By Sydney Valentine-Parris

You may not think of yourself as a “policy person,” but policy shows up in our work every single day. From room assignments to crisis response and incident reporting, policy is behind it all. Understanding policy and how it works helps professionals like you better navigate their environment and role, ultimately empowering you to better support students. 

Higher Education and Organizational Policy
Organizational policies are mandatory, formal, and written guidelines that aim to communicate expectations for how the organization should operate. For organization members and stakeholders to best understand and adhere to these policies, they should be written in neutral terms and focus on the intended outcome. Such policies outline the purpose, identify who is responsible, clarify roles and duties, and connect to related policies at subsequent levels. Organizational policy serves as the highest-level directive, thus providing foundational authority for all other standards, guidelines, and procedures within the organization. In higher education, the highest-level directives come from state governments (per the Tenth Amendment), often through their respective state higher education agencies. In the Southwest region, the state higher education agencies are the Arkansas Division of Higher Education, Oklahoma State Regents for Higher Education, and Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board.

Why Policy Matters at Every Level
Organizational policies are relevant and important at all levels of an organization’s structure because they provide a clear structure that guides organizational behavior, supports consistent decision-making, and shapes daily operations. In higher education, the levels of our structure range from the state government and associated education agencies, to institutional/system boards of regents, to senior institutional leadership, and all the way to office/department leadership and staff. 

More specific areas of importance include legal compliance, consistency and fairness, employee behavior and conduct, communication, employee training and development, and conflict resolution. Policies help organizations consistently meet relevant legal requirements, reduce risk, and promote equal treatment through consistent decision-making. Policies also establish expectations for professional conduct and serve as communication tools to ensure members understand organizational expectations and processes. This is especially true for onboarding and training new members, while also providing structured processes for addressing issues such as grievances, disciplinary actions, and disputes.  

Understanding Policy Development
Effective policy development follows a continuous cycle of stages, not a one-time process (Burke, 2019). The five stages of policy development are (1) agenda setting, (2) policy formulation, (3) policy adoption, (4) policy implementation, and (5) policy evaluation. Policy development begins by identifying and defining an issue that needs attention, followed by formulating a policy to address it. Next, the created policy is usually adopted in the form of rules, but to implement it and make it work, the organization is tasked with “establishing procedures, [and] writing guidance documents” (Texas Politics Project, n.d.). After implementing the policy, evaluation is needed to determine whether it truly addresses the identified issue; if not, revisions can be made to improve effectiveness. Although characterized as the fifth stage, evaluation is not the last stage, as revisions often occur, sending the development process back to agenda setting, policy formulation, or implementation, as depicted in the Texas Politics Project’s (n.d.) Policy Making and Policy Implementation diagram. 

The Importance of Policy Evaluation
Educational policies should be evaluated, as policy development without evaluation is likely to produce ineffective or outdated policies. Policy evaluation helps determine whether policies are effective, how implementation may or may not be effective, and whether the benefits justify the cost to the organization. Following policy implementation, decision-makers should evaluate how the policy is impacting and addressing the issue, whether implementation strategies are effective, and whether the policy’s costs justify its benefits (Burke, 2019). Educational policies require a lot of time and financial resources; it is not enough to simply assume the problem is addressed. Policymakers have a responsibility to tangibly determine effectiveness and, if needed, make revisions.    

Challenges Facing Higher Education Policy
When discussing the challenges and problems policies face, it is important to note that policies range from wide-reaching federal and state policies, all the way to those of the individual institutional units. Given the variety of policies, there are often conflicting missions and goals among organizations and their environmental factors. For example, federal immigration policy and presidential executive orders affect federal and state higher education policies, as well as institutional policies.

Another challenge policies face is that our world and environmental factors are constantly evolving, which requires policies to be updated and reevaluated to better fit and address the present. More specifically, an example is the impact of Artificial Intelligence (AI) on academic integrity policies in higher education, as AI has prompted institutions to feverishly update their policies. Initially, many institutions implemented policies banning the use of AI, but soon realized that its prevalence was only expected to increase. This has led to policies once focused on bans being replaced by policies that promote the ethical use of AI and provide faculty, students, and staff with a usage framework.

Before You Go…
Please remember that, as a professional, understanding policy is not limited to senior leadership roles. Policy is the foundation of what we do and how we do it. It is important to know how to interpret, implement, and influence the policies that shape our work and the experiences of our students.

References

Burke, A. S. (2019). The stages of policy development. Introduction to the American Criminal Justice System.

Texas Politics Project. (n.d.). A diagram of the policy making process. The Texas Politics Project.

Sydney Valentine-Parris
Texas Southern University, Public Policy Co-Chair