Wealth and the Allocation of Resources At Private Institutions of Higher Education

Utilizing a model whereby institutional wealth is allocated between financial and physical capital assets, this paper tracks the growing inequality of resources among institutions of higher education. Multivariate analyses are employed to discern the determinants of within institutional wealth allocation

Covering the uninsured: costs, benefits, and policy alternatives for New England

On December 5, 2006, the New England Public Policy Center at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston convened a policy symposium, “Covering the Uninsured: Costs, Benefits, and Policy Alternatives for New England.” As a growing number of Americans find themselves without health insurance, New England states are exploring innovative policies aimed at extending coverage. But the high cost of expanding coverage raises difficult questions about how best to improve access while preserving individual choice and maintaining quality of care. ; The conference, which brought together a select group of stakeholders from all six New England states as well as representatives from national organizations, featured lively discussion and debate about the merits of various policy alternatives and funding mechanisms. Differing viewpoints among policymakers, insurers, doctors, hospital administrators, employers, public health advocates, and health policy researchers provided a frank and productive dialogue throughout the day. This report is a synthesis of the conference’s major themes.Insurance, Health ; Medically uninsured persons

Associate Professor Turnover at America’s Public and Private Institutions of Higher Education

This paper uses data from the American Association of University Professors annual salary survey to compute continuation rates for associate professors at American colleges and universities during the 1996-97 to 2001-2002 period. Findings demonstrate that average continuation rates are higher for private academic institutions than for public academic institutions in bachelors-level, masters-level and doctoral-level institutions. Multivariate analyses indicate that the average level of faculty compensation at an institution is an important predictor of the continuation rate. All other things held equal, institutions with higher average faculty compensation have higher continuation rates. However, the magnitude of this relationship is not sufficiently large enough to warrant change in compensation policies at academic institutions, particularly between public and private institutions. The benefits associated with raising average faculty compensation to increase the tenured faculty’s continuation rates at public universities are unlikely to match or exceed the costs of doing so

The fiscal capacity of New England

New Englanders may demand high levels of government services, but their underlying need for public service provision remains quite low, and they tend to be able to better afford the costs of these services relative to the rest of the nation. As a result, the region’s state and local governments face relatively less pressure to raise taxes or increase spending in order to achieve a basic level of public services, and constituent preferences may play a larger role in the fiscal decisions that New England policymakers make.State finance - New England ; Local finance - New England

Inopportunity of Gender: The G.I. Bill and the Higher Education of the American Female, 1939-1954

While the 1944 Serviceman’s Readjustment Act, commonly known as the G.I. Bill, has been instilled within the collective consciousness of the United States as one of the most overwhelmingly positive pieces of legislation in the nation’s history, there has been little empirical inquiry into the effect that it had on the non-veteran female. Both Marcus (2003) and Bound and Turner (2001) find that of the World War II veterans that obtained a higher education on the G.I. Bill, fully 20 percent of them, or 400,000, would not have attended college had it not been for the educational subsidy offered to them in the G.I. Bill. Might this extra boon in enrollment during the postwar era have affected females’ ability to pursue higher education? Starting with an assessment of the dominant trends in mid-century higher education and the specific changes that were occurring for females in higher education, a foundation is established in Chapter Two upon which the effect that the retuning World War II veterans and the G.I. Bill had upon female’s mid-century enrollment in higher education institutions may be evaluated. In general, by the dawn of World War II, higher education was only secondary to labor market experience in its ability to improve the social and economic standing of females in society. If the G.I. Bill did, in fact, crowd out females’ ability to obtain a higher education, it did so at the expense of the social and economic standing of females of this era. Subsequently, the direct quantitative consequences that the returning veterans had upon female enrollment and educational attainment during this era are examined in Chapters Three and Four. This is done after controlling for the effects that other phenomena occurring during the postwar era had on enrollment levels. Two datasets illuminate the main analysis: micro data obtained from the National Longitudinal Study of Mature Women documenting the experiences of 5,083 women born between 1920 and 1935 and institutional level data from over 200 New York State Institutions between academic-years 1939-1940 and 1953-1954. The empirical findings of Chapter Three demonstrate that at the peak of veteran’s enrollment in academic year 1947-1948, a female was less likely to enroll in an institution of higher education than a female of similar attributes during the later years of the war. Moreover, based upon the institutional analysis in Chapter Four, at any given academic institution, an increase in both relative and absolute veteran’s enrollment is associated with a decline in both relative and absolute female enrollment during the immediate postwar period. Females are also more likely to enroll in “lesser” institutions of higher education at this time, vis-à-vis the most prestigious schools. Together, empirical evidence from Chapter Three and Chapter Four suggest that the increase in veterans’ enrollment due to the G.I. Bill at least in part contributed to diminished attainment of females in higher education during the postwar era. Finally, Chapter Five assesses how the effects of the G.I. Bill surprised the women’s movement during this time, and offers some concluding thoughts

