THE PERSPECTIVES OF HIGHER EDUCATION LEADERS AND BUSINESS EXECUTIVES ON THE FUNDING GAP BETWEEN LIBERAL ARTS AND STEM EDUCATION: A CASE STUDY

This qualitative case study investigated the perspectives of higher education leaders and business executive on the funding gap between liberal arts programs and STEM education in a public research level 2 institution in Florida. The purpose of this qualitative case study was to explore and explain participants’ perspectives and finding ways to narrow the funding gap. Historically, Congress has been open in its allocation of funds to higher education research and, recently, allotted 97% to STEM and Science related disciplines and 3% to non-science fields. At the state level, funding to these two programmatic areas showed a comparable pattern to that of the U.S. Congress with 93% of funds allocated to Engineering and Science, and 7% to non-science disciplines and fields.
There were four central research questions to help understand participants’ perspectives of the values of these fields. This study included seven participants who met the following criteria: deans, associate deans, provosts, with at least 10 years of work experience in the position; dean, associate deans, or provosts who retired within the last five years; and a business executive, director or a Chief Operation Officer, with working relations to the university and with similar work experiences. Data were collected primarily from semi-structured interviews, which lasted for 45 minutes per session. Additionally, documents were collected from interview sites. Data were codded and analyzed in two cycles.