This article examines how legal arguments advocating school finance reform do not provide an adequate basis for dealing with practical problems of implementing such policies. Guidelines for reform of fiscal policy are suggested. (DE)

The 1984 Carl D. Perkins Vocational Education Act provides federal funds to states to develop quality vocational education programs in job training, retraining, and skills upgrading, to assure equal access to programs, to assist economically depressed areas to raise employment and occupational competencies, and to promote greater cooperation…

Alaska faces a problem that is easy to explain but hard to solve: state government is spending more than it collects. The budget crisis looms because oil production, which supplies 85% of the state's general fund revenues, will soon begin to fall as the Prudhoe Bay oil field is depleted. This paper examines the potential deficit and the effect it…

This newsletter summarizes the debate on the use of state-level initiatives as levers to effect fundamental changes in higher education. It provides several perspectives on the use of incentive/enhancement programs to achieve state higher education goals. The concept of budgetary leverage is outlined, and the growth in enhancement programs…

Faced with scarce resources and environmental uncertainty in the past decade, colleges and universities have experimented with different modes of academic staffing, most of which are attempts to preserve or create more flexible policies and practices. In spite of tenure systems in operation at 94% of all four year colleges, institutions have at…

Enrollment levels of high schools are positively related to the number of courses offered. The most common way to expand educational opportunities in communities served by small high schools is to increase enrollment, usually by means of consolidation. Size, however, is not always the predictor of course offerings, as some relatively small schools…

Factors for discrepancies between budgeting ideals and actual implementation are discussed. The basic problem lies in the different orientations of budget establishers and implementors, or between product and process, which results in a separation of productivity and resource allocation issues. A recommendation is that the budgeting process must…

A study to determine the topics considered vital by principals and members of the American Education Finance Association (AEFA) is described in this paper. Questionnaires mailed to two random samples of 61 AEFA members and 181 elementary/secondary principals respectively, yielded 35 returns, a 57 percent response rate, and 113 returns, a 62…

Needs assessment is a young and growing field. Needs assessments contribute to effective educational planning and help educators improve services to students. Needs assessment can be used to identify goals and objectives, but probably has the most utility as a problem-focusing strategy that includes the following sequence: (1) identification of…

The Institute of International Education outlines the forces behind the new wave of international cooperative ventures in higher education and the challenges they pose through a systematic focus on the Japan-United States transactions. Focus is placed on two prototypes: (1) U.S. accredited institutions setting up a cooperative venture in Japan to…

This paper examines some general principles affecting the timing, extent, and direction of fiscal changes in public school finance systems. To develop a framework that is applicable to a wide variety of states, the analysis concentrates on two dimensions: allocation and distribution. The median voter model and the fiscal neutrality model of state…

Responses of colleges and universities to declining revenues and enrollments were investigated, based on a 1983 survey of 334 four-year institutions. Scalogram analysis was employed to determine whether there was a hierarchy of institutional responses to enrollment/revenue decline and whether declining and nondeclining institutions can be…

Resource allocation and reallocation strategies for colleges who have financial problems are considered in three articles based on presentations to a national conference at the University of Arizona. In "Reallocation Strategies," James A. Hyatt discusses factors that shape institutional responses to reallocation and elements that should…

Responses from 54 libraries to a 1977 survey of Association of Research Libraries (ARL) member institutions and interviews by Office of Management Studies staff members who visited another 15 indicated that 20 of the 69 libraries had and made use of a written collection development policy. Eight others reported that such a policy was being…

A 1979 Systems and Procedures Exchange Center (SPEC) survey focused on reviewing the current state of fiscal planning and cost studies in Association of Research Libraries (ARL) member libraries. The survey results indicate that, while some libraries are beginning to use cost analysis techniques to evaluate current programs, to plan for new…