In an ominously steady progression over the past decades, education in general, higher education in particular, and even honors education have increasingly been contextualized in the realm of the marketplace. Cost/benefit analyses of colleges and universities are examined; institutions in terms of their price to consumers (students and their…

Community colleges are under pressure to increase completion rates, prepare students for the workplace, and contain costs. Colleges need to know the financial implications of what are often perceived as routine decisions: course scheduling, program offerings, and the provision of support services. This chapter presents a methodology for estimating…

The paper describes a linear programming model which generates explicit quantitative information about (1) the optimal allocation of resources inside the public university (2) the "shadow price" attached to each input used in the academic process; and (3) the optimal mixture of academic outputs produced by the university. (KM)