Higher Education Finance

The Social Circuitry of High Finance: Universities and Intimate Ties Among Economic Elites, by Charlie Eaton and Albina Gibadullina, CSHE 11.20 (September 2020)

Charlie Eaton
Albina Gibadullina
2020

Financiers have regained preeminence among economic elites, accruing growing shares of income and wealth. Yet network analyses have shown a decline in the bank-based interlocks between corporate boards that were once thought to foster financier power and elite cohesion. We ask if social organizations parallel to the economy provide a circuitry that connects financiers to other elites, despite growing complexity and fragmentation in finance. We develop and test hypotheses that apply the theory to elite university social ties using original data on degree holding among the Forbes 400...

Implementing Strategic Budgeting Models for Colleges and Universities, by James A. Hyatt, CSHE 14.20 (December 2020)

James A. Hyatt
2020

This article is a follow-up to a recent ROPS article on strategic budgeting at colleges and universities. In recent years, several colleges and universities have explored alternative strategies for developing operating budgets. In part, this exploration was driven by the desire for transparency among various constituent groups and the need to tie budgeting to campus strategic planning. While developing a new budgeting process can be a very intense and involved process, the ability to implement a new budget process requires the same level of commitment and involvement. A successful...

The Big Curve: Trends in University Fees and Financing in the EU and US

John Aubrey Douglass
Ruth Keeling
2008

Globally, fees and tuition are growing as an important source of income for most universities, with potentially significant influence on the market for students and the behavior of institutions. Thus far, however, there is no single source on the fee rates of comparative research universities, nor information on how these funds are being used by institutions. Furthermore, research on tuition pricing has also focused largely on bachelor’s degree programs, and not on the rapid changes in tuition and fees for professional degrees. This paper offers a brief scan of pricing trends among a...

Federally Funded Research, the Bayh-Dole Act, and the COVID Vaccine Race, by John Aubrey Douglass, CSHE 3.21 (February 2021)

John Aubrey Douglass
2021

This essay discusses the world of federally funded intellectual property (IP) before and after the Bayh-Dole Act and its impact on the world of science and commerce, before then exploring the complicated debates over ownership of the science behind the life-saving COVID-19 vaccines that will bring normalcy back to the world. Before 1980, federally funded science in the U.S. was largely focused on meeting the Cold War national defense needs of a nation in a science and technology race with the Soviet Union. The 1980 Bayh-Dole Act initiated in earnest the recognition that the advancement of...

Affording the Dream: Student Debt and State Need-Based Grant Aid for Public University Students by C. Eaton, S. Kulkarni, R. Birgeneau, H. Brady, and M. Hout

C. Eaton
S. Kulkarni
Robert Birgeneau
Henry Brady
Michael Hout
2017

Public research universities are a key vehicle for educational mobility. Yet rising student debt for undergraduate students has created new risks, particularly for lower income students at lower ranked universities. We find that student loan default rates reached 35 percent for low-income students at public universities with low research rankings during the Great Recession. Given these troubling loan default rates, we find encouraging evidence that a few U.S. states have adopted robust need-based grant aid programs to make college more affordable for low-income students. Such grant...

The Private Side of Public Universities: Third-party providers and platform capitalism by Laura T. Hamilton et al. CSHE 3.22 (June 2022)

Laura T. Hamilton
Heather Daniels
Christian Michael Smith
Charlie Eaton
2022

The rapid rise of online enrollments in public universities has been fueled by a reliance on for-profit, third-party providers—especially online program managers. However, scholars know very little about the potential problems with this arrangement. We conduct a mixed methods analysis of 229 contracts between third-party providers and 117 two-year and four-year public universities in the US, data on the financing structure of third-party providers, and university online education webpages. We ask: What are the mechanisms through which third-party relationships with universities may be...

A Case for For-Profit Private Higher Education in India by Asha Gupta, CSHE 8.22 (October 2022)

Asha Gupta
2022

India has the credit of running the second largest higher education system in terms of institutions worldwide, despite having only 26.3% Gross Enrollment Ratio (GER), including vocational education. It aspires to achieve a target of 50% GER by 2035. It means it would require a larger number of higher education institutions (HEIs), public and private, in addition to huge fiscal resources. At present about 75% of the HEIs are privately managed with about 66% of student enrolment. Though there is no provision of for-profit higher education institutions in India, many non-profit private HEIs...

How Helpful Are Average Wage-By-Major Statistics In Choosing A Field Of Study? by Zachary Bleemer, CSHE.1.24 (January 2024)

Zachary Bleemer
2024

Average-wage-by-major statistics have become widely available to students interested in the economic ramifications of their college major choice. However, earning a major with higher average wages does not necessarily lead individual students to higher-paying careers. This essay combines literature review with novel analysis of longitudinal student outcomes to discuss how students use average-wage-by-major statistics and document seven reasons that they may differ, sharply in some cases, from the causal wage effects of major choice. I focus on the ramifications of two-sided non-random...

Exploring Funding Options for the University of California by John Aubrey Douglass

John Aubrey Douglass
2018
Despite massive cuts in state funding over the past thirty years, the University of California has managed to keep enrollment on pace with growth in population. With California’s population projected to grow 22.5 percent (from 40 to 49 million by 2040), that will no longer be the case, unless UC is able to find a new funding model. Informed by the historical analysis in the report Approaching a Tipping Point: A History and Prospectus of Funding for the University of California, this essay revisits the options for funding UC from that report, including: reinvestment by California lawmakers and...

The Allure of Free Tuition

John Aubrey Douglass
2020

Throughout the world, tuition at any level is regarded as a significant barrier for university access to disadvantaged socioeconomic
groups. In the United States, student debt levels are at an historic high. In most cases, the political movement for free tuition does not provide any significant plan on how to make up lost revenue. Consolidating existing financial aid sources, combined with progressive tuition levels, may be a promising model.