Economics
drorzel | July 26, 2007It's been a few days since I linked to Inside Higher Ed, and the Internet itself was threatening to collapse. They're got a provocative article today about university endowments, though, so disaster is averted. The author, Lynne Munson, compares colleges and universities to private foundations, and doesn't like what she sees:
A recent survey of 765 colleges and universities found they are spending 4.2 percent of their endowments' value each year. Meanwhile, private foundations -- which are legally required to spend at least 5 percent of their value annually -- average 7 percent spending.…
drorzel | June 29, 2007Lest I go two days without linking to Inside Higher Ed, there's a "Devil's Workshop" column from Wick Sloan today, in the form of a fake letter to Congress calling for higher taxes on higher education:
Perhaps it's time for the nation to admit we are at war and to act accordingly. The immense Iraq war spending is the answer, not the obstacle, to helping millions of low-income students attend and finish college now. Via tax policy for donations and endowments alone, our nation allocates $18 billion in benefits to higher education. In a commendable bipartisan spirit, the Senate, this year and…
drorzel | March 29, 2007Yes, the unofficial Admissions Policy Month continues here at Uncertain Principles. The problem really is that it's Admissions Season in academia, so all the navel-gazing academic journals are loaded with articles about it, which means that having wandered into talking about it, I can't get out without a major effort of will...
Today's worthwhile article is from Inside Higher Ed, where Alan Contreras puts the cost of higher education in perspective in a way that makes the class problem very clear:
In 1974, a year of attendance at the University of Oregon (the flagship university in my state)…
drorzel | March 27, 2007This will probably cause some eye-rolling on the part of my local readers, but there's an interesting article in Inside Higher Ed on the real effect of merit scholarships, which is the term of art for "money given to students for reasons other than financial need." This is a hot topic, as the article notes:
The rapid growth in merit scholarships has been controversial: Many institutions (public and private) say that the awards allow them to better shape their classes and to attract talented applicants who might otherwise go elsewhere. Yields -- the percentage of accepted applicants who enroll…
drorzel | January 29, 2007Apparently, it's "economics of higher education" day here at Uncertain Principles. This time out, we have Steve Hsu on Larry Summers.
(Update: I should also link to this post by Brad DeLong discussing the same article, with good stuff in the comments. And while I'm bashing free-market advocates, here's Jonah on the worst assumption in economics, and Dave on funding research with prizes.)
Steve quotes Summers saying:
In today's economy an outstanding graduate of a leading business school earns a substantially higher salary than a potential Nobel prize winner graduating with a PhD in biology.…
drorzel | January 29, 2007Inside Higher Ed also features an opinion piece about Princteon's tuition freeze, following my alma mater's lead from 2000.
While Princeton is larger and may carry more punch in the world of higher education than Williams, I will be very surprised if this decision triggers an onslaught of emulation. Only a tiny number of extraordinarily wealthy institutions could even consider following, and it is unclear why they would do so. The distributional consequences of the Princeton decision could be viewed as analogous to the early Bush tax cuts, in that the benefits will accrue to the very wealthy…
drorzel | January 17, 2007I'm running about a day behind on my Inside Higher Ed commentary because the ongoing search has made this a Week From Hell, but there was an interesting news item yesterday about an economic study suggesting that health care subsidies would improve education more than tuition credits:
The study's bottom line finding, in the authors' words, is that "health plays an extremely important role in determining an individual's educational attainment. On average, having been sick before the age of 21 decreases [an individual's average educational attainment] by 1.4 years."
(I assume that "sick" here…
drorzel | January 4, 2007Inside Higher Ed reports on an impressively bad idea from the upper midwest:
"If we can't lure them here, let's tether them here," said Mark O'Connell, executive director of the Wisconsin Counties Association, a lobbying organization, and a member of the Commission on Enhancing the Mission of the Wisconsin Colleges, a group created to advise the network of 13 two-year colleges in the state.The commission, appointed by the chancellor of the University of Wisconsin Colleges in August, submitted a report late last month calling for an investment in new scholarships pegged to residency…
drorzel | December 14, 2006The Times had an article the other day about the warped economics of higher education:
So early in 2000 the board [of Trustees of Ursinus College] voted to raise tuition and fees 17.6 percent, to $23,460 (and to include a laptop for every incoming student to help soften the blow). Then it waited to see what would happen.
Ursinus received nearly 200 more applications than the year before. Within four years the size of the freshman class had risen 35 percent, to 454 students. Applicants had apparently concluded that if the college cost more, it must be better.
"It's bizarre and it's…
drorzel | December 13, 2006The Democrats have decided to punt on the budget, which the outgoing Republican Congress left unfinished in a childish fit of pique. Instead of completing the usual budget process, the incoming Congress plans to pass a "continuing resolution," to fund 2007 operations of Federal agencies at the same level as 2006.
See, people, this is what happens when you put the grown-ups back in charge-- the first thing they do is cancel Christmas.
Inside Higher Ed gives a run-down of the implications for academia, which I know is what you were all dying to hear about. The bottom line isn't particularly…
drorzel | July 27, 2006Harry Brighouse at Crooked Timber is enthusiastic about something that appears to be that rarest of rarities, a new idea in the education funding debate: instead of giving the best students money to move to different schools, let schools bid for the best students.
Betts suggests this: first fund the schools equally on a per-student basis. Then distribute trade-able rights to admit highly advantaged students; and allow schools to auction those rights. Schools would then be forced to figure out how much they valued the money they were spending relative to the highly advantaged children they…
drorzel | July 13, 2006The Dean Dad, spinning off an article in the Chronicle, has some interesting thoughts on the economic benefits of colleges and universities:
Apropos of my minor obsession with the economic conditions in Northern Town, the Chronicle of Higher Ed has a story noting that the University of Rochester is now the largest employer in Rochester. A quick check on the always-reliable Wikipedia (I know, I know...) reveals that SUNY-Buffalo is the largest employer in Buffalo, and Syracuse University the largest employer in Syracuse. Binghamton University (a.k.a. SUNY-Binghamton) is the largest employer in…