Ronald G. Ehrenberg (www.people.cornell.edu/pages/rge2/main.html)
Irving M. Ives Professor of
Industrial and Labor Relations and Economics
Director, Cornell Higher Education
Research Institute
Annotated
additional readings in Microsoft Word format.
Annotated Additional Readings for the Readers of
Ronald G. Ehrenberg’s
Tuition Rising: Why College Costs So
Much
(Harvard
University Press, September 2000)
I.
Setting the Stage | II
Wealth and the Quest for Prestige
III
The Primacy of Science Over Economics | IV.
The Faculty
V.
Space | VI.
Academic and Administrative Issues
VII.
The Nonacademic Infrastructure | VIII.
Student Life | IX.
Conclusion
Tuition
Rising: Why College Costs So Much was written for a general audience. As a
result, the use of footnotes and citations to the writing of others was
minimized. I have prepared this annotated reading list for those readers who
would like to delve deeper into the academic research on the economics of higher
education institutions.
I. Setting the
Stage (Chapter 1- Why do Costs Keep Rising at Selective Private Colleges and
Universities and Chapter 2-Who is in Charge of the
University?)
There are a number of
wonderful books written by past presidents and deans of major American
universities that out their philosophies of, and their perceptions of the issues
facing American higher education. Sometimes these books are series of essays
that were delivered at different occasions during the administrator’s term and
sometimes they were written after he or she left the position. These books
discuss the whole gambit of problems facing American higher education. Related
to these books are collections that contain essays by a number of university
leaders and other distinguished academics. These volumes include:
·
Derek Bok, Beyond the Ivory Tower (Harvard
University Press, 1983)
·
William Bowen, Ever the Teacher (Princeton University
Press, 1987)
·
James Friedman, Idealism and Liberal Education
(Michigan University Press, 1998)
·
Donald Kennedy, Academic Duty (Harvard University Press,
1997)
·
Annette Kolodny, Failing the Future (Duke University
Press, 1998)
·
Richard O’Brien, All the Essential-Half Truths About Higher
Education (University of Chicago Press, 1998)
·
Henry Rosovsky, The University: An Owners Manual (W.W.
Norton, 1987)
·
Johnathan
Cole et. al. Research Universities in a
Time of Discontent (Johns Hopkins Press,
1994)
·
Kenneth Arrow et. al. Education in Research Universities
(Stanford University Press, 1996)
·
Ronald G. Ehrenberg ed. The American University: National Treasure
or Endangered Species (Cornell
University Press, 1997)
Over 35
years ago William Bowen studied cost increases at American research
universities. A more recent treatment that addresses the nuts and bolts of why
costs increase at these institutions by looking at exactly what the increased
costs are spent at is Charles Clotfelter’s book. Several other collections focus
specifically on the variety of economic problems that the institutions
face.
·
William Bowen, The Economics of Major Private Research
Universities (Carnegie Commission on Higher Education,
1967)
·
Charles Clotfelter, Buying the Best: Cost Escalation in Elite
Higher Education (Princeton University Press,
1996)
·
Charles Clotfelter, Ronald
G. Ehrenberg, Malcom Getz and John Siegfried, Economic Challenges Facing Higher
Education (University of Chicago Press, 1991)
·
William Massey, Resource Allocation in Higher Education
(University of Michigan Press, 1996)
·
Roger
Noll et. al. Eds. Challenges to Research Universities
(Brookings Institution Press, 1998).
[Top]
II Wealth and the Quest for Prestige
(Chapter 3-Endowment Policies, Development Policies and the Cost of Money,
Chapter 4-Undergraduate and
Graduate Program
Rankings, Chapter 5-Admissions and Financial Aid
Policies)
An early discussion of
the university as prestige maximizing institution is the work of David Garvin.
His work was generalized and extended by Estelle James. Robert Frank and Phil
Cook stress the implications of the winner take all society for universities and
Gordon Winston elegantly spells out how institutional wealth influences
behavior.
·
David Garvin, The Economics of University Behavior
(Academic Press, 1980)
·
Estelle James, “Decision
Processes and Priorities in Higher Education” in Stephen A. Hoenack and Eileen
L. Collins eds. The Economics of American
Universities (State University of New York Press,
1990)
·
Robert H. Frank and Phillip
J. Cook, The Winner-Take-All Society
(Free Press, 1995)
·
Gordon Winston, “Subsidies,
Hierarchies and Peer: The Awkward Economics of Higher Education”, Journal of Economic Perspectives 13
(Winter 1999).
