Legislative Intent, Program Implementation, and Higher Education Policy: The Case of Title Iii of The 1965 Higher Education Act
Hood, Stafford
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Permalink
https://hdl.handle.net/2142/68927
Description
Title
Legislative Intent, Program Implementation, and Higher Education Policy: The Case of Title Iii of The 1965 Higher Education Act
Author(s)
Hood, Stafford
Issue Date
1984
Department of Study
Education
Discipline
Education
Degree Granting Institution
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Degree Name
Ph.D.
Degree Level
Dissertation
Keyword(s)
Education, Bilingual and Multicultural
Abstract
The Higher Education Act (HEA) of 1965 moved the federal government toward a new level of equal educational opportunity in higher education. In addition to student aid, direct institutional aid was viewed as an appropriate vehicle for the pursuit of equal educational opportunity. Title III of the HEA, The Developing Institutions Program, played a dual role in maintaining access to higher education for disadvantaged students and serving as a vehicle for fulfilling Congressional and Presidential political commitments.
This study explains how the legislative intent of HEA Title III (based on the legislative language) was translated into federal implementation policies. The legislative history was developed from a review and analysis of Congressional documents, activities, and modifications to Title III's legislative language, plus interviews with present and former members of Congress, congressional staff, and key federal education officials considered to be appropriate for this study. Students of legislative history will find detailed accounts of how to proceed in conducting similar studies. Further, a history of Title III's implementation was similarly constructed and analyzed.
The study focuses on the historical claim on HEA Title III funds by black colleges and provides insight as to how that claim was translated into implementation policy by the Office of Education. In the early 1970s, two viewpoints began to crystallize: the first saw the Developing Institutions Program as mainly (if not wholly) created to provide financial assistance to historically black colleges; the second saw the legislative intent as supporting small colleges without regard to the race of their students.
This study establishes that Title III grew out of a political relationship which led to an informal, unwritten agreement. The Title III legislation was intended principally for black colleges--but the formal legislative language does not clearly articulate this intent. Legislative intent was found to be crucial since it determined how the competing concerns would be valued and how resources would be allocated.
Currently Title III proclaims institutional self-sufficiency as the ultimate goal of its program. The study concludes by exploring unresolved lingering concerns and fundamental questions: Will the program for institutional self-sufficiency transform black colleges from "developing" into mainstream institutions, or will it merely label them as perennially developing institutions?
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