Tuition Rising
Why College Costs So Much
Ronald G. Ehrenberg
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America's elite colleges and
universities are the best in the world. They are also the
most expensive, with tuition rising faster than the rate
of inflation over the past thirty years and no indication
that this trend will abate.
| Ronald G.
Ehrenberg explores the causes of this tuition
inflation, drawing on his many years as a teacher
and researcher of the economics of higher
education and as a senior administrator at
Cornell University. Using incidents and examples
from his own experience, he discusses a wide
range of topics, including endowment policies,
admissions and financial aid policies, the
funding of research, tenure and the end of
mandatory retirement, information technology,
libraries and distance learning, student housing,
and intercollegiate athletics. |
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He shows that elite colleges and
universities, having multiple, relatively independent
constituencies, suffer from ineffective central control
of their costs. And in a fascinating analysis of their
response to the ratings published by magazines such as
U.S. News & World Report, he shows how they engage in
a dysfunctional competition for students.
In the short run, these colleges
and universities have little need to worry about rising
tuition, since the number of qualified students applying
for entrance is rising even faster. But in the long run,
it is not at all clear that the increases can be
sustained. Ehrenberg concludes by proposing a set of
policies to slow the institutions' rising tuitions
without damaging their equality.
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What Others Have To
Say
From the Library Journal: “Unlike
businesses, which strive to keep costs at a minimum, universities
must spend to make themselves as attractive as possible to their
constituents. Ehrenberg, a senior administrator and professor of
economics at Cornell University, examines the factors influencing
the spiraling tuition costs of the past decade: the need to spend
money to have the best facilities, faculties, and learning tools
in order to attract the best and brightest students, the need to
spend for athletics and other programs to keep alumni support
strong, the self-governing nature of university faculty, and the
increasing pressure to spend in order to increase ratings in
external publications. Observes Ehrenberg, ‘As long as
lengthy lines of highly qualified applicants keep knocking at its
door no institution has a strong incentive to unilaterally end
the spending race.’ This highly readable examination of the
American higher education system is an excellent addition to any
public or academic library.”- Mark Bay, Univ.
of Houston Lib. Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.
"Economists are sometimes accused of
possessing 'an irrational passion for dispassionate rationality.'
This book describes what a first-rate economist learned in trying
to introduce greater rationality to the decision-making of a
great university, a place that emerges as passionate and
ambitious, but markedly reluctant to make hard choices. The
account is sobering, illuminating, and immensely entertaining.
Both those who love universities and those who love rationality
will enjoy this book." - Michael McPherson, President,
Macalester College
"Ron Ehrenberg's comprehensive and
important analysis of rising college costs is based on both his
professional expertise as an economist and his practical
experience as a member of the central administration at one
university: Cornell. With insight, candor, and rigor he examines
the 'arms race' among selective universities, reviewing the role
each of the major participants - trustees, presidents, deans,
faculty, local, state and federal governments, and, not least,
tuition-paying students - in ratcheting up the level of tuition.
Pointing to the fate of hospitals and medical centers, he
cautions that self-regulation and institutional restraint are
needed to prevent loss of public confidence and possible federal
regulation. This book deserves widespread attention, both within
the academic community and beyond it." - Frank Rhodes,
former President, Cornell University
"Balanced, sensible, and informed, Tuition
Rising is a valuable addition to the literature on higher
education. Giving the reader a lot of very useful empirical
analysis, Ehrenberg demonstrates the value of being an economist.
Anyone about to become a college administrator will want to read
this book with great care." - Henry Rosovsky, former
Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Harvard University,
and author of The University: An Owner's Manual
"Ehrenberg demonstrates in convincing
detail that private universities do not easily make economically
efficient choices. The culprits are variously loose budget
constraints, relatively little hierarchical authority,
decentralized units that do not share the universities' goals,
poor institutional design, poor public policies, political
vulnerability, and the pious blindness of faculty. Tuition
Rising is interesting, well-argued, and provocative. It ought
to be required reading for presidents, provosts, and trustees of
elite private research universities." - Michael
Rothschild, Dean, Woodrow Wilson School of Public and
International Affairs, Princeton University
"What makes Tuition Rising so valuable
and so much fun is its combination of facts, analysis, and
administrative war stories. So, for instance, the importance to a
college of national rankings, like US News's, is supported by
careful econometric analysis (kept in the background, as are all
technical jargon and argument), put under a microscope to
understand the reasons for their often-quirky rankings, and then
followed into Cornell's business school to see how 'managing to
the rankings' - the collegiate version of 'teaching to the test'
- can make sensible university-wide administration very
difficult." - Gordon Winston, Professor of
Economics, Williams College
TUITION RISING: Copyright © 2000 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College
Jacket Design by Tim Jones - Jacket Photos: University computer lab © Bob Rowan, Progressive Image / Corbis ; Boston College football practice by Jim Davis / The Boston Globe via Merlin-Net.com; Construction of underground university library © Roger Ressmeyer / Corbis; Students on campus courtesy of FPG.
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