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The purpose of this study was to identify indicators of quality for liberal arts colleges and universities as defined by internal and external constituents, and to compare the results of this study with those of two-year public institutions. The internal constituents included college and university presidents and faculty, and the external constituents consisted of officers of Chambers of Commerce and the Kiwanis International, representing business and industry. A survey instrument of 70 items was sent to the constituents of 148 institutions accredited by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools. A total of 592 surveys were sent with an average response rate of 56.93%. The study was limited to Baccalaureate (Liberal Arts) Colleges I and Baccalaureate (Liberal Arts) Colleges II according to the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. There were 57 survey items identified as indicators of quality by agreement of all respondent group means. The highest ranked indicator of quality was faculty commitment to teaching. The Analysis of Variance revealed close agreement by constituents on 17 of the quality indicators. There was close agreement also that three of the survey items were not indicators of quality. Fisher's Multiple Comparison test revealed that various constituents rated some survey items significantly higher than all other groups. The items that presidents, faculty representatives, and Chamber of Commerce officers each rated significantly high indicated the unique perspective of each constituent group. The Kiwanis officers responded similarly to the Chamber officers but did not rate any survey items significantly higher than other groups. Internal constituents rated seven items significantly higher than external constituents. These items centered mainly on faculty characteristics. External constituents rated three items higher than internal constituents. These survey items focused mainly on curriculum issues that related to the community and real-world problems. Seventeen conclusions were drawn from the study and implications for practice were formulated in areas such as faculty teaching, student interaction, learning outcomes, institutional effectiveness, external constituents, goal setting, advertising, and recruiting.

This dissertation explores the impact of the state public sector legal environment as a determinant of the governance content of faculty collective bargaining agreements. Using content analysis, the legal environment and contractual content are reduced to quantities that may be explored through the lens of population ecology. Legal environment is determined to have a significant impact on the development of contractual content and individual factors of governance and statutory form are identified. Specifically, the statutory scope language and reservation of management rights are seen as the primary environmental forces determining policy and rule issues in contractual content. Further, the relevant temporal element for an ecological model appears to be the tenure of public sector bargaining in each state. National affiliation, institutional type and other temporal variables do not have a significant impact on governance language. Implications and directions for further research are discussed.

Southern Baptist-Related college faculty attitudes and opinions on areas of higher education most important to the professoriate as identified by the Carnegie Foundation in its 1989 National Survey of Faculty are described in this study and compared with the data from the survey reported by the Carnegie Foundation in The Condition of the Professoriate: Attitudes and Trends, 1989 and Scholarship Reconsidered: Priorities of the Professoriate. The data were compared in the eight areas: goals of collegiate education, academic standards, attitudes about student life, teaching, research, and service, status of the profession, views of the institution, participation in decision-making, and general observations of higher education.

Leadership has been studied as an essential component for success in business, government, and military environments. However, the optimal style of leadership in university settings remains unclear. Transformational leadership style has been proposed as efficient for universities, however some experts have argued that transformational leadership is actually counterproductive at academic institutions. Increasing public scrutiny of university leaders has also raised the question of presidential leadership style. One manifestation of this scrutiny is the U.S. News & World Report (USNWR) annual college ranking. To resolve the uncertainty regarding effective leadership style the present study was designed to address the following research questions: 1. Is there any relationship between a top tier ranking in the USNWR and a particular leadership style? 2. Is there agreement among top administrators at the ranked institutions regarding the style of leadership exhibited by their university president? The proposed study answers these questions through the analysis of data gathered utilizing the Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire. The survey instrument was sent to three top administrators at the top 50 ranked national universities according to USNWR. A score was derived which provided a quantitative assessment of transformational, transactional or laissez-faire leadership styles. In addition, a satisfaction score was determined. The key results of the study show: 1) transformational leadership was found in 56% to 74% of the rated presidents; 2) transformational leaders were found to induce the greatest satisfaction; 3) transactional leadership style was exhibited 24% of the time, and laissez-faire leadership was found among 8% of the presidents; 4) laissez-faire leadership was noted significantly more frequently among universities ranked from 40 - 50 according to the USNWR; and 5) there was no statistical agreement among the administrators surveyed.In conclusion, the findings of this study indicate that transformational leadership is the most satisfactory style of leadership among these national universities. The rating of transformational university presidents as highly satisfactory demonstrates the success of presidents with these leadership skills.

