Postsecondary Participation and State Policy: Meeting the Future Demand (review)

State-level higher education policy was relatively cyclical and predictable in the decades after World War II. When economic times were good and state coffers flush, then public higher education got its share and more of revenues. When recessions hit, public higher education was the first item to face flat or reduced appropriation. Also cyclical and relatively predictable was the literature on state-level higher education policy analysis. The typical discussions centered on the good-times/bad-times scenario described above.

The first waves of serious change in the standard narrative came with the accountability movements of the 1980s. All of a sudden, higher education policy analysts had to explain why it was that state policy actors were demanding proof that public colleges and universities were engines of social equity and economic progress. These had been the selling points of investment in public higher education for decades from the Morrill Act to the Truman Commission and through the great expansion of the 1960s.

More recently, the budget realities of the post-September 11 era have led some policy analysts to predict that the usual rebound for higher education may not happen this time around. The trend in the decline of state appropriations as a percentage of overall revenues is anticipated by many to not just continue but to get worse, with institutions forced to make tough budget cuts and students expected to pay a larger share of their college education.

Mario Martinez's book Postsecondary Participation and State Policy: Meeting the Future Demand is a new take on the state policy discussion. Martinez does not wallow in old assumptions and, best of all, presents his argument in a very easy-to-understand manner. Couched in the context of access, the book serves as a tool to assess how each of the fifty states is positioned to meet a projected increased demand for higher education, a demand that is expected to crest around the year 2015. Using a trove of publicly available census, NCES, and other data, Martinez constructs a series of measures that work in logical sequence to benchmark and compare where states are now and where they could and should be in 2015. In recognizing that higher education is not just for 18 to 24 year olds, Martinez divides the population into two groups, 18–24 and 25+ and presents his projection measures for both groups.

Martinez first sets out the 2015 baseline enrollment projections by holding year 2000 participation rates constant and projecting those rates onto 2015 population estimates. Since population changes are not expected to be similar in all states nor between the two age groups, Martinez rightly computes the numeric and percentage changes in enrollment from 2000 to 2015.

Next, Martinez borrows from financial analysis to compute comparison ratios, answering the question: "Is a state's participation rate for each age group reasonable, given the state's population represented by that age group?" Current comparison ratios are computed by dividing the age group's participation rate by the proportion of that age group in the 18+ portion of the population. The 2015 comparison ratios are computed by using current participation rates over the 2015 population projections.

Having established both absolute and ratio measures by which to gauge the ability of a state to handle future access needs on its own terms, Martinez's next move is to establish benchmark figures by taking the top state performers in participation for each of the age groups and using those rates as the goals for postsecondary participation in 2015. The 18–24-year-old group benchmark is Rhode Island's 2000 participation rate of 47.7%. California led the way for 25+ with 6.4% of its adult population enrolled in postsecondary education in 2000. The benchmarks are compared to the baseline numbers to determine which states will have participation gaps and which states are better situated to meet rising...