enrolled) with programs such as the Servicemen’s Readjustment Act of 1944 (i.e., the G.I. Bill), the 1952 Veterans’ Readjustment Assistance Act (i.e., the Korean G.I. Bill), and multiple funding sources and regulations under the Higher Education Act (HEA) of 1965. Accreditation was made a requirement for receiving funding through the G.I. Bill with the federal role of certifying accreditation agencies.

State Oversight Today

The state role in postsecondary education continues to be primarily through funding, reform efforts, and holding institutions accountable through authorization and continued monitoring of quality education. Postsecondary state governance varies across all states. However, states can be placed in general types of postsecondary governance based on whether they have a single- or system-based, coordinating or governing board or agency.

Whether a state’s system of oversight or governance is a coordinating body or a governing one depends on the level of authority and fiscal control they have been granted, ranging from having some authority and oversight concurrent with institutional boards, to oversight and management of institutions in place of individual boards.

Fulton, 2019, identifies most states (n=20) as having a “single, statewide coordinating board/agency,” with the next largest number (n=14) of states having “one or more major, systemwide governing board” (p. 11). See the full table she has included in her ECS Policy Guide Report located at https://www.ecs.org/research-reports/key-issues/governance/.

References

Berdahl, R.O. & McConnell, T.R. (1999). Autonomy and accountability: Who controls academe? In P.G. Altbach, R.O. Berdahl, & P. Gumport (Eds). American Higher Education in the Twenty-first Century: Social, Political, and Economic Challenges (pp. 70-88). Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press.

Brubacher, J.S. & Rudy, W. (2003). Higher education in transition: A history of American colleges and universities (4 th ed.). New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction.

Fulton, M. (2019). An analysis of postsecondary governance structures. Education Commission of the States Policy Guide, October 2019, (pp. 1-14). Education Commission of the States: Denver. www.ecs.org.

Gladieux, L.E., and King, Jacqueline, E. (1999). The federal government and higher education. In P.G. Altbach, R.O. Berdahl, & P. Gumport (Eds). American Higher Education in the Twenty-first Century: Social, Political, and Economic Challenges (pp. 151-182). Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press.

McGuinness, Jr., A.C. (1999). The states and higher education. In P.G. Altbach, R.O.

Berdahl, & P. Gumport (Eds). American Higher Education in the Twenty-first Century: Social, Political, and Economic Challenges (pp. 183-215). Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press.