Ronald G. Ehrenberg is Irving M. Ives Professor of Industrial and Labor Relations and Economics at Cornell University
and Director of the Cornell Higher Education Research Institute.
Summary
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.
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.
Table of Contents
I Setting the Stage
1 Why Do Costs Keep Rising at Selective Private Colleges and Universities?
2 Who Is in Charge of the University?
II Wealth and the Quest for Prestige
3 Endowment Policies,Development Policies, and the Color of Money
4 Undergraduate and Graduate Program Rankings
5 Admissions and Financial Aid Policies
III The Primacy of Science over Economics
6 Why Relative Prices Don't Matter
7 Staying on the Cutting Edge in Science
IV The Faculty
8 Salaries
9 Tenure and the End of Mandatory Retirement
V Space
10 Deferred Maintenance, Space Planning, and Imperfect Information
11 The Costs of Space
VI Academic and Administrative Issues
12 Internal Transfer Prices
13 Enrollment Management
14 Information Technology, Libraries, and Distance Learning
VII The Nonacademic Infrastructure
15 Parking and Transportation
16 Cooling Systems
VIII Student Life
17 Intercollegiate Athletics and Gender Equity
18 Dining and Housing
IX Conclusion
19 Looking to the Future
20 A Final Thought
Appendix. De Þned Bene Þt and De Þned Contribution Retirement
Plans
Notes
Acknowledgments
Index
