EDU 589 Week 2 Assignment State Funding Memorandum

Prior to beginning work on this assignment, read the article Federal and State Funding of Higher Education: A Changing Landscape (Links to an external site.) and review the National Center for Higher Education Management Systems (Links to an external site.) website.

For this assignment, you will create a memorandum on state financing of higher education to be presented at a fictional local community college forum, which is being held to support increased funding for higher education at the state level. Your memorandum is intended to inform participants regarding the state and national environments within which decisions regarding the funding of higher education are made.

A memorandum is a written report that is prepared for a person or committee in order to provide them with information about a particular matter. Note that the requirement (stated below) to cite credible sources reflects the research and information-gathering process that is part of constructing a memorandum.

Your memorandum should address the following:

• Summarize the main issues facing institutions of higher education with respect to the financing of higher education at the federal and state levels.
• Assess how the funding of higher education is structured and governed in a state of your choosing (Texas). This section of the memorandum should examine how the funding of higher education has changed over the past 5 to 10 years in the state and nationally.

The State Funding Memorandum

• Must be two to three single-spaced pages in length and formatted according to APA style as outlined in the Ashford Writing Center (Links to an external site.)‘s APA Style (Links to an external site.) Specific to APA style for memorandums, see the Ashford Writing Center’s Writing a Business Memo (Links to an external site.) resource, or Purdue Owl’s pages on Memos beginning with Audience and Purpose (Links to an external site.) (and then click the Next Resource button to see Parts of a Memo (Links to an external site.), Format (Links to an external site.), and Sample Memo (Links to an external site.)).
• Must include a separate title page with the following:
  • Title of paper
  • Student’s name
  • Course name and number
  • Instructor’s name
  • Date submitted
• For further assistance with the formatting and the title page, refer to APA Formatting for Word 2013 (Links to an external site.).
• Must utilize academic voice. See the Academic Voice (Links to an external site.) resource for additional guidance.
• Must include an introduction and conclusion paragraph. Your introduction paragraph needs to end with a clear thesis statement that indicates the purpose of your paper.
  • For assistance on writing Introductions & Conclusions (Links to an external site.) as well as Writing a Thesis Statement (Links to an external site.), refer to the Ashford Writing Center resources.
• Must use at least three credible sources in addition to the course text.
  • The Scholarly, Peer-Reviewed, and Other Credible Sources (Links to an external site.) table offers additional guidance on appropriate source types. If you have questions about whether a specific source is appropriate for this assignment, please contact your instructor. Your instructor has the final say about the appropriateness of a specific source for a particular assignment.
  • To assist you in completing the library research required for this assignment, view this Quick ‘n’ Dirty (Links to an external site.) tutorial, which introduces the Ashford University Library and the research process, and provides some library search tips.
• Must document any information used from sources in APA style as outlined in the Ashford Writing Center’s Citing Within Your Paper (Links to an external site.)
  • Must include a separate references page that is formatted according to APA style as outlined in the Ashford Writing Center. See the Formatting Your References List (Links to an external site.) resource in the Ashford Writing Center for specifications.