This dissertation examines the work of Ralph Furse, the Appointments Secretary for the Colonial Office, and his forward imperial allies. Furse, in office from 1910-1914 and 1919-1948, slowly gained control over the British imperial apparatus in large part due to bureaucratic maneuvers of his own and the missteps of his competitors. Furse reformed the way new administrators were hired, trained, and tracked, and therefore, in theory, how the Empire operated during the interwar period. However, this transformation failed to translate to on the ground changes because of the thin numbers of officials on the ground before World War II, the lack of buy-in by the junior administrators themselves, the Depression, and geopolitical concerns. Furse slowly gained bureaucratic control of the levers of imperial power, first by centralizing recruitment and hiring for the Colonial Office and putting it in his own hands. He then developed a yearlong training program for new administrators at Oxford and Cambridge that tried to indoctrinate them into viewing the Empire as an economic asset. Furse and his allies evaluated administrators on how enthusiastically they accepted his approach, testing and tracking them at Oxbridge and continuing to do so throughout their entire careers. With this information, Furse inserted himself into changes to the administrative functions of the colonial Empire. Although Furseâ"u20ac™s reforms changed the administrative apparatus of the Empire by 1939, little in fact changed on the ground in the colonies. Geopolitically, rivals showed the weakness of Britain. The Depression dampened the merger attempts at capital investment. Finally, Furseâ"u20ac™s presumably reformed junior administrators were more interested in hunting, sport and safari. Although some junior administrators succeeded in Furseâ"u20ac™s new system, junior administrators in the field reflected the incongruences and inconsistences of Furseâ"u20ac™s grand plan for the Empire. / Jonathan A Moore

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On April 18, 1989, eighteen school aged children from the metropolitan Hartford, Connecticut area, acting through their parents, commenced a civil action in the Hartford Superior Court. The suit named the State of Connecticut, constitutionally elected officials, and officials of various state commissions and agencies as defendants. The plaintiffs alleged significant constitutional violations under applicable sections of the State constitution which they believe constituted a denial of their fundamental rights to an education and rights to equal protection under the law. In the landmark civil rights decision of Sheff v. O'Neill, the Connecticut Supreme Court, on July 16, 1996, ruled that based upon these constitutional claims, the state had an affirmative obligation to provide Connecticut's school children with a substantially equal educational opportunity. This constitutionally guaranteed right encompasses the access to a public education which is not substantially and materially impaired by racial and ethnic isolation. The Court further concluded that school districting based upon town and city boundary lines are unconstitutional. The implications and potential ramifications of this decision are significant. This dissertation chronicles the events and examines the issues surrounding this landmark decision. The background contributing to the plaintiffs claims, the state's position, the historical evolution of the case, and reaction/actions and proposals to remedy and comply with the court's order are examined.

<p> This dissertation examined the literature of cutback management in the context of the Great Recession. Specifically, it studied the relationship between cutback management policies used by county governments during the recession and revenue changes. </p><p> The purpose of this dissertation was to test whether or not the percent change in revenue had an impact on the probability that cutback management policies were used in the recession. According to the cutback management literature developed in the 1970s and 1980s, there should be a relationship. </p><p> The theoretical framework used for this study was the rational-approach framework, which proposes that every expenditure reducing and revenue increasing policy is enacted based on the percent decrease in revenue the government faces. This suggests that the cutback management policies are a proportional response to revenue decline. The framework was operationalized by using a binary logistic regression that used policy enactment as the dependent variable and the percent change in revenue as the independent variable. Eighty-six counties were sampled and 7 years of each county&rsquo;s budget book were examined for policies and financial data. </p><p> The research found that eleven expenditure policies and three revenue policies had a statistically significant relationship with the percent change in revenues. This resulted in the conclusion that the framework and, therefore, the cutback management literature were useful in explaining primarily expenditure policies.</p>

<p> The purpose of this thesis is to explore how the contemporary art gallery model has been adapted in order to suit a post-2008 global recession marketplace. Using Culver City as a case study, I have analyzed how three local gallerists have changed their business practices made in response to a rapidly changing economic environment as well as the demands of the current "Knowledge Age" and also demonstrated how these adaptations follow from historical developments in American gallery culture. My findings suggest the degree to which socioeconomic changes inspired shifts within the design of the current gallery business model, which enabled galleries in Culver City to survive the most challenging economic recession of their time. Findings from this study can benefit future gallerists, collectors, artists, or historians engaging in the contemporary art marketplace.</p>

