This comprehensive handbook, which emphasizes major planning problems and their solutions, should enable administrators and others to enhance the professional skills they will need for the successful management and operation of statewide systems of higher learning.

Among the many challenges facing higher education today, affordability, access, and accountability are increasingly commanding the attention of the public and policymakers alike. As students and their families struggle to meet rising tuition prices, and state resources for the funding of higher education are constrained, policymakers confront issues of affordability within state and institutional budgets. Changing demographics and challenges to affirmative action complicate the admissions process even as colleges and universities seek to diversify enrollments. And issues of institutional accountability have given rise to the restructuring of higher education governing boards and systems and to a reexamination of the role of public trustees in governance. In The States and Public Higher Education Policy, Donald E. Heller and other higher education scholars and practitioners explore the debates surrounding issues of affordability, access, and accountability. In a concluding chapter, Heller considers the impact of technology on public colleges and universities, a subject that dominates many discussions of higher education. Offering a broad perspective that will appeal to policymakers and educators, The States and Public Higher Education Policy provides an unobstructed view of key issues that will shape the future of higher education.

This book focuses on some of the last decade's more significant writing about developments in higher education planning, organizing the wide-ranging commentaries and studies to show the administrator, the faculty member and the informed layman what the current status of higher education appears to be.