During the 2008-2009 academic year, there were nearly 1.8 million students enrolled at more than 2,800 for-profit institutions of higher learning in the United States. Students in for-profit colleges and universities accounted for over 9% of all students enrolled in postsecondary education. The numbers have continued to grow, and today (2010) the…

Urges social scientists of various disciplines to turn their attention to the public schools. Illustrates thesis by applying principles and tools of economics to a variety of educational problems. (JES)

In the spring of 2005, the author, the retiring president of EDUCAUSE, was asked to be the keynote speaker at the EDUCAUSE Western Regional Conference. The conference theme was "Winds of Change: Charting the Course for Technology in Challenging Times." What that brought to his mind was the era of the great sailing ships of the eighteenth and…

This document (1) describes current PPBS techniques and their limitations for planning and budgeting in public higher education; (2) presents suggestions for PPBS applications in higher education systems, with emphases on the problems of identifying objectives, evaluating effectiveness, and structuring the program budget; and (3) analyzes the…

The relationship between the costs of schooling and the size of school districts is discussed. The first section of this paper provides a critical survey of what economists have written about economies of scale and questions whether bigger is really cheaper or more efficient, as is generally found in commercial endeavors. The second section…

Every administrator bears primary responsibility for planning the accomplishment of those objectives and activities that fall in his area. When responsibility is relatively restricted, the informal and intuitive methods that constitute "sound judgment" suffice. However, as his area of responsibility widens to include increasingly complex…