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Public Policy Challenges Facing Higher Education in the American West is the first regional public policy study of American higher education. Presidents of the Western State Commission for Higher Education and the National Center for Higher Education Management Systems, alongside nationally recognized policy analysts and current western campus presidents, provosts, and administrators, tackle seven key public policy issues facing postsecondary education in the American West: student access, federal research funding, state governance, state financing, state appropriations and their relationship to institutional tuition, distance education and technology, and the role of community colleges. These analysts, researchers, and administrators offer a clear and complete analysis of the facts of each policy situation, the public policy options, and their connections to state and university relationships. Fifteen western states, including Alaska, California, and Hawaii, comprise the expansive region under discussion. With its companion volume, Higher Education in the American West: Regional History and State Contexts, this book is essential reading for higher education policymakers, scholars, and anyone who wants to know what the relationship between states and universities in the West has been and where it is going.