After receiving his PhD in 1970, the author has spent almost 30 years conducting research on the economics of higher education, chairing faculty budget committees at Cornell, serving as a Cornell vice president and then as a trustee of both Cornell and SUNY, and being associated with innumerable national commissions and higher education…

American law schools are part of a much broader higher education system. So to set the stage, the author begins his remarks by discussing the stresses that the American higher education system is under and the changes that everyone has seen in it over the last three decades. This discussion should convey to everyone that the challenges law…

Being a president of a member institution of the Council of Independent Colleges (CIC) is fraught with challenges. To name but a few: (1) The nation's financial meltdown in 2008 and the accompanying great recession has dramatically increased families' financial need and led to increased pressure on financial aid budgets; (2) Reductions in…

American higher education is in transition and if there ever was a "golden age" for faculty, it probably is behind us. The best historical data on the composition of faculty is collected annually by the American Mathematical Society. Between 1967 and 2009, the share of full-time faculty with PhDs remained constant at about 90 percent at…

Endowments of major universities such as Cornell have received much attention over the past few years. Last academic year, the U.S. Senate Finance Committee launched an investigation into the finances of universities with endowments that exceeded $500 million dollars and required all of these universities to file reports detailing their finances.…

Explores reasons behind higher-than-inflation tuition increases at private colleges, the public interest in tuition rates at private institutions, and what trustees at private colleges and universities can do to bring tuition under control. (EV)

Each year over the past quarter century, undergraduate tuition and fees in the United States have increased by an average of 2.5 to 3.5 percentage points above the inflation rate. This continuous rise recently led one congressman to propose that the government penalize institutions that raise their tuition by more than twice the rate of inflation…

The United States no longer leads the world in college completion rates. Inequality in college access rates by income have barely narrowed over the last 25 to 30 years and inequality in college completion rates have narrowed even less. The groups in the population that are growing the most rapidly are those that have historically been…

Considers how higher education supply is adapting to an evolving new world and suggests areas where research would shed light on the strategic choices institutions are making and help guide policy decisions. These include effects of tuition levels on state appropriations and out-of-state enrollment, and effects of admissions policies on different…

This article discusses how federal and state governments can improve student access to private and public higher education institutions. Florida helps to achieve that with a common course-numbering system across community and four-year colleges, which permits students to easily transfer credits. Both the Senate and the House of Delegates in…

This study attempted to understand how the share of nonresidents among first-time freshmen varied at a point in time across 91 flagship public research institutions and over time at any given institution. Panel data from a variety of sources, including national surveys by the National Center for Education Statistics, were used to estimate a system…

By last spring, most faculty members at public institutions of higher education were justifiably pessimistic about their likely salary increases for the 2003-04 academic year. Many states were running large budget deficits for the second or third year in a row and no longer had reserves to draw upon to balance their budgets. These shortfalls…

The article presents an econometric analysis of the interrelationships between law school tuition levels, law school quality, law faculty salaries, and the starting salaries of graduates. It then analyzes recent data and concludes that, while tuition increases have outpaced starting salaries, law school attendance is still a good investment.…

This book explores the causes of tuition inflation, using Cornell University (New York) as a prototypical institution. There are 9 sections with 20 chapters. Section 1, "Setting the Stage," includes (1) "Why Do Costs Keep Rising at Selective Private Colleges and Universities?" and (2) "Who Is In Charge of the…