This paper explores how coordinating departments of higher education diffuse academic innovations. Both the type of change they favor and their dissemination strategies are linked to their political position in a legislatively-mandated policy sector. This article explores how state coordinating agencies diffuse academic innovations. Although the study of curriculum innovation continues to concentrate on examining internal college processes (Conrad and Pratt, 1983), much influence has shifted from academic administrators and faculty to state organizations (Mumper, 1983; Statewide Boards of Higher Education, 1984).
In the 1960s and 1970s, every American state legislature strengthened or established coordinating mechanisms to link public and private colleges and universities in an attempt to stem duplication and overlap, reduce tension among providers and enhance service articulation (Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, 1982;Millard, 1976;and Millett, 1984). Nineteen states provided for consolidated governing boards with authority to mandate at least the public universities' internal policies. These regulatory boards 1) appoint and evaluate the chief executive officers of collegiate institutions; 2) intervene, when necessary, in internal campus affairs by approving personnel policies and establishing admission standards; and 3) initiate internal organizational changes in departmental or program responsibilities.
Thirty-one states enacted coordinating boards with planning, budget review and new-program approval responsibilities but without any authority over constituent institution's internal administration. Coordinating boards lack authority to select college presidents, determine internal campus personnel policies and develop internal organizational changes in governance or programmatic responsibilities. (Differences between governing and coordinating boards are discussed in Berdahl, 1971: 18-36 and Millett, 1984: 99-102.) For coordinating boards, information diffusion is a particularly important activity. These boards and their administrative agencies rely on diffusion to ex-* Many of the ideas in this article are taken from a presentation I gave at the 1985 American