How did State U. get so expensive? A leading culprit is reduced state support. Since 1987, the typical student at a public college or university has seen the government subsidy for her education drop by $2,337, or roughly one quarter. And in prior research, the author found that every $1,000 in state divestment leads colleges to raise tuition by…

School finance reforms caused some of the most dramatic increases in intergovernmental aid from states to local governments in U.S. history. We examine whether teachers' unions affected the fraction of reform-induced state aid that passed through to local spending and the allocation of these funds. Districts with strong teachers' unions increased…

Efforts to subsidize private education take a variety of forms, with the most familiar being the private school voucher provided directly to parents. But there are other less direct ways governments subsidize private schools. One such method is to provide a tax credit to parents to offset their personal education expenses (education tax credit).…

Voters in Marin County have long been willing to pass parcel taxes to fund their schools. In 2016, taxes faced unprecedented opposition from local activists; taxes in Kentfield and Mill Valley were defeated or passed by previously unheard-of narrow margins, respectively. What changed? This case study uses district financial and demographic data as…

The COVID-19 pandemic has created and will continue to create uncertainty in all facets of everyday life, exacerbating current challenges -- and generating new ones -- for every sector of the economy, including postsecondary education. As the pandemic continues, postsecondary education faces increasing pressures as concerns about health and…

With recent changes in how UK higher education is funded, universities are operating in a context in which finances are uncertain. It is more important than ever that university leaders are able to manage the finances of their organisations in ways which both provide long-term security and allow for investment in strategically important…

Sixty-seven school finance reforms (SFRs) in 26 states have taken place since 1990; however, there is little empirical evidence on the heterogeneity of SFR effects. We provide a comprehensive description of how individual reforms affected resource allocation to low- and high-income districts within states, including both financial and…

This paper compares and contrasts different strategies to balance academic institutions' operating budgets. Some strategies use economic theory to recommend a budgeting technique, others use management methods to cut cost, and some strategies use a management accounting approach to reach a balanced budget. Through the use of a simplified numerical…

The advent of democracy in South Africa triggered notable reforms to the financing of quality education, and curriculum design and innovation. The ulterior motive behind this study was to underscore the correlation between inadequate financial resources and learners' achievement. School finance reform was found to contribute to learner achievement…

Funding is an important mechanism for exercising influence over ever more parts of academic systems. In order to do so, funding agencies attempt to export their functional and normative prerequisites for financing to new fields. One essential requirement for fundees is then to construct research processes in the form of a project beforehand, one…

Student-Based Budgeting (SBB)--also called weighted student funding, fair student funding, student-based allocations, or student-centered funding--is a school funding system where schools receive dollars based on the number of enrolled students and their individual needs (such as English language learners, or students from high-poverty…

This chapter summarizes funding trends to support career and technical education (CTE) and science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) programs at community colleges compared to funding for similar programs at 4-year colleges and universities. Examples of intramural and extramural funding strategies as well as lessons learned and…

Gains in school spending helped to lift achievement over the past half century. But California's ambitious effort--progressively distributing $23 billion in yearly funding to poorer districts--has yet to reduce disparities in learning. We theorize how administrators in districts and schools, given organizational habits and labor constraints, may…

A major feature of the school finance landscape over the last two decades has been the reform of state school finance systems. Using the case of Maryland's Bridge to Excellence in Public Schools Act, this paper extends the current literature by developing a conceptual framework for residential bidding and sorting and using it to estimate housing…

The paper addresses the problem of the financial regulations' impact on the share of private financing in higher education institutions (HEIs). The authors postulate the trade-off between the size and stability of public financing and the regulations fostering stability of HEIs' funds. If the public sources are insufficient then the regulations…