| There are multiple constructs of the public good leading to tensions regarding the cost, quality, and mission of higher education. University-community partnerships are one place where these tensions are enacted. This qualitative case study of a public and private institution in New York State used critical realism to examine the causal mechanisms informing participants' constructs of the public good.;This study asked: How is the public good constructed within U.S. institutions of higher education, and how do these constructs influence university-community partnerships?;Five complementary data sources were used. First, a survey was used to explore attitudes about the cost, value, quality, and mission of a college education so as to understand how participants construct the public good and to identify mechanisms that inform these constructs. Second, focus groups were conducted to compare how participant attitudes influence perceptions of campus-community partnerships. Data collection for phase three consisted of audiotaped interviews to gain a deeper understanding of the construct of the public good. I simultaneously conducted other research activities, including note taking and the collection of documents pertaining to partnerships. A final focus group was held with administrators and community members that addressed study implications.;This research is grounded in ontological realism and social constructivist epistemologies, articulated in the theoretical framework of critical realism. Critical realism necessitates the examination of both the world that is observable and the structures in the social and natural world that exist independently of our knowledge of them. An iterative analysis was employed to develop each case and constituted the empirical domain. Via the critical realist strategy of retroduction, a neoliberal lens guided the second level of analysis so as to illuminate the structures that frame concepts of the public good in higher education.;Results from the empirical analysis employed in this study suggest that differences in how administrators and community partners understand the mission of higher education inform the ways that university-community partnerships are entered into, as well as the perceived benefits and challenges of those partnerships. Analysis at the abstract level engages the tension between structure and agency, moving from a description of experience to an examination of the reflexive interaction between the individual and social context. Combined, findings from this dissertation suggest that neoliberalism is the dominant paradigm influencing higher education across contexts, and that within the neoliberal university service learning has been marginalized to a rhetorical commitment to the public good. |
