| Between 1946-68, sixteen Presidential commissions and task forces were appointed to examine education. Relatively little is known about how these temporary groups functioned, and equally little is known about how the Presidents who appointed them responded to their recommendations. Using public and private archival collections, as well as personal interviews and correspondence with Administration officials and advisory group members, this study reconstructs the policymaking role and analyzes the policy impact of six commissions and task forces that dealt with higher education. Those examined include President Truman's 1946 Commission on Higher Education, President Eisenhower's 1956 Committee on Education Beyond the High School, President Kennedy's 1960 Task Force on Education, and three of President Johnson's "secret" task forces, the 1966 Interagency Task Force, the 1966-67 Outside Task Force, and the 1967 Interagency Task Force.; The specific objectives of the investigation include: (1) tracing the process by which task force or commission recommendations were formulated and reviewed; (2) identifying the participants in and their impact upon this process and the results it reached; (3) determining whether recommendations of the task force or commission were included as part of the Administration's legislative program, and whether they became law; (4) explaining, as fully as the archival and other evidence allows, why some recommendations were embraced by the White House while others were rejected.; The study's findings indicate that in numerous instances the impact of a commission or task force has been underestimated, inaccurately characterized, or overlooked in discussions of Presidential policy formulation in higher education. Each of the panels directly influenced policy initiatives that were proposed by the White House to Congress. A number of the advisory groups' recommendations were enacted in legislation, including the National Defense Education Act, amendments to the NDEA, and the 1968 Higher Education Amendments. |
