ABSTRACT

This study of merit aid policy formulation illustrates the intense and perpetual politics of education. The policy episodes of New Mexico, West Virginia, and Tennessee reveal the manifest political dynamics, from legislative horse trades to grassroots mobilization, that led directly to policy decisions affecting scholarship eligibility criteria. Moreover, in all cases, consideration of these new merit-based scholarship programs rose to the statewide political agenda and as such partisanship, political gamesmanship, and interest group activity characterized policymakers’ consideration of this issue. Through a series of findings that converge across cases, this final chapter offers a revised conceptual framework to explain the merit aid criteria determination process and suggests implications for future policies and research.