The Changing Distributions of New Ph.D. Economists and Their Employment: Implications for the Future

[Excerpt] Academic careers are no longer the be-all and end-all for economics Ph.D. students, and the findings and background provided by Siegfried and Stock help to explain why this is so. The median age at which individuals receive economics Ph.D.\u27s in the Siegfried and Stock sample is 32. While they are somewhat surprised at this finding, it parallels the experiences of many other fields. Increasingly, students are working before proceeding to doctoral studies. Often Ph.D. students in economics enter their programs after having spent several years working for government agencies or research consulting companies—work that has whetted their appetites for graduate study in economics that will enable them to make greater contributions in the policy arena. As these students proceed through doctoral studies, average time to degree has also increased. It is unclear whether this has occurred across institutions, or whether the phenomenon is a byproduct of Ph.D.\u27s increasingly coming from lower-ranked institutions at which financial support for graduate students is less adequate. Less adequate financial support is known to lengthen time to degree and reduce doctoral completion rates (Ehrenberg and Mavros, 1995)

Are School Superintendents Rewarded for “Performance”?

[Excerpt] This chapter presents analyses of the compensation and mobility of school superintendents in New York State during the 1978-79 to 1982-83 period. The focus is on school superintendents because they are the chief operating officers of school districts, their salaries are determined through individual negotiations with school boards, and their salary data were made available to us. In contrast, school principals\u27 salary data were not available to us. Especially in large districts, principals tend to be members of a union and their salary increases negotiated collectively, which limits the likelihood of observing individual principals\u27 salaries being related to measures of their school\u27s performance

Why Can’t Colleges Control Their Costs?

[Excerpt] Over 30 years ago William Bowen (1967) studied data from a set of selective private institutions and concluded that their tuition levels had been rising, on average, by 2 to 3 percent more annually than the rate of inflation ever since the turn of the 20th century. He attributed this partially to the increased specialization of knowledge and the growth of new fields of study. But first and foremost, this occurred because the nature of the educational process did not permit academia to share in the productivity gains that were leading to the growth of earnings in the rest of society. I am going to claim in this paper that there are a number of forces, in addition to the ones that Bowen discussed, that continue to put upward pressure on tuition. These include the aspirations of academic institutions, our “winner take all” society, the shared system of governance that exists in academic institutions, recent federal government policies, the role of external actors such as alumni, local government, the environmental movement and historic preservationists, periodicals that rank academic institutions, and how universities are organized for budgetary purposes and select and reward their deans. After briefly discussing each of these forces, I will present some results from a survey I recently conducted of large research universities to obtain information on how they organize themselves for budgetary purposes. Finally, I will conclude with some thoughts on the steps that academic institutions themselves must take if they want to hold down their costs

Review of the Book \u3ci\u3eThe Davis-Bacon Act\u3c/i\u3e

[Excerpt] Armand J. Thieblot\u27s monograph is not the first study of the administration and impact of the Davis-Bacon Act; however, it certainly is the most comprehensive. Successive chapters of the book consider the history of the act, definitions and interpretations of key words in the legislation, its current administrative organization and enforcement, experience under it (including improper wage determinations), and its costs and inflationary impact. A set of case studies are then presented to document the existence of improper and excessive wage determinations. Finally, the book concludes with a discussion of the original rationale of the Davis-Bacon Act and its current-day relevance, a survey of contractors reporting their views of the act, and a set of conclusions and recommendations

The Flow of New Doctorates

[Excerpt] As noted by Bowen and Sosa, their projections of the supply side of the academic labor market, which are typical of those used in other studies, are based on a number of simplifying assumptions. Similarly, their proposed policy remedies to increase the flow of new doctorates, such as increasing financial support for graduate students and shortening the time it takes students to receive degrees, are made presenting only scanty evidence on the likely magnitude of supply responses to these changes. This essay, which draws heavily from my study (Ehrenberg 1991), reviews the academic literature and available data (from a wide range of sources) to summarize what we know about new doctorate supply and what we need to know to make informed policy decisions

Are Black Colleges Producing Today\u27s African-American Lawyers?

In past years, almost all of America\u27s black lawyers came from historically black colleges and universities because these schools were the only ones that would admit black students. Today, it appears that black colleges are producing increasingly fewer of the nation\u27s black lawyers

Retirement Policies, Employment, and Unemployment

[Excerpt] There is a growing consensus among economists that reliance on aggregate demand policies alone will not be sufficient to move the economy to full employment with a nonaccelerating inflation rate, and that policies which alter the structure of labor markets will be required. While obvious structural policies such as public sector employment programs and training programs are the focus of current debate, many other public policies affect labor markets in subtle ways which may well adversely affect the level and distribution of employment and unemployment. To help improve the inflation-unemployment tradeoff, policymakers should seek to marginally modify these policies, preserving their benefits while reducing their adverse labor market effects. To illustrate these points, this paper discusses the influence of public and private retirement policies on the level and distribution of employment and unemployment. I focus on the Social Security system (OASDHl), the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA), the amendment to the Age Discrimination in Employment Act that raised the permissible mandatory retirement age to 70, the Supreme Court decision in the Manhart case prohibiting sex differentials in employee pension contributions, and early retirement provisions negotiated in private collective bargaining agreements. Certainly, it would be difficult to criticize the intent of these policies. However, each of the public policies adversely affects the level or distribution of employment and unemployment. I conclude by noting several reforms of the method of financing the Social Security system which would reduce the system\u27s adverse labor market effects

Empirical Consequences of Comparable Worth

[Excerpt] To help focus subsequent debate, this paper presents a nontechnical survey of the small but growing empirical literature by economists on the consequences of comparable worth. I discuss in turn studies of the consequences of comparable worth on the male-female earnings gap, of its potential to affect adversely the employment of women, of its effects on the labor supply and occupational mobility of women, and of its effects on women and their families as a group. The survey is critical in nature and points to areas in which research is needed

Independent Colleges and Universities in a Time of Transition

[Excerpt] I am going to discuss the stresses that the American higher education system is now under, the changes that we have seen in American higher education over the last three decades - many which predate the great recession - and how CIC members have responded, and might respond in the future, to these changes. A message that I hope you will take away is that I believe you have a unique advantage relative to your public sector counterparts because of the difference in the governance structures and financial models under which you operate. I will conclude by speculating a bit about what the future will hold for all of us

What’s The Future of Public Higher Education? A Review Essay on \u3ci\u3ePublic No More: A New Path to Excellence for America’s Public Universities\u3c/i\u3e

[Excerpt] Every year I come across a few books or papers that I wish that I had written. Public No More: A New Path to Excellence for America’s Public Universities clearly is one of them. Coauthored by Gary Fethke and Andrew Policano (henceforth F&P), two longtime public business school deans (one of whom was also acting president of the University of Iowa), who are both very serious scholars with long publication records, Public No More paints a picture of a future for public research universities that is very different than what many people will want to see. And although its message is that the financial and governance models under which public research universities have operated under have broken down and that new models are required, I will argue at the end of this piece that private higher research universities face many of the same issues as their public counterparts, so their message is relevant to private research universities as well. While I do not always agree with F&P’s prescriptions, this is a book that deserves to be widely read by all people concerned with the future of higher education in the United States. In what follows, I outline the arguments found in Public No More interjecting my comments and concerns as I go along. As an economist specializing for many years in the economics of higher education, a former Cornell vice president and trustee, and most recently a member of the board of trustee of the 64 campus State University of New York (SUNY) system, I view higher education from a number of different perspectives and these will all be evident in this essay