An Examination of Higher Education Policy Problems Using Narrative Policy Analysis

Policy actors and coalitions use narratives to frame higher education policy problems and solutions. In this article, I illustrate how I employed narrative policy analysis (NPA) in practice to demonstrate how state policy actors and coalitions created policy storylines that offered social orientation, reassurance, or guidance for a stubborn higher education policy problem in one state. I begin the article with a review of NPA, followed by a discussion of the methods and tools that guided my analysis and scholars interested in NPA can employ. Next, I provide a brief overview of the policy problem context followed by a detailed description and examples of analysis for policy artifacts and the construction of policy storylines.