Change Agents or Same Agents?: Grantmakers and Racial Inequity
in U.S. Higher Education
My dissertation interrogates how grantmakers—e.g., the Lumina Foundation or the National Science Foundation—influence postsecondary policy systems in ways that expand or constrain possibilities for minoritized students and the organizations that serve them. This area of study is particularly urgent as grantmakers have historically influenced policy ecosystems to hinder rather than aid progressive change. I combine analytic lenses from organizational theory, the sociology of race, and critical race frameworks to interpret the role of grantmakers in the maintenance or diminishment of racial inequity in postsecondary education. My dissertation takes up this call via three interrelated studies using qualitative (e.g., archival content analysis, semiotic interview analysis) and quantitative methods (e.g., descriptive and causal econometrics). Below, I provide an overview of each of the three studies.
Study 1: The Design and Effects of Racial Frames on Postsecondary Grantmaking
at a Federal Agency (1995-2015)
Study 1 is a longitudinal mixed-methods study focusing on a federal grantmaking agency—the Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education—and one comparison agency, which acts as a control group—TriO Student Support Services (SSS). I ask: How did FIPSE’s racial framing persist or change over time (1995-2015)? How did the implementation of this new frame change (or not) the agency’s funding patterns?
I combine archival document analysis (N=92 published grant guidelines over 20 years) with difference-in-difference-in-differences (DDD) analysis of both agencies’ grantmaking histories (N=4,400 grants at FIPSE; N=5,200 grants at SSS).[1] I trace the causal processes of a racial framing change and estimate its effects on the types of colleges and universities, and by extension the types of students, that have access to grant dollars with a particular emphasis on how frames follow or remediate racialized funding patterns.
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Download a draft of this paper here.
Study 2: The Design and Effects of Racial Frames on Grantmaking at Nine Private, Postsecondary Foundations (2000-2019)
In Study 2, I use a parallel research design to Study 1, but in a private foundation setting. This analysis will use 19 years of nearly $3 billion worth of grantmaking data from nine private, postsecondary foundations (N=13,042 grants), as well as annual archival data of strategic plans, annual reports, and mission statements from each foundation (N= 512 documents). In this study, I ask: How do nine private foundations’ racial frames persist or change over time (2001-2019)? How does a public shift toward a racial-justice frame at one foundation, beyond the equity-conscious frame of other foundations, change (or not) its funding patterns? I will deepen my theorization in terms of public-private variation by comparing results with those in Study 1, and I will test the effects of frames that center broad equity conceptions against those that center racial injustice as a lynchpin in perpetuating social inequalities. This study will also describe the origins and evolution of this set of foundations, all founded by student loan management corporations (e.g., Sallie Mae).
Study 3: Making and Giving Sense to Racial Justice Grantmaking in Higher Education
A study of racialized change processes would be incomplete without investigating conditions under which grantmakers’ adopted frames have their intended effect or become decoupled from practice. In Study 3, I conduct a qualitative-comparative analysis across two major grantmaking organizations—one federal and one private. Because qualitative research typically examines issues from the perspective of the participant, it is appropriate to the study of grantmakers’ constructions and accounts of organizational change. I analyze how the organizations’ initiated new frames, how individuals made sense of these changes, and how sensemaking processes translated or not into altered decision-making practices. In order to establish a wide base of different ways of thinking about grantmaking work, I interviewed 59 staff at all organizational levels (e.g., new program officers, directors), as well as 12 grantees, about their espoused beliefs and their descriptions of organizational routines, decision-making processes, as well as matters of race and racism in higher education.
