IS IT WORKING? NARRATIVE PERSPECTIVES ON PERFORMANCE-BASED FUNDING POLICIES IN PUBLIC HIGHER EDUCATION

Public higher education increasingly relies on performance-based funding (PBF) policies to enhance accountability. These policies attempt to steer institutions towards successful outcomes via performance indicators, such as graduation rates. Nationally, PBF policies continue to grow in popularity despite limited evidence that they are effective (Hillman, Tandberg, and Gross, 2014).
Motivated by the apparent conflict between the widespread adoption of PBF policies and the lack of evidence that they actually improve outcomes in higher education, this dissertation investigates the perceived impacts of PBF policies. Florida’s public university system serves as the setting for the study due to its uniquely punitive PBF policy design and the model’s non-standardized performance indicators.