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

合作研究：RAPID：飓风响应、治理结构和公立高等教育

• 批准号: 1803959
• 负责人: Brenda Nichols
• 金额: $ 2.94万
• 依托单位: Lamar University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2018
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2018-03-15 至 2019-08-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1803959&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Collaborative; Research; RAPID; Hurricane; Response

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.

公立大学在一个既受政治影响主导又受到基于市场的必要资源竞争压力的环境中运营时面临着许多挑战。灾害加剧了在这种环境下进行管理的挑战，特别是当机构满足自然灾害后面临重大困难的学生的独特需求的能力受到限制时。灾害造成的短期破坏可能会给公共机构带来长期后果，但许多更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无法适应极端事件后公共机构和政策受益人的需求的结果。尤其重要的是入学损失带来的财务后果以及认证结构带来的限制。本研究将利用行政访谈和学生成功数据来检验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能够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选择，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。公共性、政治控制、政策实施和政治关注的理论大多谈论公共部门领导人在相对稳定时期（而不是应对极端事件）所面临的挑战，并且许多关于灾难应对的讨论是有限的 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。我们将使用混合方法设计，对管理人员进行定性访谈并对学生数据进行定量分析。研究地点是德克萨斯州博蒙特的拉马尔大学。行政访谈的重点是为受风暴影响的人们提供安置和支持的努力受到与认证相关的限制（在本例中是来自南方学院和学校协会）的影响，以及对资金流（学费收入、州拨款和联邦财政援助）影响的担忧。定量分析研究了风暴后立即做出的决定如何影响学生入学和坚持，以及这些影响在多大程度上因学生级别的风险因素或风暴对个人家庭的损害程度而变化。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。