Higher education administrators face challenges related to declining net tuition revenues. Net tuition revenues are sustaining decreases related to tuition discounting and declining enrollments. College and university leaders were interviewed in this qualitative study to determine why it is challenging to reverse narrowing net tuition revenues and…

University leaders do not have sufficient tools easily available to guide their decision-making related to institutional financial wellbeing. Currently, many financial indicators used by leaders of tuition-dependent higher education institutions are not focused on vital metrics such as liquidity and cash earnings. The twofold purpose of this…

Over the last forty years, non-elite private institutions have steadily increased listed tuition and institutional aid. This practice has continued even though the net tuition revenue gains from incoming students have become minimal. We present a new explanation for why these yearly increases continue: The pricing structure of non-elite privates…

This article explored the state of the industry of graduate theological education using three key measures: accessibility, affordability, and financial sustainability. Access was analyzed with respect to educational modality (i.e., in-person, distance) and student populations (i.e., by demographic category). Affordability was investigated by…

Universities face tough choices about how to allocate tight budgets. A frequent question is whether a significant investment in research that is crucial for the university's position in rankings will make the university more popular and lead to higher revenues from tuition. This paper analyses how the ranking and popularity of universities are…

This paper aims to assess the degree of the income diversification of the UK higher education providers as a component of their overall financial resilience. In addition, we investigate a correlation between ranking, income diversification, and income size. The main research question is whether the higher ranking of the universities, in…

Impacts to postsecondary institutions' enrollment and financial positions that resulted from the COVID-19 pandemic were examined in this study. Taking a quantitative observational approach, enrollment trends as they relate to changes in tuition and fee revenue, unrestricted cash on hand, and unrestricted investments held are analyzed to determine…

The study addresses the widening income and racial access gap in higher education resulting from enrollment management teams' operationalization of academic capitalism. The study focuses on the local, micro level, emphasizing how enrollment management leadership teams make sense of enrollment management, recognizing that enrollment management and…

Changes in government policy and funding structures, alongside a rapidly evolving (international) market for education have made education provision a key revenue driver for UK higher education institutions. In this setting, the Russell Group of Universities (RGU), a self-selected association of elite, research-intensive universities and Business…

The purpose of this non-experimental study was to utilize a resource dependence theory (RDT) conceptual framework to examine differences between quality, affordability, and undergraduate enrollment based on private nonprofit four-year colleges and universities' (PCUs) institutional characteristics from the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data…

This study examines the relationship between cost efficiency and privatization at 163 public research institutions in the United States between 2005 and 2015. We employ a spatial autoregressive (SAR) random-effects model and stochastic frontier analysis (SFA) to estimate the relationship between costs and four privatization variables: auxiliary…

Using data collected from more than 5.8 million high school and college graduates ages 18 to 65 years who participated in the American Community Survey between 2009 and 2021, the authors estimate the internal rates of return (IRRs) for individuals with college degrees in 10 broad majors compared with high school graduates. The analysis shows…

This study applies demand theory to investigate how college discounting practices impact student enrollment across income categories for members and affiliates of the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities. The dependent variable for this study, student enrollment by income category, comes from the Student Financial Aid and Net Price…

Scholars disagree about the effect out-of-state university students have on potential in-state students. Despite paying a premium to attend state universities, researchers argue that out-of-state students may come at a cost to in-state students by negatively affecting academic quality or by crowding out in-state students. To study this…

Historically, it has been difficult for students and their families to compare how different colleges and programs improve students' chances of landing a desirable job and earning a good salary. The U.S. Department of Education's 2015 release of student earning data was a major step toward remedying this problem. The data offered by the College…