ABSTRACT
This chapter explores how the effects of polarization play out at the institutional level. In particular, it hypothesizes that public institutions will respond to a polarized political environment by playing to the middle: promoting the social efficiency agenda of providing accessibility to job training and regional economic development that has become the default policy position for both sides of the aisle. To test this question, the chapter utilizes two samples of public universities drawn from Michigan, US and Ontario, Canada in a two-stage approach. In the first stage, It employs a model of financial condition analysis (FCA) using a set of ten indicators applied to annual audited financial statements to determine university solvency over a ten-year period and a summary score to reveal relative university rankings within each sample. In the second stage of the analysis, the chapter utilizes these same financial statements, or reports, to construct rhetorical analyses of university decision-making.
