Studies of "cost and value" in anatomical sciences education examine not only what works, but at what cost, thus evaluating the inputs and outputs of education. This research provides insights into how to use available resources (e.g., academic time, budgets, infrastructure) as a mechanism to obtaining the maximum outcomes available. The…

In December 2010, the California Postsecondary Education Commission (CPEC) staff surveyed public universities in other states to learn how they have dealt with cuts in state funding. All of the institutions CPEC surveyed have increased tuition and or fees at least once in the last two fiscal years, and many project additional increases. All have…

Two significant challenges hamper analyses of collective choice of educational vouchers. One is the multi-dimensional choice set arising from the interdependence of the voucher, public education spending, and taxation. The other is that household preferences between public and private schooling vary with the policy chosen. Even absent a voucher,…

Using logistic regression, this study sought to understand the relationship between district characteristics, district finances, levy characteristics, and campaign expenditures with new operating levy outcomes. We found that employee benefits as a percentage of the district's budget were negatively associated with levy outcomes, while salaries…

Using detailed individual-level data from public universities in the state of Ohio, I estimate the effect of various institutional expenditures on the probability of graduating from college. Using a competing risks regression framework, I find differential impacts of expenditure categories across student characteristics. I estimate that student…

A multiproduct cost function is estimated for English higher education institutions using a panel of data from recent years. The panel approach allows estimation by means of a random parameter stochastic frontier model which provides considerable new insights in that it allows the impact on costs of inter-institutional differences in the cost…

This article discusses the impact of changing student demographics on financing education and on our national wellbeing. We begin by examining the research of current student demographics and their relationship to learning and education costs. We then calculate a 1% cost factor from the average per-pupil expenditure based on the 2011 "Digest…

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…

Benefit-cost analysis consists of establishing ratios of benefits to costs for a set of project variants. The decision rule is to select that project variant where the ratio is a maximum. This paper argues that specification and estimation errors can contribute to findings for large-scale systems of benefit-cost ratios approximating zero. The…

This paper assesses the impact on economic growth of increased efficiency of public spending in primary and lower-secondary education. Higher efficiency in public spending in schools can bolster growth through two main channels. On the one hand, it can allow a transfer of labour from the public sector to the business sector at unchanged…

This publication is a discussion of the concept of an educational production function, a mathematical formulation of the relationship between inputs and outputs in education. A description of how a production function can direct decision making toward economic efficiency precedes a theoretical discussion of the nature of actual estimation. Several…

There is no unique answer to the question of what an ongoing program costs in medical schools. The estimates of program costs generated by classical methods of cost accounting are unsatisfactory because such accounting cannot deal with the joint production or joint cost problem. Activity analysis models aim at calculating the impact of alternative…

The author reviews five cost-effectiveness basic models including log-log correlational, general utility theory, simultaneous equations, nonlinear theoretical, and feedback. Several suggestions are made to improve the models and increase the domain of problems that can be considered by the models. In the second part of the paper, the author…

Analyzes resource allocations in institutions of higher education to undergraduate costs, graduate costs, and faculty research and teaching time in order to determine educational "productivity." Although real undergraduate costs were found to be much lower than previously assumed, cost-based subsidies and the redistributive effects of higher…