Institutional determinants of market structure in corporate funding of United States four-year colleges and universities

The purposes of this study were to identify a conceptual framework for understanding the market structure of corporate higher education funding and to empirically examine whether this perspective helps to explain the allocation of corporate higher education support at the market level. Three general institutional characteristics of colleges and universities were analyzed as determinants of corporate voluntary support, based upon prior studies: (1) core institutional resources (academic, financial, and research), (2) disciplinary focus (teaching and research activity in major fields of study related to salient corporate resource needs), and (3) definitional attributes (characteristics associated with corporate access to educational outputs).; A large sample of four-year colleges and universities representing three institutional categories--doctoral-granting universities, comprehensive colleges and universities, and liberal arts colleges--was used to examine the effects of selected institutional characteristics on corporate contributions. Multiple linear regression was employed to examine these relationships quantitatively. The data were also analyzed descriptively in order to document systematic differences across institutional groups.; Organization-environment relations provided the theoretical framework for the study. It was postulated that the corporate funding market "selects" grant recipients based upon their inherent ability to produce trained students, scientific knowledge, and other educational services relevant to the collective input needs of contributing firms. Colleges and universities possessing internal resources and attributes capable of producing such outputs were considered to be isomorphic with the corporate donor market and thus most likely to receive support.; The data showed that core institutional resources and disciplinary specialization in scientific and management education were strong predictors of corporate voluntary income in each sample group. In general, graduate education and research productivity led to greater corporate investment in doctoral universities, while undergraduate studies were most predictive of contributions for non-doctoral institutions. In all cases, applied disciplines appeared to have the greatest positive effect on corporate support. Analyses of definitional attributes suggested that doctoral universities compete nationally for corporate sponsorship and that non-doctoral institutions are more likely to receive funding from local and regional companies. Other corporate access variables, such as private control and alumni executive representation, were also found to result in greater corporate support among all institutional types, as predicted.; Based upon these findings, it was recommended that educational administrators carefully assess their institutions' positions in the corporate donor market and emphasize internal capabilities and areas of expertise closely related to corporate resource needs. It is also suggested that current patterns of corporate funding to four-year colleges and universities could have deleterious effects on the supply of basic academic research and could threaten the survival of non-doctoral institutions.