Performance Funding for Higher Education: What Are the Mechanisms? What Are the Impacts?

After first appearing in 1979 in Tennessee, performance funding for higher education went on to be adopted by another 26 states. This monograph reviews research on a multitude of states to address these questions: What impacts does performance funding have on institutional practices and, ultimately, student outcomes? What obstacles and unintended effects do performance funding encounter? This monograph finds considerable impacts on institutional practices, weak impacts on student outcomes, substantial obstacles, and sizable unintended impacts. Given this, the monograph closes with a discussion of the implications for future research and for public policymaking on performance funding. This is the 2nd issue of the 39th volume of the Jossey-Bass series ASHE Higher Education Report. Each monograph is the definitive analysis of a tough higher education issue, based on thorough research of pertinent literature and institutional experiences. Topics are identified by a national survey. Noted practitioners and scholars are then commissioned to write the reports, with experts providing critical reviews of each manuscript before publication.