The Relationship Between Categorical Expenditures and Graduation Rates at North Carolina Community Colleges

Abstract

The public perception of higher education, the culture of that institution, and its value to American citizens is changing. Taxpayer demands to downsize costly government expenditures, including government subsidizing of state supported educational institutions, have resulted in increased scrutiny of colleges and universities. Special programs have been reduced and in the case of post-secondary schools, there is increased pressure to find alternative funding sources and to increase tuition requirements. As a result, educational stakeholders have been forced to examine all aspects of institutional performance, especially numbers of graduating students. Though numerous theories suggest innovative ways to increase student success, college presidents face the reality of limited money to implement every success effort. More informed spending decisions might be possible by exploring an economic production function model to see what expenditures might produce better student success results at post-secondary institutions. This study examined four expenditure inputs - instructional support, academic support, institutional support, and student services support -, to determine whether there were any relationships between expenditure categories and graduation rates. My population included the 58 North Carolina Community College System (NCCCS) schools between the years of 2004-2014 using ordinary least squares regression to test my research question. The data for this study were collected from The Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS). The results of my study revealed there was no statistically significant relationship between individual expenditure category and graduation rates of those institutions for that time period.