Collaborative Research: RAPID: Hurricane Response, Governance Structures, and Public Higher Education

公立大学在一个既受政治影响又受市场竞争压力的环境中运作面临着许多挑战。灾难放大了在这种环境中管理的挑战，特别是当机构在其能力受到限制，以满足学生谁是面临重大困难的自然灾害后的独特需求。灾害造成的短期中断可能对公共机构造成长期后果，但许多这些更为明显的后果可能并不完全归因于灾害的影响，而可能是政策框架和行政结构在极端事件后无法适应公共机构和政策受益者的需要。尤其重要的是入学损失的经济后果和认证结构带来的限制。本研究将使用行政访谈和学生成功的数据，以研究政策设计在灾后决策中的作用及其对学生成功的影响。我们希望我们的研究结果将激发联邦教育官员和认证组织领导人之间的讨论，讨论他们可以考虑如何使机构能够更好地支持学生重建生活和追求教育目标的努力。关注政治主要是指公共部门领导人在相对稳定时期面临的挑战（不是为了应对极端事件），而且许多关于灾害应对的讨论仅限于民选官员和/或联邦机构。该项目旨在研究这些动态如何在公立高等教育机构及其学生的灾难恢复工作中发挥作用。我们将采用混合方法设计，对管理人员进行定性访谈，并对学生数据进行定量分析。研究中心为德克萨斯州博蒙的拉马尔大学。行政访谈的重点是如何努力适应和支持那些受风暴影响的影响认证相关的限制（在这种情况下，从学院和学校的南方协会）和关注的影响资金流（学费收入，国家拨款，和联邦财政援助）的方式。定量分析考察了风暴发生后立即做出的决定如何影响学生入学率和持续性，以及这些影响因学生层面的风险因素或个人家庭遭受风暴破坏的程度而变化的程度。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Public universities face many challenges in their efforts to operate within an environment that is both dominated by political influences and subject to the pressures of market-based competition for necessary resources. Disasters magnify the challenges of managing within this environment, especially when the institution is constrained in its ability to accommodate the unique needs of students who are facing significant difficulties after a natural disaster. The short term disruption caused by a disaster can lead to long-term consequences for public institutions, but many of these more pronounced consequences may not be fully attributable to the effects of the disaster, but instead may be a function of the inability of policy frameworks and administrative structures to adapt to the needs of public institutions and policy beneficiaries after extreme events. Especially important are the financial consequences of enrollment loss and the constraints that come with accreditation structures. This study will use administrative interviews and data on student success to examine the role of policy design in post-disaster decisions and its influence on student success. We hope that our findings will motivate discussions among federal education officials and accreditation organization leaders about the ways in which they may consider options that would enable institutions to better support students in their efforts to rebuild their lives and pursue their educational goals.Theories of publicness, political control, policy implementation, and the politics of attention mostly speak to the challenges faced by public sector leaders in times of relative stability (not in response to extreme events), and many discussions of disaster response are limited to elected officials and/or federal agencies. This project seeks to examine how these dynamics play out in disaster recovery efforts for public higher education institutions and their students. We will use a mixed methods design, with qualitative interviews of administrators and a quantitative analysis of student data. The study site is Lamar University in Beaumont, TX. The administrative interviews focus on the ways in which efforts to accommodate and support those affected by the storm were influenced by accreditation-related constraints (in this case, from the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools) and concerns about the effects on funding streams (tuition revenue, state appropriations, and federal financial aid). The quantitative analysis examines how the decisions immediately following the storm affected student enrollment and persistence and the extent to which these effects vary by student-level risk factors or level of storm damage for the individual's household.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.