Innovator Vol. 37 No. 1 - Fall 06: Legacy of Leadership
Return to contents Paul Lingenfelter
Paul Lingenfelter says there are two
initiatives he’s been involved in since
becoming Executive Director of the
national organization of State Higher Education
Executive Officers (SHEEO) in 2000 that
are the most significant of his tenure. One was
the creation in 2004 of the National Commission
on Accountability in Higher Education.
The other is the publication of an annual
survey of state higher education finance.
Accountability and finance have been major concerns for Lingenfelter throughout his career, and his interest in them had its roots in what he calls “a very formative moment” when he was working as director of the Bursley Hall residence on North Campus while a doctoral student in the Center for the Study of Higher and Postsecondary Education.
It was the spring of 1970, and the Black Action Movement (BAM) at the University of Michigan had asked the University to commit to enrolling in its freshman class the same percentage of African Americans that graduate from high school in Michigan each year.
“The Regents agreed to the goal,” he recalls, “but said that without legislative concurrence, they could not commit to the necessary budget for financial aid and supporting services, about $1 million per year. The students shut down the University for four tense days until the President met with the deans of the schools and colleges to negotiate an agreement to reallocate one percent of the University’s state appropriated budget to generate $1 million. It was clear that the University community wanted to achieve the goal, but it had to overcome its own inertia to do so, a very difficult task. It took a four-day strike to mobilize the effort to reallocate one percent of the appropriated funds budget.”
Much of his graduate course work was in political science and public policy — his dissertation was an analysis of the politics of higher education appropriations in Michigan, Illinois and Wisconsin — but the BAM experience made it clearer than ever to Lingenfelter how profoundly important, and profoundly difficult, the issues of finance and accountability are.
After completing his work at Michigan, Lingenfelter spent 11 years at the Illinois Board of Higher Education, the last five as deputy director for fiscal affairs, then worked at the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation from 1985 to 2000 before receiving “an opportunity to return to my first love, which was higher education public policy,” at SHEEO.
