The growth of college and university endowments, particularly those of elite schools, have drawn the attention of policymakers and pundits. Using a decomposition of the growth of endowments between 1991 and 2010 we simulate the effects of three prominent proposed policies had they been implemented in 1991 on endowment payouts through 2010: (1) a…

This paper considers the influence of labor demand for new PhD recipients on time to the doctorate. I use student-level data on all doctorates awarded by U.S. universities in seven humanities and social science fields together with the annual number of job listings by field from 1975 to 2005. An increase in the number of job listings in a field…

Electronic books are a fast-growing component of the publishing industry. Sales of electronic textbooks (e-textbooks) are growing, but at a slower rate. In this research we use data from an undergraduate student survey to estimate the determinants of e-textbook use. We find that students who are younger, lower-income, and from larger high schools…

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…

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…

This study reviews the historical trend of college revenues and expenditures from a national perspective. The years 1999-2009 are examined with the most detail using primarily Delta Project/IPEDS data. Looking at trends related to state and local appropriations, college costs and prices, output, and productivity, it argues that various policy…

We evaluate potential determinants of enrollment in an early retirement incentive program for non-tenure-track employees at a large university. Using administrative records on the eligible, population of employees not covered by collective bargaining agreements, historical employee count and layoff data by budget units, and public information on…

Using detailed individual-level data from public universities in the state of Ohio, I estimate the effect of various institutional expenditures on the probability of graduating from college. Using a competing risks regression framework, I find differential impacts of expenditure categories across student characteristics. I estimate that student…

This research examines the effect of undergraduate course letter grades on future course selection and major choice. Using a Regression-Discontinuity design, we exploit the fact that the probability of earning a particular letter grade jumps discontinuously around letter grade cutoffs. This variation in letter grades allows us to isolate the…

Numerous studies have investigated the impact of class size on student outcomes. This analysis contributes to this discussion by examining the impact of class size on student outcomes in higher education. Additionally, this paper investigates the importance of student load (total number of students taught across all courses) in educational…

After nearly four decades of campaigning, faculty and academic staff union members across the University of Wisconsin (UW) System won the right to bargain collectively in June 2009 when the Governor signed legislation that modified state labor law. In this paper, I present historical and interdisciplinary analyses of the organizational structures…

Several studies have focused on the increasing gender diversity in the boardrooms of corporations; both on what causes the increase and how this affects performance. Institutions of higher education also have governing boards but their incentive structures are quite different than those of corporations, thus providing a unique opportunity to study…

In his February 2009 address to Congress, President Obama called attention to the problems of higher education and promised a policy agenda to restore the U.S. to its leadership role in student access and completion rates. However, a depressed economy, stagnant or falling state funding for public higher education, and public resistance to rising…

In this paper, the author argues that a combination of short- and longer-run economic and political forces pose a threat to the well-being of the nation's doctoral programs. After briefly touching on the impact of current economic problems on doctoral education at private universities, he then discusses the growing pressure on academia to expand…