The study posed the general question: How has the historical federal relationship with higher education affected the institutional capacity of the U.S. higher education system to sustain and expand its international dimension, to internationalize? Two federal programs were identified for their explicit interest in building higher education's institutional capacity in the international dimension between 1958 and 1988. National Defense Education Act, Title VI programs administered by successive federal education agencies were treated in depth. Agency for International Development programs administered by the foreign affairs agencies were highlighted as a counterpoint to Title VI. Two further guide questions helped analyze the evolution of the policy arena. First, how effective were the federal case programs in achieving their legislative aims per se? The theoretical framework was triangulated from three veins in the literature, i.e., public policy implementation effectiveness, diffusion of innovations and higher education organization. The basic tool was legislative case history. The period was 1958-1980. Second, what did higher education institutional participation patterns in the case programs reveal about the effectiveness of these case programs and their influence on the international capacity of the higher education system? This was answered in terms of specific definitions of internationalization. The participation and funding patterns of 506 institutions and consortia of higher education in the two case programs from 1969-1988 were analyzed in terms of regional dispersion within the U.S., ownership balance and institutional diversity. Institutional diversity was analyzed in depth for Title VI. The study revealed a series of policy choices and decisions as the policy arena developed. It confirmed an important but not dominant role of federal programs in sustaining higher education's international capacity. Internationalization depended on higher education itself. Federal resources rarely matched policy goals. Over the thirty years, the case programs most directly contributed to international capacity in research universities, less directly in other higher education groups. The study suggests that barring massive concerted advocacy or a unique policy catalyst, the higher education system can best increase federal resources for internationalization by stretching existing channels rather than creating new ones.

This descriptive and interpretive study explores the problem of school funding uncertainty in Massachusetts. Information from three main strands converges on the achievement status of today's Massachusetts students: the history of school funding since the earliest permanent English-speaking settlements, the municipal budget-making process in Massachusetts as it affects school funding, and the state budget-making process in regard to its effect on the funding of public K-12 education. Clearly the history of school funding mirrors social and economic issues in the 400-year period reviewed. Definition of social and economic needs of the citizenry has been a continuous political process. Who has had the power to define the needs has affected the funding of public schools. The municipal school funding process in Massachusetts is reviewed both as an annual procedural cycle and as a product of ongoing politically sensitive relationships at the local level. Its effect on the funding of public K-12 schools is influenced by the credibility and political effectiveness of the school district leadership. Funding of public schools by the state is also reviewed both as an annual procedural cycle and as a product of the political give and take that legislators rely upon to get their own agendas supported. Against this background of the past history and current process of allocating resources for public K-12 schools, student achievement scores are examined relative to money provided for schools. A statewide pattern showing money reflected in student achievement is found--both public money and personal money. This study concludes that in Massachusetts, while the uncertainty of school funding continues from year to year regardless of the 1993 Education Reform Act, a sufficient and stable flow of money to the schools is necessary to prepare students adequately for the future. Suggestions for further study and for local action are detailed.

In the decades following World War II American higher education enjoyed a period of unprecedented growth and development. By the 1970s, however, it was clear that the growth curve was flattening. The prospect of fiscal stringency sparked interest in formal planning, and campuses experimented with Program Planning Budgeting Systems (PPBS) and other "rational" planning approaches. As the 1980s unfolded, however, the sense that fiscal problems would persist deepened, and the emphasis shifted to effectiveness. "Strategic" approaches to planning--emphasizing adaptive change in response to environmental analysis--came into wide use. The comprehensiveness and complexity of strategic approaches introduced new challenges for which institutions were poorly prepared, and many had disappointing experiences. The literature offered only fragmented and often inconsistent advice for institutions contemplating strategic planning. The author reviewed the literature with an eye toward identifying "conditions" that support successful planning. Five such conditions were identified: (1) consensus for change; (2) focus on institutional needs; (3) good "fit" between planning and the campus culture; (4) effective faculty participation; and (5) effective leadership. It is argued that an institution which satisfies these conditions increases its chances of success; conversely, an institution which falls short in these areas diminishes its chances. This hypothesis was explored in a case study of planning efforts at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst between 1971 and 1992. The campus engaged in seventeen planning efforts, nine of which were judged to be "strategic." Of the nine, only two could be considered "successful," both quite modest in scope. An examination of the campus's status with respect to the five "conditions" suggested that they were useful in understanding the planning outcomes. The five conditions were then recast as a "diagnostic" tool, a set of questions to be answered before embarking on strategic planning. This tool should help the institution understand its "readiness" to undertake strategic planning; identify areas in which ameliorative action is needed; form a more realistic set of planning expectations. A number of directions for future research are suggested to both test the predictive power of the five conditions and to enhance the usefulness of the diagnostic tool.