This study searches for a set of common indicators that contributed to the ultimate closure of 40 colleges and universities between 1965 and 2005. From research on related literature, a set of 31 contributing factors was identified by published experts and observers in higher education. That set of indicators was then used as a list of 31 questions answered by data found in newspaper articles, professional journals, published research work, published institutional records, data taken from the Department of Education, data taken from IPEDS, data published in historical recounts of the colleges of interest, etc. The data was accumulated in the form of yes/no responses to the 31 questions. Although the study involved only 40 colleges and universities this population represents the majority of institutions that pass the restrictions of limitations and delimitations described in the full document. The complete data set was processed using SPSS which produced ANOVA tables and level of statistical significance for each indicator question. The results indicate that out of the 31 original indicator questions there were two groups of statistically significant indicators. The larger group of indicators having statistical significance at the .05 level encompassed the smaller group having statistical significance at the .001 level. There were ten indicators in the first group with significance at the .05 level and seven in the second group with significance at the .001 level. Both groups conform to Bowen's revenue theory of cost associated with the operations of colleges and universities. The first group also has a cultural values component observed by a number of the experts cited in this study. The second is very tightly associated with Bowen's revenue theory of cost and Bates and Santerre's for profit theory of economics. Future research needs to be done to investigate the effect of such use of those indicators and to cause change in their use by educating those entities who are informed by those indicators.

The purpose of this study was to determine what institutional advancement processes are currently operating in a sample of Southern Baptist 4-year colleges and universities ("what is") and how these processes compare with Wesley K. Willmer's model of an effective small college institutional advancement program ("what ought to be"). An overview of advancement literature suggested that Willmer had developed the best model of an effective, small college advancement program. Willmer's model consisted of five benchmarks which focused on the following: institutional commitment, authority and organizational structure, personnel resources, advancement activities and functions, and evaluation. Willmer developed the model based on his review of advancement literature and results from a survey he sent to 191 small colleges as part of his 1980 dissertation. The same survey instrument, with slight revisions, was subsequently mailed to more than 650 small colleges over a seven year period and through a series of three studies in 1985, 1989, and 1992.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the impact of changes in nonresident tuition on nonresident enrollment and tuition revenue in American public four-year colleges and universities. The economic framework used to examine this relationship was the human capital investment model, which assumed a two-stage model of student choice. The analysis calculated a price elasticity coefficient and a student price response coefficient for nonresident first-time freshmen in three institutional classifications (i.e., doctoral-granting universities, comprehensive universities, and baccalaureate institutions) and for all institutions combined. Nine institutional, economic, and demographic variables were regressed on the dependent variable--a ratio of probabilities of nonresident enrollment to resident enrollment. The regression equations were estimated in double-log functional form utilizing ordinary least squares procedures. The student data used in the study were Fall 1986 first-time freshmen enrolled in 435 public four-year institutions. The major findings of the study include: (1) The price elasticity of demand with respect to nonresident tuition for all institutions in the study was estimated to be -0.60. The student price response coefficient (SPRC) for a $100 change in tuition was calculated to be -1.69 percent. (2) The price elasticity of demand for baccalaureate institutions was estimated to be negative unitary elastic (i.e., -1.00). The baccalaureate SPRC was calculated to be -3.2 percent. (3) Nonresident enrollment demand was positively associated with migration patterns of the nonstudent population, employment rate in the destination state, and home state per capita income. In summary, nonresident students in the average public four-year college or university are only moderately sensitive to changes in price. Nonresident tuition increases in the public sector will cause relatively small declines in enrollment and will be accompanied by increased tuition revenue. Students at baccalaureate institutions are more sensitive to changes in price; tuition increases in these institutions will result in larger declines in enrollment and will have no impact on tuition revenue. Institutional officials and state policy makers should be aware of these results when considering the impact of changes in tuition on nonresident enrollment and institutional revenues.

The purpose of this research was to provide a descriptive and critical analysis of the function of evaluation teams in regional accreditation of senior colleges and universities--how evaluators perceive their roles, how they spend their time on site, and how they make decisions. The objectives of the study were (1) to determine the extent to which regional accrediting visits do what they are purported to do in regional policy and procedure statements, and (2) to determine the strengths and weaknesses in the onsite evaluation process as perceived by regional evaluation team members. The methodology involved a three-step process: (1) a content analysis of regional policy statements regarding the evaluation visit, (2) a survey of evaluators from five of the six regional associations, and (3) a review and comment on the draft findings by professional staff of the participating regional commissions. An overall response rate of 82 percent was obtained from the sample of 349 evaluators--without the use of follow-up mailings. Regional cross tabulations of evaluator responses, together with Chi-square statistics and standard errors of the percentages, provided the basis for the analysis. Major conclusions of the study were: (1) The lack of clear specification of the purpose of the evaluation team visit rendered it difficult to determine whether the purported purposes of the visit were being met. (2) The major strengths of the evaluation visit lay in the expertise and dedication of the volunteer evaluators, and in the willingness of the commissions to adapt their procedures to changing needs and new technologies. The major weakness in the evaluation visit was the lack of an evaluation framework or model to guide the work of the evaluation team. The researcher's recommendations included (1) the regional commissions should clearly specify the intended purposes of the evaluation visit in light of the overall purposes of regional accreditation, and (2) the regional commissions should utilize a coordinating group such as the Council on Postsecondary Accreditation and the evaluation expertise within academe to develop a framework, or genre, to guide team members in accomplishing the purposes of the visit.