NSF Award
1803959
Public universities face many challenges in their efforts to operate within an environment that is both dominated by political influences and subject to the pressures of market-based competition for necessary resources. Disasters magnify the challenges of managing within this environment, especially when the institution is constrained in its ability to accommodate the unique needs of students who are facing significant difficulties after a natural disaster. The short term disruption caused by a disaster can lead to long-term consequences for public institutions, but many of these more pronounced consequences may not be fully attributable to the effects of the disaster, but instead may be a function of the inability of policy frameworks and administrative structures to adapt to the needs of public institutions and policy beneficiaries after extreme events. Especially important are the financial consequences of enrollment loss and the constraints that come with accreditation structures. This study will use administrative interviews and data on student success to examine the role of policy design in post-disaster decisions and its influence on student success. We hope that our findings will motivate discussions among federal education officials and accreditation organization leaders about the ways in which they may consider options that would enable institutions to better support students in their efforts to rebuild their lives and pursue their educational goals.<br/><br/><br/>Theories of publicness, political control, policy implementation, and the politics of attention mostly speak to the challenges faced by public sector leaders in times of relative stability (not in response to extreme events), and many discussions of disaster response are limited to elected officials and/or federal agencies. This project seeks to examine how these dynamics play out in disaster recovery efforts for public higher education institutions and their students. We will use a mixed methods design, with qualitative interviews of administrators and a quantitative analysis of student data. The study site is Lamar University in Beaumont, TX. The administrative interviews focus on the ways in which efforts to accommodate and support those affected by the storm were influenced by accreditation-related constraints (in this case, from the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools) and concerns about the effects on funding streams (tuition revenue, state appropriations, and federal financial aid). The quantitative analysis examines how the decisions immediately following the storm affected student enrollment and persistence and the extent to which these effects vary by student-level risk factors or level of storm damage for the individual's household.<br/><br/>This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.
