An assessment of university administrators' and faculty knowledge of United States constitutional and federal statutory laws and recent court decisions in higher education

The purpose of this study was to measure knowledge of constitutional and federal statutory law relevant to public institutions of higher education receiving any form of federal funding. The study was designed to determine the percentage of faculty and academic administrators at higher educational institutions who could demonstrate a proficient knowledge concerning relevant legal issues related to constitutional and federal statutory law.;The investigation built upon that of Goellnitz (1993), who focused on the development and validation of an instrument to measure knowledge of constitutional and federal statutory law relevant to public institutions of higher education. It was the Goellnitz instrument that was used for this study.;The instrument consisted of 25 True-False items. Eighteen items were designed to measure knowledge of constitutional law and 7 items were designed to assess knowledge of federal statutory law. The main question addressed in this study was, "What is the level of knowledge of relevant constitutional and federal statutory law of faculty and academic administrators in four-year public colleges and universities receiving any form of federal funding?";The study participants were from the 16 constituent universities of the university of North Carolina. Faculty and academic administrators from each institution were included in the study. After administration of the instrument, which was essentially a test, the resultant data were treated by several appropriate statistical tests.;Several significant findings emerged from the analysis of the data. The most significant, however, was that scores for academic administrators at the various institutions were higher than those for faculty. In general, faculty and academic administrators did not have a proficient knowledge of relevant law. Demographic factors, such as level of education, and years of experience, were not correlated with higher levels of knowledge. Specific recommendations for future studies were made.