Since 1935, Social Security has provided a vital safety net for millions of Americans who cannot work because of age or disability. This safety net has been especially critical for Americans of Latino decent, who number more than 50 million or nearly one out of every six Americans. Social Security is critical to Latinos because it is much more…

Over the last decade, and in the context of the fiscal crisis in the nation in general and in higher education in particular, a debate has raged over the value of humanities research. Various commentators have argued that unlike nonhumanities disciplines, fields such as English studies and other humanistic disciplines bring very little into their…

Real-estate markets are almost as volatile as stock markets. Prices of agricultural land, of commercial real estate, and of homes and condominiums have gone through a series of huge bubbles, as if people never learned from the previous ones. Such events--in particular the recent housing bubble--are driven by what John Maynard Keynes called animal…

A May 2007 Congressional advisory committee found that average full-time undergraduates spent between $700 and $1,000 on textbooks in 2003-2004 and that from 1987-2004, textbook prices at four-year public colleges rose 109 percent compared to a rise in the Consumer Price Index of 65 percent. Higher education is transitioning from atoms…

Background: This paper considers some economic aspects of a therapy and support service for people with stroke and aphasia. This material was part of a broader evaluation of the service, which is reported elsewhere (van der Gaag et al. 2005, van der Gaag and Mowles 2005). Aims: The purpose of this part of the study was to investigate the…

Explains how instruction about the Consumer Price Index can help students learn about the effects of inflation, how to change patterns of consumption, and the effects of consumer choices. (SK)

Argues that a cost of education index presented in the winter 1980 issue may create inequities in the treatment of both taxpayers and pupils, mainly because of its evaluation of teacher salary costs. (IRT)

The author defends his conceptualization of a cost of education index against criticisms made in the preceding article. The defense focuses on the availability of teachers and the impact of this availability on education costs. (IRT)

Eleven issues were considered in study of Government Printing Office's Sales of Publications Program in areas such as pricing, marketing, program administration, and appeals of disputed prices. Sales Program study of documents pricing and government information dissemination proposes testing of alternative approaches to current pricing, increasing…

Argues that the Consumer Price Index (CPI) is not the same as the cost of living and that, while the CPI may reflect changes in an "average" family's purchasing power, the expenses and purchases of teachers' families may not be "average." (Author/RW)

Consumer demand and advances in technology are generating increases in the availability of brand name compact disc (CD) recorders priced for average consumers. A comparative analysis of CD-recorders is presented based on functions, capabilities, cost, and marketability. Related issues are also discussed, including computer software; technical…

Between 1986 and 2004, textbook prices rose 186 percent in the United States, or slightly more than six percent per year. Meanwhile, other prices rose only about three percent per year. This paper examines the economic reasons why textbook prices have escalated so briskly and what reasonable alternatives are available that might slow down these…

This article, based on the Periodicals Prices Survey of 2006, evaluates the changing trends of electronic periodical marketplace in 2006 and indicates what to expect in 2007. The 2005-2006 academic year was one of competing realities: the buying and selling of electronic journals continued apace, while the posting and crawling of every kind of…

Standard & Poors (S&P) uses a measure they call a Performance Cost Index (PCI) as their measure of a school or district?s ?Return on Resources?. The Performance Cost Index is defined as the average cost per measured ?unit? of student performance. In its simplest form, the Performance Cost Index is calculated as per student expenditures divided by…

The development of standard measures of financial health and distress should not mislead anyone into thinking there are common yardsticks for measuring the potentials of each college and university for survival and vitality. However, the process of developing and examining indicators can be healthy in itself. (Author/MSE)