Abstract:

Public/private funding policies for American higher educational institutions are a critical issue. All institutions have developed divisions whose primary mission is fundraising. That phenomenon includes both public and privately funded institutions. An increasingly complex classification/rating schema for higher educational institutions has emerged. Emergent classification/rating schema are major drivers of public/private funding policies. In America, the most influential higher education classification system is the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education (CCIHE). The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching developed CCIHE a systematic structure for classifying colleges and universities that was introduced in1970. Though CCIHE criteria have been revised over time, core criteria have remained constant. Colleges and universities are organized into seven broad groups based on CCIHE criteria. Moreover, CCIHE criteria have become the most influential higher education funding policy standard in American higher education. Library/information resource collections are major CCIHE criteria. The latter observation has been consistently validated by public/private funding policies and decisions. Therefore, the primary rationale for this study was the public/private funding policies that are based primarily on classification/rating systems. Research institutions engage in significant competition for limited public/private funding support. Library/information collections is a major variable among the CCIHE sets of criteria that are determinants of which research institutions are classified. Sharing of library/information among research institutions is critical but it does not address disparities that influence classification/rating systems. In this research study, an analysis was conducted and limited to the library/information collections criteria on a random sample of research institutions on the degree of differences.

Four research questions were generated and they are:
1) Are the library/information collections significantly different between the two sub-groups of research institutions?
2) Are the library/information collections significantly different within two sub-groups of research institutions?
3) Are the scope/range of electronic resource collections significantly different between the two sub-categories of research institutions? and
4) Are the scope/range of electronic resource collections significantly different within two sub-groups of research institutions?

A correlational research design was developed and samples of scaled data were analyzed using the Chi-Square Test of Independence. All four null hypotheses were rejected with results indicating that significant differences exist within and between the two groups of research institutions relative to library/information and the scope/range of electronic resource collections. These findings have significant implications regarding public/private funding policies for American research institutions. Consequently, significant public/private funding policy reforms must be made in order to create a more equitable environment in this segment of higher education given the competition for limited funds. Moreover, public/private funding policy reforms are needed for all American higher education not just for research institutions.

Keywords:

American higher education, CCIHE, funding policies, library/information collections.