America is again in a period of intense education reform designed to improve teaching and learning. Since 1983, when America was declared "at risk" highly publicized and widely disseminated reports criticized the state of the nation's schools and suggested global remedies for perceived weaknesses. Such generalized calls for education reforms initiated by those outside the individual school historically failed to significantly alter the learning environment and effect improvement. A growing body of research suggests legislated reform efforts do not succeed because they do not recognize the unique character of each school. Further, research findings relative to the change process itself is consistently ignored by outside-the-school policymakers. A crucial step toward education renewal at the local school level is the identification of improvement priorities. The purpose of this study was to investigate practices and perceptions of the improvement priority determination process in the local school. Three research objectives guided the study: (1) To describe priorities identified by teachers and principals to bring about improvement; (2) To describe how teachers and principals determine priorities for improvement; (3) To describe the degree of teacher satisfaction towards the process for determining priorities for school improvement. Data was obtained from principals and teachers in the eleven core schools of the University of Massachusetts, Amherst school/university partnership, the Coalition for School Improvement. Analysis of findings for the first objective indicate that less than half (44%) of principal-identified priorities and only 10% of teacher-identified priorities were stated in terms of student learning. Analysis of findings for the second objective indicate general congruence between principal and teacher perceptions of procedures employed to establish priorities but that principals felt teachers had greater involvement in determining priorities than did the teachers. Findings for the third objective indicate teachers were satisfied with their degree of involvement in establishing improvement priorities although they expressed a higher degree of satisfaction with their role in initiating priorities than they did regarding their role in determining priorities. The determination of priorities to address learning problems of students is an immediate step that can be taken to make schools even more adequate to their tasks of preparing children and youth for constructive participation in their democracy. The tendency of educators to describe goals in terms of the program rather than in terms of the learner suggests that concerns for the means has relegated concern for the learner to a lesser place in the hierarchy of school renewal priorities.

In the years after 1959 Britain's disengagement from her colonial Empire was comprehensive and rapid. A newly re-elected Conservative government, well aware that many special interests would suffer in the process, set out nevertheless to press the policy of decolonisation speedily to its end. This new tempo of policy was a natural enough response to the experiences of the preceding years. The decade and a half since the war had encompassed both the rise of articulate and aggressive colonial nationalism and a steep decline in Britain's own power in the world. What Macmillan and Macleod recognised, in essence, was that a point had been reached beyond which the continuation of the old gradualist tempo of devolution would precipitate more colonial unrest than Britain could hope to contain. Thus the period from the end of the war to the general election of 1959 appears in retrospect as the penultimate phase of Britain's colonial experience, spanning those events and movements of ideas in terms of which the hurried conclusion of the early sixties may be understood. This work attempts to discuss the domestic politics of colonial policy in the period. It is motivated not by any general belief that the approach to decolonisation is best studied from the domestic point of view, but simply by the hope of illuminating an area of the picture which, by comparison with the events in the colonies themselves, has remained in shadow. The study deals with the activities of the major political parties and certain pressure groups within that area of British political activity having the Colonial Office and Parliament as its focal points. It is organised around two broad questions. Firstly, how were colonial problems and issues dealt with in British politics; that is, what kinds of attitudes and activities were stimulated among parties and groups by the existence, and the changing character, of this area of British responsibility? Secondly, how far did domestic political activity affect the course of governmental policy?