Declining PhD Attainment of Graduates of Selective Private Academic Institutions

[Excerpt] On average, the typical American citizen who received a PhD during the last 40 years did so approximately 9 years after she received her bachelor’s degree. Thus, if we divide the number of American citizens receiving PhDs in a year by the number of American citizens receiving bachelor’s degrees 9 years earlier, we obtain an estimate of the fraction of American citizen college graduates in the earlier year who ultimately receive PhDs. This fraction rose from .042 for 1954 bachelor’s recipients (1963 PhDs) to about .07 for 1962 bachelor’s recipients (1971 PhDs). The fraction then plummeted over the next decade falling to .026 for 1973 bachelor’s recipients (1982 PhDs) and has been relatively stable, fluctuating between .025 and .028, since then. Of course changes in the probability that bachelor’s recipients go on to receive PhDs nationwide are influenced by many changing demographic trends including changes in high school graduation rates, changes in college enrollment rates of high school graduates, changes in college graduation rates for college enrollees, changes in the distribution of undergraduate majors, and changes in the academic backgrounds of college students. In this paper we focus on a more homogenous set of 31 highly selective private colleges and universities. The academic aptitudes and preparations of students attending these institutions are among the highest in the nation and make this group’s students’ behavior of special interest

PhD Attainment of Graduates of Selective Private Academic Institutions

[Excerpt] It is therefore important to understand the forces that have caused a decline in the PhD attainment rate of American college graduates. The fraction of bachelor\u27s recipients who go on to receive PhDs nationwide is influenced by many factors, including high school graduation rates, college enrollment rates of high school graduates, college graduation rates for college enrollees, the distribution of undergraduate majors, and the academic backgrounds of college students. PhD attainment also depends upon changes in the economic rewards to pursuing PhD study relative to entering the workforce or pursuing study for other professional occupations, such as law, medicine, and business. In this article we focus on a homogeneous set of thirty-one highly selective private colleges and universities. The academic aptitudes and preparations of students attending these institutions are among the highest in the nation, and historically students from these institutions have been much more likely to go on to PhD study than the average college graduate nationwide; therefore, the behavior of students from these institutions is of special interest

In the shadows of the national recovery: an overview of New England's economic performance in 2005

Annual review of the economic performance of the New England states.Economic conditions - New England

Growing... but slowing? : an overview of New England's economic performance in 2006

New England’s economic performance was somewhat mixed during 2006. On one hand, all six states added jobs over the course of the year, and the region’s unemployment rate remained steady. The region as a whole picked up jobs in nearly all major industries. Export values and income and wages also increased. One the other hand, much of the economic growth experienced by the region was slower than that seen in the nation as a whole. Although the unemployment rate did not go up for the region, the nation saw joblessness decrease. Moreover, real estate markets, though weak nationwide, were even weaker in the region.Economic conditions - New England ; Economic conditions - Connecticut ; Economic conditions - Maine ; Economic conditions - Massachusetts ; Economic conditions - New Hampshire ; Economic conditions - Rhode Island ; Economic conditions - Vermont

Collective Bargaining in American Higher Education

[Excerpt] No discussion of governance in higher education would be complete without a consideration of the role of collective bargaining. Historically, most researchers interested in the subject have directed their attention to the unionization of faculty members. Given several recent decisions by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) that leave open the possibility that unionization of faculty in private colleges and universities may increase in the future, we discuss collective bargaining for faculty in the first section (Leatherman 2000, A16). Recently, however, attention has been also directed at the unionization of two other groups in the higher education workforce. Activists on a number of campuses have pressed for academic institutions to pay their low-wage employees a living wage, and this has brought attention to the role of staff collective bargaining in academia. In the second section, we present the first empirical estimates of the impact of staff bargaining on staff salaries in higher education. Finally, the number of public universities in which teaching assistants, and in some cases research assistants, have won the right to bargain collectively began to expand rapidly at the turn of the twenty-first century. A NLRB ruling in 2001 that permitted collective bargaining for teaching assistants at New York University (NYU), led the university in the following year to become the first private one to sign a contract with a union representing teaching assistants. Building on this ruling, graduate assistant organizing campaigns are underway at a number of prestigious private universities. In the third section we address why graduate assistants are increasingly interested in organizing and then present evidence on the effects of graduate student unions on a number of economic variables