An Understanding of How Public Good Creation and Resource Allocation are Affected by State Budget Reductions at Public Universities

This study investigates how senior leaders at the University of California, Riverside make and have made policy and financial decisions as forced by the disinvestment of state resources, and how those decisions have impacted the campus' role as a public good. To gather data, this study used interviews of University of California, Riverside leadership on its recent and current policy decisions. Through data collection, it was uncovered what decision makers perceived as the alternatives and consequences to their decisions and how they received and monitored feedback to the tradeoffs. This project focuses on both the current and potential losses that occur when tradeoffs are made to keep the university afloat and the decision making process on those tradeoffs, how leaders made those decisions and what went into those decisions. To analyze the decision making process, a theoretical framework guided the research which included academic capitalism theory, resource dependency theory and rational choice theory