Excellent discussions
about endowment policies are found in the pieces by Richard Ennis and Peter
Williamson and William Massy. Henry Hansmann presents a discussion of why
universities hold endowments and encourage gifts to endowment. Frank H. Rhodes’s
book is an excellent treatment of development policies.
·
Richard Ennis and Peter
Williamson, Spending Policies for
Educational Endowments (The Common Fund, 1976)
·
William Massey ed. Resource Allocation in Higher Education,
chapter 4.
·
Henry Hansmann, “Why Do
Universities Have Endowments?” Journal of
Legal Studies 19 (1990), no.1: 3-42.
·
Frank Rhodes ed. Successful Fund Raising for Higher
Education: The Advancement of Learning (Oryx Press,
1997)
Michael McPherson and
Morton Shapiro are two economists/college presidents whose research on financial
aid policies has been extremely important. Tom Kane presents a recent treatment
on federal and state policies.
Discussions of admissions policies in selective institutions are found in
the books by Bok, Bowen, Freedman and Rosovsky listed under I-A. The Duffy and
Goldberg book is a history of admissions and financial aid policies at selective
private colleges during the second half of the 20th century. While Tuition Rising does not deal with issues
relating to affirmative action in admissions policies, William Bowen and Derek
Bok’s book is a “must” read.
·
Michael S. McPherson and
Morton Owen Schapiro, Keeping College
Affordable (Brookings Institution, 1991)
·
Michael S. McPherson, Morton
Owen Schapiro and Gordon C. Winston, Paying the Piper (University of Michigan
Press, 1993), chapters 6 through 9.
·
Michael S. McPherson and
Morton Owen Schapiro, The Student Aid
Game (Princeton University Press, 1998).
·
Thomas J. Kane, The Price of Admission: Redefining How
Americans Pay for College (Brookings Institution,
1999)
·
Elizabeth Duffy and Idana
Goldberg, Crafting A Class: College
Admissions and Financial Aid, 1955-94 (Princeton University Press,
1998)
·
William G. Bowen and Derek
Bok, The Shape of the River: Long-Term
Consequences of Considering Race in College and University Admissions
(Princeton University Press, 1998)
[Top]
III The Primacy of Science Over Economics
(Chapter 6- Why Relative Prices Don’t Matter and Chapter 7-Staying on the
Cutting Edge of Science)
The rising cost of
science, changing federal policies towards the funding of scientific research
and the implication of these changes for universities is described in several
chapters of Roger Noll’s book. Irwin Feller’s articles describes the impact on
the universities of the increasing requirement that they provide funds to match
the funds that the federal government has provided to them for research. My
article questions whether the decrease in indirect cost rates that the private
research universities faced during the last decade of the 20th
century reduced the competitiveness of their faculty members’ grant
applications. Where the pressures came from to reduce indirect cost rates in the
private universities is discussed by Donald Kennedy in his book. Finally, the
Graham and Diamond and the Lowen books are interesting discussions of the growth
of the American research university during the second half of the
20th century.
·
Roger Noll ed. Challenges to Research Universities
(Brookings Institution Press, 1998)
·
Irwin Feller, “Social
Contracts and the Impact of Matching Fund Requirements on American Research
Universities”, Educational Evaluation and
Policy Analysis (Spring 2000)
·
Ronald G. Ehrenberg and
Jaraslova K. Mykula, “Do Indirect Cost Rates Matter?”, National Bureau of Economic Research Working
Paper 6976 (February 1999). Available on the world wide web at http://papers.nber.org/papers/W6976
·
Donald Kennedy, Academic Duty:
164-175.
·
Hugh Davis Graham and Nancy
Diamond, The Rise of American Research
Universities (Johns Hopkins Press, 1997)
·
Rebecca S. Lowen, Creating the Cold War University
(University of California Press, 1997)
[Top]
IV. The
Faculty (Chapter 8-
Salaries and Chapter 9-Tenure and the End of Mandatory
Retirement)
Data on faculty
salaries at American colleges and universities are collected annually by the
AAUP and are published, typically in the March/April or May/June issue of
Academe. A cover article that summarizes the trends in compensation in
academic and highlights important policy issues accompanies these
data.
A stirring explanation
of what tenure means and a passionate defense of the institution of tenure
appears in Matthew Finkin’s book. The books by Albert Rees and Sharon Smith and
P. Brett Hammond and Harriet P. Morgan were studies of the likely effects of the
end of mandatory retirement on academia that were undertaken prior to the
abolishment of mandatory retirement for faculty. Studies that have looked at the
actual impact of the end of mandatory retirement on universities and suggested
policies that institutions can follow to adjust to it include my own and the
essays in the book edited by Robert Clark and Brett Hammond.
