The Science of Higher Education

From the Foreword:
"The context of higher education has changed, and Martinez is no longer content with incremental approaches to evolving our thinking and work in higher education finance. Adapting methods used to model dynamic systems, he offers scale analysis as a new way of capturing public benefits. His is not a minor attempt to advance our thinking. Throughout the book, Martinez provides a wealth of examples, analyses, and comparisons to demonstrate this approach's utility. While admittedly oversimplified, his approach does represent a genuine shift in our paradigm—one that is likely to cause discomfort and controversy among many in the field.

More important is the work he has put into the conceptualization, the logic, and warrant for reframing our approach to the analysis of finance policy. By design, Martinez is provoking the reader. He is challenging our purchase on traditional assumptions about policymaking and policy analysis. Along with the challenge, we get a well-developed conceptual rationale, a new set of measures, and results to stimulate debate in the field. The framing almost ensures that this debate will necessarily revolve around equity and context.

Do the contents of this book constitute the beginning of a Science of Higher Education? I leave that to the reader to decide. Regardless of your opinion on that count, I hope you will agree that this book offers more science than this area has seen since Berdahl and his contemporaries laid the foundation of our current knowledge base in the 1970s."

Scott L. Thomas - John P. “Jack” Ellbogen Dean of the College of Education, University of Wyoming

"It is increasingly clear that states and the federal government must undertake major reforms in how they finance higher education to meet the challenges of excessive college costs and reliance on loans as well as insufficient attention to equity and quality concerns. Mario C. Martinez’s dynamic scale-based approach offers an innovative and likely controversial perspective that promises to provoke healthy and needed debate in this important field of public policy."

Arthur M. Hauptman, Independent Public Policy Consultant Specializing in Domestic and International Higher Education Finance

"Mario C. Martinez is a big, broad thinker in higher education scholarship. For those who care deeply about college policy and finance, this book will give you a lot of ideas to chew on.”

Michael Bastedo - Professor and Director, Center for the Study of Higher and Postsecondary Education, University of Michigan School of Education

Foreword
Acknowledgments
Preface

Part One 1: Foundations for a Science of Higher Education
1) Complex Systems and State Higher Education
2) A New Paradigm
3) Actor Interactions: Nature and Context

Part Two: Scale Patterns
4) Lessons from Life Sciences and Cities
5) Scale and State Higher Education Funding
6) Scale and State Policy
7) Higher Education Supply

Part Three: Outcomes and Return on Investment
8) Higher Education Outcomes
9) Return on Investment: Funding and Outcomes
10) Policy Implications

Appendix 1: Glossary of Terms
Appendix 2: 2015 All State Data (original units)
Appendix 3: Logarithmic Regression Results (Predictions)
Appendix 4: Population: Funding Scale Results
Appendix 5: Population: Enrollment Scale Results
Appendix 6: Population: Completion Scale Results
Appendix 7: Population: # of Institutions (Supply) Scale Results
Appendix 8: Funding: Enrollment Scale Results
Appendix 9: Funding: Completion Scale Results
Appendix 10: Statistical results: All Scale Analyses
Appendix 11: Linear and Scale Ranking Comparisons
Appendix 12: Exponents, Logarithms and Scale

References
End Notes
About the Author
Index

Mario C. Martinez

Mario C. Martinez is Vice Chancellor of Strategy and Innovation for the National University System. He has written several books in the area of higher education innovation, strategy and policy. He is a founding partner of SoftSkillsPros.com, a training and resource company serving higher education institutions and the many professionals who work within them.

Book Trailer: The Science of Higher Education