Buying the Best (eBook)

Cost Escalation in Elite Higher Education

Charles T. Clotfelter (Autor)

eBook Download: PDF

2014
334 Seiten
Princeton University Press (Verlag)
978-1-4008-6427-0 (ISBN)

Infos

Since the early 1980s, the rapidly increasing cost of college, together with what many see as inadequate attention to teaching, has elicited a barrage of protest. Buying the Best looks at the realities behind these criticisms--at the economic factors that are in fact driving the institutions that have been described as machines without brakes. In designing his study, Charles Clotfelter examines the escalation in spending in the arts and sciences at four elite institutions: Harvard, Duke, Chicago, and Carleton. He argues that the rise in costs has less to do with increasing faculty salaries or lowered productivity than with a broad-based effort to improve quality, provide new services to students, pay for large investments in new facilities and equipment (including computers), and ensure access for low-income students through increasingly expensive financial aid.In Clotfelter's view, spiraling costs arise from the institutions' lofty ambitions and are made possible by steadily intensifying demand for places in the country's elite colleges and universities. Only if this demand slackens will universities be pressured to make cuts or pursue efficiencies. Buying the Best is the first study to make use of the internal historical records of specific institutions, as opposed to the frequently unreliable aggregate records made available by the federal government for the use of survey researchers. As such, it has the virtue of allowing Clotfelter to draw much more realistic comparative conclusions than have hitherto been reported. While acknowledging the obvious drawbacks of a small sample, Clotfelter notes that the institutions studied are significant for the disproportionate influence they, and comparable elite institutions, exercise upon research and upon the training of future leaders. The book contains a foreword by William G. Bowen, President of the Mellon Foundation, and Harold T. Shapiro, President of Princeton University."Concern about ever-rising costs runs like a thread through the myriad critiques of higher education that have been published in recent years. . . . One of the great contributions of Clotfelter's work is to dismiss easy explanations for the problems that worry us. With some of the scales removed from their eyes, both those with responsibility for the future of higher education and observers who continue to expect an ever-wider scope of effort from particular colleges and universities, can now adjust their focus. Armed with this original and extremely useful analysis, we can confront more directly (and with less romanticism) the real choices before us as we seek to employ limited resources most effectively in the service of teaching and research."-William G. Bowen, President, Mellon Foundation, Harold T. Shapiro, President, Princeton University, from the forewordOriginally published in 1996.The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 14.7.2014
• Reihe/Serie: National Bureau of Economic Research Publications
• Reihe/Serie: National Bureau of Economic Research Publications
• Reihe/Serie: Princeton Legacy Library
• Reihe/Serie: Princeton Legacy Library
• Reihe/Serie: The William G. Bowen Series
• Reihe/Serie: The William G. Bowen Series
• Zusatzinfo: 28 line drawings, 66 tables
• Verlagsort: Princeton
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Schulbuch / Wörterbuch ► Lernhilfen ► Sekundarstufe I
• Themenwelt: Geisteswissenschaften
• Themenwelt: Sozialwissenschaften ► Pädagogik
• Schlagworte: academic department • Academic tenure • Academic year • adjunct professor • Arnold R. Weber • assistant professor • athletic scholarship • Audiovisual education • Bachelor's degree • BE Education • Budget Process • Calculation • Canadian Studies • capital expenditure • Carl Kaysen • Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education • Classroom • class size • College and university rankings • Committee for Economic Development • compliance cost • Consortium on Financing Higher Education • Cost Accounting • Cost Cutting • cost escalation • Cost of attendance • Cross-registration • Depreciation • doctorate • Economics • Emerging Technologies • Employment • Executive compensation • Expense • Faculty (academic staff) • Fair Labor Standards Act • federal student aid • Financial endowment • First professional degree • Full-time equivalent • Funding • Graduate school • Harvard College • Harvard University • Henry Rosovsky • higher education • Higher education in the United States • Higher Education Price Index • income • Inflation • Institution • Institutional Research • Internal Financing • International Studies • Knowledge Worker • Lecture • lecturer • liberal arts college • Liberal arts education • Mandatory retirement • Marginal cost • Massachusetts Institute of Technology • master's degree • Minicomputer • Monopsony • Moses Abramovitz • Nathan Rosenberg • National Bureau of Economic Research • Need-blind admission • New Course • of education • opportunity cost • Overextension • Overhead Rate • Peer Review • percentage • Principles (retailer) • Private School • private university • Profession • Professional School • Professional services • Professional student • Professor • Professors in the United States • Public university • research associate • salary • stipend • student affairs • Subsidy • Tax • Thesis • The True Cost • Tuition payments • undergraduate education • University • University and college admission • write-off • X-inefficiency
• ISBN-10: 1-4008-6427-5 / 1400864275
• ISBN-13: 978-1-4008-6427-0 / 9781400864270