Higher education institutions are in the battle of a lifetime as they are coping with political and economic uncertainties, threats to federal aid, declining state support, higher tuition rates and increased competition from for-profit institutions. Amid all these challenges, these institutions are pressed to keep up with technological demands,…

The problem addressed in the current study was an enrollment decline for numerous private institutions. Using data obtained from the United States Department of Education's Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System, the purpose of the quantitative correlational study was to examine the impact of enrollment substitution within peer…

Historically, Florida has emphasized access for citizens in setting undergraduate resident tuition for the State University System (SUS). Figure 3 and Figure 6 depict the long-term effects of this, as Florida's undergraduate resident tuition and required fees, among high (RUH) and very high (RUVH) public research universities, have remained second…

The Big 12 is famous for its athletics--and well it should be. But what about the rest of the conference--the academic part? The Big 12's website says, "Performance in the classroom is just as important as accolades on the field." So what's happening off the field? How do the Big 12 schools fare when it comes to cost and quality? The…

Every year about 65,000 undocumented students graduate from U.S. high schools. A major obstacle to their attending college is not being eligible for in-state tuition. Today, nine states permit it while four prohibit it. Even if the federal DREAM Act passes, state policy decisions will continue to strongly shape college opportunities for…

For the past thirty years, conventional wisdom has held that cutting public funding will make public institutions more efficient. This idea has profoundly altered support for higher education. University leaders have regularly assured legislators, and the general public, that business-oriented science, fundraising, and sophisticated financing…

This "First Look" presents findings from the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) fall 2010 data collection, which included three survey components: Institutional Characteristics for the 2010-11 academic year; Completions, covering the period July 1, 2009, through June 30, 2010; and 12-Month Enrollment, covering…

From 1995-96 to 2007-08, the number of undergraduates in the United States grew from about 16.7 million to 21 million (Horn and Berktold 1998; Wei et al. 2009). In 2007-08, two-thirds of all undergraduates received some type of financial aid, including grants, loans, work-study, or some combination of these types of aid. These Web Tables provide…

Currently, 42 percent of Americans in the 25-34 age range hold a degree from a two- or four-year institution of higher education. At one time, that proportion was high enough to make the United States the best-educated country in the world. But in one generation, America's educational attainment has held steady while in other countries it has…

This paper is the fourth annual report on the student loan debt of new college graduates. This analysis of the most recent available data found that student debt continued to rise even as it got harder for recent graduates to find jobs, and that debt levels vary considerably from state to state and college to college. Nationwide, average debt for…

It comes as no surprise that the prices being charged for college tuition are out of control. Stories about the staggering price of tuition are commonplace in popular media. Although the supposed explanations for this phenomenon are attributed to issues such as financial aid, lack of government support, and the state of the economy, none seem to…

The effect of vouchers on sorting between private and public schools depends upon the price elasticity of demand for private schooling. Estimating this elasticity is empirically challenging because prices and quantities are jointly determined in the market for private schooling. We exploit a unique and previously undocumented source of variation…

The paper takes advantage of exceptionally rich longitudinal data on the universe of labor force participants in Slovenia and simulates the working of an income contingent loan scheme that seeks to recover part of schooling costs. The simulations show that under the base variant (where the target cost recovery rate is 20% and the contribution rate…

Information Resource Management--State University System of Florida (IRM-SUS) is the primary collector and provider of data concerning state universities that is used to make sound education policy decisions. The office provides technical assistance to those using the information, state and federal reporting support, those supplying information,…

In this study, the authors examined the impact of two interventions related to the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) on postsecondary outcomes of low- to moderate-income individuals. The two interventions were included: (1) providing an estimate of need-based aid compared against tuition costs for nearby colleges and assistance in…