State universities and colleges--Florida--Finance

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.

Purpose of the Study. The purpose of the study is to investigate the appropriations activity of the State of Florida, giving attention to general revenue growth and attendant workload data, to determine whether Program Plan Budgeting has been successful in obtaining an equitable funding position for state universities. Four research objectives were established to focus the results of the investigation: (1) To determine whether PPBS workload measures have been effective in influencing general revenue allocations. (2) To determine whether the scarcity of general revenue funds has been equally felt among all state agencies. (3) To measure allocations growth in excess of the Consumer Price Index to determine if such growth was justifiable as a result of workload increases. (4) To identify those departments which experienced rapid allocation growth to determine where general revenue dollars were placed by the legislature. Conclusions. Program Plan Budgeting workload factors were not effective in obtaining equitable funding for state universities. In the eighteen departments which experienced a greater appropriations growth rate than the Department of Education during the ten year period, only half of that growth could be justified by increased workload. Only four of those departments could totally justify their allocations through increased workload. The sense of general revenue scarcity was not equally felt in all departments. In fact, Florida's total general revenues increased at a rate which exceeded that of the Consumer Price Index for the period under study. Where the Department of Education's general revenue allocation equaled 76.9 percent of all general revenue allocated in 1968/69, it comprised only 61.9 percent of the total allocation in 1977/78. Within the Department of Education, the State University System's allocation declined from 12.2 percent of total general revenue in 1968/69 to 10.9 percent of the total in 1977/78, although the University System enrollments climbed from 45,982 to 80,616 students over the period of this study.