THIRD SECTOR NETWORK

Over the past 30 years or so the argument that public higher education is becoming privatized has become an accepted fact. However, less attention has been focused on how, why and to what extent these colleges and universities are actually pursuing more “private” means of sustaining themselves as various types of government support has declined. Preliminary evidence from my dissertation research indicates that though there is evidence of privatization among public colleges and universities between 1970 and 1995, however, concluding that this is occurring for the entire industry would be an oversimplification.

Using a new methodological technique I empirically derived five different organizational funding strategies that are being pursued by a sample of 164 colleges and universities from 1970-1995. These strategies range from very public funding models (no endowment income, very little if any endowment and low levels of private contributions) to funding models that closely parallel the private colleges and universities within this industry which are characterized by high levels of endowment income and wealth as well as high levels of private gifts, grants and contracts.

Overall the field is shifting towards the private end of the spectrum with increases in private and hybrid strategies over the time period, with declines in the strategies at the public end of the spectrum. This gives the picture of an industry characterized by dynamic changes over time. This shift is, primarily, being driven by the movement of a small subgroup of institutions, predominantly the branch campuses of the large state systems (University of Texas-San Antonio, University of California-Davis, and University of Wisconsin-Platteville for example) and smaller public colleges and universities that are not affiliated with the large state systems (Southwest Texas State University, Evergreen State College, and Coastal Carolina University for example). This indicates that this industry, rather than being dynamic, is actually relatively stable with significant movement by a small but important contingent of institutions. This finding is contrary to the depiction of the higher education industry in the popular press and in some academic literatures.

This evidence indicates that the privatization of higher education is not an industry-wide phenomenon but instead is occurring in a smaller subpopulation of colleges and universities within this very diverse group. The majority of institutions that are seen as pursuing privatized strategies in the literature have not drastically changed their funding strategies in the past 30 years. These larger state institutions have consistently been pursuing endowment income, donations and higher tuition levels as means for sustaining their mission. Therefore to say that privatization is occurring across the board and at much higher rates than in the past is not supported by the empirical evidence.

It has occurred to me in the course of revising a work in progress that in the general literature on organizations there is surprisingly little discussion of sector differences or governance differences as mediating or conditioning the impacts of some of our fundamental theories. Neoinstitutionalism, resource dependency and population ecology are just some theories or orienting frameworks which come to mind. Most of the discussion regarding the role of sector differences is restricted to the nonprofits and public administration literature; when it does occur or get mentioned within the broader organizations literature it is usually in the form of a control variable in analysis.

Why is it that organizational researchers have been lax in examining this question? (Or have I simply been looking in the wrong places?)Why is this not a question in the broader literature? Why is it restricted to the small subsection of nonprofits? If researchers are truly interested in developing theories of organizational behavior shouldn’t we take into account this fundamental aspect that creates heterogeneity within organizational fields/markets and populations?

This issue becomes increasingly interesting given the growing interest within the field in categories of organizations and organizational identities. Recent work by Greta Hsu, Michael T. Hannan, Ezra Zuckerman, and others has focused on organizations and the impacts of the different identities on an organization’s likelihood of success in a given industry or field. It seems to me that this has direct relevance for both the issue of sector differences as well as higher education, which as I mentioned is my field of interest. This is in fact one of the issues that I will be examining in my dissertation research. Hopefully I can shed some light on the role of sector differences and multiple identities on higher education institutions and organizations more generally. Bringing these two issues together will hopefully aid in bridging this gap in the organizations literature.

Hello everyone, welcome to our venture into the blogging world. My name is Sondra Barringer and I am currently a fourth year student in the Sociology Department at the University of Arizona, working on my doctoral dissertation. My fellow bloggers and I had the pleasure of meeting at the RGK Center for Philanthropy and Community Service Summer Fellowship Program at the University of Texas at Austin this past summer. Like Erica I am also a bit of a black sheep since my background is in sociology and organizations. My interest in nonprofits developed out of my interest in sector differences in organizations, specifically in higher education which is the subject of my dissertation.

My academic background, like many nonprofit researchers, is also a little eclectic. My undergraduate degree is in Economics and Sociology from Baylor University and my graduate work here at the University of Arizona has focused primarily on organizations, methods, higher education, networks, and statistics.

My dissertation work is situated at the intersection of higher education, organizational strategies, governance, nonprofits, and methodology. Broadly speaking it examines the different organizational strategies that are pursued by institutions of higher education, the factors that dictate which strategies are pursued and the impacts of those strategies on the various constituencies of higher education.