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 Changing Nature of the Faculty and Faculty Employment Practices

[Excerpt] The nature of faculty employment practices at American colleges and universities is changing rapidly. So too is the gender, racial and ethnic composition of American faculty members. These changes, along with the growing importance and costs of scientific research, the increased commercialization of faculty research, the elimination of mandatory retirement for tenured faculty members and the growing costs of retiree health insurance, the growing salary differentials across universities and academic fields within an university, and the growth of collective bargaining for tenured and tenure-track faculty and graduate assistants at public universities and now adjuncts at private universities, have put enormous stresses on our nation’s academic institutions and their leaders. The discussion that follows explains why

Review of the Book \u3ci\u3eShakespeare, Einstein, and the Bottom Line: The Marketing of Higher Education\u3c/i\u3e

[Excerpt] Befitting a former journalist, Kirp\u27s book is extraordinarily well-written; once one picks it up it is hard to put down. Some economists may be put off by a book that contains no equations, tables, figures or regression results. Such an attitude, however, would be misguided and any academic economist interested in better understanding how market forces are reshaping higher education should read Shakespeare, Einstein, and the Bottom Line

American Law Schools in a Time of Transition

[Excerpt] I will argue that reports of law school unintentionally or intentionally misreporting a variety of types of data to USNWR should not be surprising; we have long seen similar problems occurring with respect to its rankings of undergraduate institutions. The fact that rankings schemes can induce such behavior emphasizes the need for our law school deans and faculty members to always stay focused on the social purpose of higher education, rather being obsessed with perceptions of prestige and rankings

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