·
Matthew Finkin, The Case for Tenure (ILR Press, 1996)
Albert Rees and Sharon P Smith, Faculty
Retirement in the Arts and Sciences (Princeton University Press,
1991)
·
P. Brett Hammond and Harriet
P. Morgan, Ending Mandatory Retirement
for Faculty: The Consequences for Higher Education (National Academy Press,
1991)
·
Ronald G. Ehrenberg, “No
Longer Forced Out: How One University is Dealing with the End of Mandatory
Retirement”, Academe (May/June
1999)
·
Robert L. Clark and P. Brett
Hammond eds. To Retire or Not: Retirement
Policy and Practice in Higher Education (University of Pennsylvania Press,
2000)
[Top]
V. Space (Chapter 10-Deferred Maintenance,
Space Planning and Imperfect Information and Chapter 11- The Costs of
Space)
The books by Harvey
Kaiser, Steven Glazer and Sean Rush and Sandra L. Johnson spell out the problem
of deferred maintenance at American colleges and universities that existed in
the 1980s. Gordon Winston was one of the first economists to point out the
importance of including unmet maintenance needs in the accounting statements of
universities. The paper by Boyes and Happel is a creative attempt to use the
price system to ration space.
·
Harvey H. Kaiser, Crumbling Academe: Solving the Capital
Renewal and Replacement Dilemma, (Association of Governing Boards of
American Colleges and Universities, 1984)
·
Steven Glazer ed. Critical Issues in Facility Management 4:
Capital Renewal and Deferred Maintenance (Association of Physical Plant
Administrators of Universities and Colleges, 1987)
·
Sean C. Rush and Sandra L
Johnson, The Decaying American Campus: A
Ticking Time Bomb (Association of Physical Plant Administrators of
Universities and Colleges, 1989)
·
William J. Boyes and Stephen
K. Happel, “Auctions as an Allocation Mechanism in Academia: The Case of Faculty
Offices”, Journal of Economic
Perspectives (Summer 1989)
·
Gordon C. Winston, “Why Are
Capital Costs Ignored by Nonprofit Organizations on What Are the Prospects for
Change?” in McPherson, Schapiro and Winston, Paying the
Piper.
[Top]
VI. Academic and Administrative Issues (Chapter 12-
Internal Transfer Prices, Chapter 13-Enrollment Management and Chapter 14-
Information Technology, Libraries and Distance
Learning
The edited volume by
Brian Hawkins and Patricia Batin covers many of the important issues. The world
of distance learning is moving so quickly that anything that has been written is
quickly out of date. So here I simply refer the reader to recent issues of The Chronicle of Higher Education and Change Magazine, two of the leading
publications for the higher education community.
·
Brian L. Hawkins and
Patricia Batin eds/ The Mirage of
Continuity: Reconfiguring Academic Information Services in the 21st
Century (Council on Library and Information Services,
1998)
[Top]
VII. The
Nonacademic Infrastructure (Chapter 15-Parking and Transportation
and
Chapter 16- Cooling
Systems)- I have no additional readings beyond those suggested in notes in the
text to suggest for these chapters.
[Top]
VIII. Student Life (Chapter
17- Intercollegiate Athletics and Gender Equity and Chapter 18- Dining and
Housing)
Two wonderful
books on collegiate athletics are those by Andrew Zimbalist and Arthur Fleisher,
Brian Goff and Robert Tollison. The former shows that big-time college sports
are often money losers and traces through all of the adverse impacts that they
have on academic institutions. The latter shows that the National Collegiate
Athletic Association functions as a cartel and traces through what this means
for institutions and their scholar athletes. The Zimbalist book has a very
comprehensive list of references to academic research on intercollegiate
athletics.
·
Andrew Zimbalist, Unpaid Professionals: Commercialism and
Conflict in Big-Time College Sports (Princeton University Press,
1999)
·
Arthur A Fleisher III, Brian
L. Goff and Robert D. Tollison, The
National Collegiate Athletic Association: A Study in Cartel Behavior
(University of Chicago Press, 1992)
[Top]
IX. Conclusion
(Chapter 19- Looking to the Future)
One can look to
the future of American higher education in a number of ways. Tuition Rising focuses on one set of
issues. A discussion of issues confronting public universities and colleges is
found in my paper. Frank Rhodes wonderful book presents a view of the future
from the perspectives of one of the most successful and esteemed university
presidents of the 20th century.
·
Ronald G. Ehrenberg,
“Financial Forecasts for the Next Decade”, The American Presidency (Spring
2000)
·
Frank H. T. Rhodes, The American University: Dinosaur or Dynamo
(forthcoming)
[Top]
This reading list was last updated on July 10,
2000