The Role of Tuition, Financial Aid Policies, and Student Outcomes on Average Student Debt

Rising college student debt levels have recently received considerable media coverage and have even been the topic of policy proposals that link rising student debt with tuition inflation. This paper examines the role that tuition, financial aid policies, and academic outcomes play in determining variation in average student debt levels across higher education institutions. A focus solely on tuition as the culprit in rising student debt misses the significant role that financial aid policies and student outcomes play in determining debt levels across non-profit higher education institutions. Specifically, being need-blind in admissions, meeting-full-need, limiting loans, and graduating students in high paying majors can have a larger impact on student debt levels than simply the cost of attendance

Institutional Variation in Enrollment of Low-Income Students: The Role of Prices, Financial Aid Policies and Selectivity

Socioeconomic diversity in tertiary education has come under increased scrutiny over the past few years. Policy makers and practitioners within higher education have devoted greater attention to encouraging more low-income students to pursue a college degree. This paper estimates the influence of prices (both sticker-price and net price), financial aid policies, and selectivity on the matriculation decisions of low-income students, across postsecondary institutions. All three factors are significant in determining the representation of Pell grant recipients as a percent of an institution’s entering class. A focus on net price, while important, ignores the significant influence of sticker-price (shock), selectivity, and financial aid policies on low-income students’ enrollment decisions, particularly at private institutions

Job Stability Among U.S. University Presidents

This paper examines job duration among U.S. university presidents from 2001 to 2006. Using data from the American Council of Education’s Survey of American College Presidents, this analysis finds that public university presidents are approximately 50 percent more likely to leave office than are their private university counterparts. This turnover translates into average job spells that are approximately 20 percent shorter for public university presidents. This job instability appears primarily to be driven by the higher propensity for public university presidents to leave one institution to become president at another institution

Global versus local managing human resources in the multinational company

This paper considers the extent to which multinational enterprises adopt a global or local approach in their management of human resources. Nine organisations, drawn from a range of nationalities and sectors operating in Ireland, were examined. The analysis revealed that the majority of organisations adopted a local approach, with headquarters involvement in many cases limited to monitoring the financial implications of human resource decisions. However, it appears that the transfer of human resource management practices can be a two way process with some subsidiaries focusing on human resource issues in order to maintain their competitive position within the corporation. The findings also suggest that the integration of human resource issues in strategic decision-making may need to be considered as a local, rather than a corporate level, activity

Public versus Private University Presidents Pay Levels and Structure

A number of existing studies have examined the determinants of private university presidents\u27 compensation, but none have estimated the recent earnings differential between public and private university presidents. This paper fills this void and estimates that public university presidents earn approximately 50 percent less than observably comparable private university presidents. This salary discount is robust to controls for institutional size, quality, wealth, individual characteristics of the office holder, and estimation technique

Title IX Compliance and Preference for Men in College Admissions

Title IX has undoubtedly increased athletic opportunities for young high school and college women. What is less well understood is whether Title IX has had the unintended consequence of decreasing educational opportunities for young women relative to men. This paper examines the relationship between a university\u27s compliance with Title IX via the proportionality standard and the subsequent admit rate difference by sex. I find that a lower proportionality measure, indicating a lack of Title IX compliance, results in an increase in preference for non-athlete males in college admissions

Revenue Shares and Monopsonistic Behavior in Intercollegiate Athletics

Intercollegiate athletics in the United States operates as a monopsonistic cartel under the umbrella of the National Collegiate Athletics Association. This paper examines the degree to which it is able to exploit this position by restricting the level of compensation that goes directly to the athletes in the form of athletic scholarships. The major professional sports leagues in the United States (baseball, basketball, football, and hockey) all have negotiated aggregate salaries that represent over fifty percent of league-wide revenues. In comparison, analyzing data from The Office of Postsecondary Education (OPE) of the Department of Education on 2,068 institutions of higher education reveals that intercollegiate athletes receive payments-in-kind, via athletic scholarships, that constitute less than 22 percent of total athletic department revenues. Clearly the monopsonistic practices of the NCAA are effective in restricting the compensation of athletes

Performance related pay: what makes a successful scheme?

The complexities surrounding the issue of reward management can be seen as indicative of the contradictions that exist within the discipline labelled human resource management (HRM). For example, Storey's (1992: 27) distinction between 'hard' and 'soft' HRM identifies the need for 'strategic interventions designed to elicit commitment and to develop resourceful humans' ('soft' HRM) and 'strategic interventions designed to achieve full utilisation of labour resources' ('hard' HRM. The current state of knowledge on reward systems suggests that these are often designed to attempt both strategic interventions together; how successful they are on either count is perhaps less well documented. This tension within HRM has been noted by several writers and the processes currently used to reward individuals have been well scrutinised (Smith, 1992; Legge, 1995; Kessler, 1995). In the final analysis, it appears that many of the reward initiatives pursued represent no more than a 'shuffling of the pack' (Kessler, 1995:274), rather than any innovative, integrated strategy which could be considered part of a distinctive HRM approach. This paper considers one aspect of the current debate on reward systems by examining the operation of a PRP scheme in a multi-divisional company in Ireland. Before considering the findings of the research, the paper first of all considers some of the evidence available on the operation of PRP systems and describes the background to the study and the methodology used in the research