Who Bears the Growing Cost of Science at Universities?

Scientific research has come to dominate many American university campuses. The growing importance of science is due to exciting breakthroughs in biology, information technology and advanced materials that have promise of tremendously improving human welfare. Along with the growing importance of science has come a growing flow of external funds to universities to support research. What is not well known, however, is that increasingly the costs of research are being funded at universities are coming out of internal university funds. Over the last three decades of the 20th century the percentage of university research that is funded out of internal funds rose from about 11 to 20 and internal research expenditures per faculty member almost quadrupled in real terms. Our paper sketches the reasons for the tremendous increase in university expenditure on research out of internal funds including changes in federal indirect cost reimbursement policies and the growing cost of start-up funds for new faculty. We present evidence, based upon a survey of department chairs, deans and vice presidents for research at over 200 public and private universities, on the magnitude of start up packages received by researchers in science and engineering disciplines. We then use panel data for 21 years and over 200 universities to estimate the impact of growing internal expenditures on research on student/faculty ratios, the substitution of lecturers for tenure track faculty, on average faculty salaries and on tuition levels at public and private universities. Among our most important findings is that universities whose research expenditures per faculty member out of internal funds has been growing the most rapidly in absolute terms, ceteris paribus, have the greatest increase in student/faculty ratios. So while undergraduate students may benefit from being in close proximity to great researchers, they also bear part of the costs in the form of larger class sizes and fewer full-time faculty members

Why WARN? The Impact of Recent Plant-Closing and Layoff Prenotification Legislation in the United States

[Excerpt] WARN was passed only after a decade of strenuous debate. We can now look back and address a number of issues it raised. What benefits did its proponents think would arise from the notice legislation, and what costs did its opponents think there would be? What public policies toward advance notice do other nations have? Did displaced workers in the United States receive advance notice before the passage of WARN? What do we know empirically about the effects on workers and firms of the provision of advance notice? What has experience under WARN taught us? Finally, what research issues need to be addressed to decide if WARN is a good idea, and what alternative public policies might help facilitate the provision of advance notice to displaced workers

Who Bears the Growing Cost of Science at Universities?

Scientific research has come to dominate many American universities. Even with growing external support, increasingly the costs of scientific research are being funded out of internal university funds. Our paper explains why this is occuring, presents estimates of the magnitudes of start-up cost packages being provided to scientists and engineers and then uses panel data to estimate the impact of the growing cost of science on student/faculty ratios, faculty salaries and undergraduate tuition.We find that universities whose own expenditures on research are growing the most rapidly, ceteris paribus, have had the greatest increase in student faculty ratios and, in the private sector, higher tuition increases. Thus, undergraduate students bear part of the cost of increased institutional expenditures on research.

Inside the Black Box of Doctoral Education: What Program Characteristics Influence Doctoral Students’ Attrition and Graduation Probabilities?

[Excerpt] In this paper, we go inside the “black box” of graduate education to investigate what characteristics of graduate programs in the humanities and related social sciences actually influence PhD students’ attrition and graduation probabilities. We make use of data from the Graduate Education Survey; a retrospective survey of all graduate students who entered PhD programs in the treatment and control departments during the 1982-1997 period that was conducted by Mathematica Policy Research Inc. for the Mellon Foundation. After briefly describing the survey in the next section, section III outlines our methodological approach. Section IV presents our empirical findings and brief concluding remarks appear in section V. While our focus is on evaluating the effects of the GEI, we believe the methodological approach that we use can be profitably employed in a wide range of program evaluation studies

Program Design and Student Outcomes in Graduate Education

Doctoral programs in the humanities and related social sciences are characterized by high attrition and long time-to-degree. In response to these long-standing problems, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation launched the Graduate Education Initiative (GEI) to improve the structure and organization of PhD programs, and in turn reduce attrition and shorten time-to-degree. Over a 10-year period starting in 1991, the Foundation provided a total of $80 million to 51 departments at 10 major research universities. This paper estimates the impact of the GEI on attrition rates and time-to-degree. Our analysis is based on a competing-risk duration model and student-level data spanning the start of the GEI, including data on students at a set of control departments. We estimate that, on average, the GEI had modest impacts on student outcomes in the expected directions: reducing attrition rates, reducing time-to-degree, and increasing completion rates. The overall impacts of the GEI appear to have been driven in part by reductions in cohort size, increases in financial aid, and increases in student quality

Analysing income distribution changes: Anonymous versus panel income approaches

We reconcile, both theoretically and empirically, changes in inequality with panel income changes over periods of economic growth and decline. We also explore what factors account for the trends of short-run inequality and of inequality in individual average earnings. Finally, we explore what factors account for the equalization brought about by economic mobility. Using panel earnings data from Mexico we find that earnings changes are convergent, irrespective of whether inequality rises or falls. This is caused by a small fraction of individuals experiencing large and convergent earnings changes. The equalization that earnings changes bring over a year is mainly driven by changes in the employment and sector of workers

Do Trustees and Administrators Matter? Diversifying the Faculty Across Gender Lines

Our paper focuses on the role that the gender composition of the leaders of American colleges and universities – trustees, presidents/chancellors, and provosts/academic vice presidents – plays in influencing the rate at which academic institutions diversify their faculty across gender lines. Our analyses make use of institutional level panel data that we have collected for a large sample of American academic institutions. We find, other factors held constant including our estimate of the “expected” share of new hires that should be female, that institutions with female presidents/chancellors and female provosts/academic vice presidents, as well as those with a greater share of female trustees, increase their shares of female faculty at a more rapid rate. The magnitudes of the effects of these leaders are larger at smaller institutions, where central administrators may play a larger role in faculty hiring decisions. A critical share of female trustees must be reached before the gender composition of the board matters

Changing Income Inequality and Panel Income Changes

When economic growth (or economic decline) takes place, who benefits and who is hurt how much? The more traditional way of answering this question is to compare two or more comparable cross sections and gauge changing income inequality among countries or individuals. A newer way is to utilize data on a panel of countries or a panel of people and assess the pattern of panel income changes. How do these two approaches relate to one another? This paper shows, first, that it is possible to have all four combinations - rising or falling inequality and divergent or convergent panel income changes, and second, under what conditions, for various measures of rising/falling inequality and various measures of divergent/convergent income changes, each of the four possible combinations can arise

Do Trustees and Administrators Matter? Diversifying the Faculty Across Gender Lines

Our paper focuses on the role that the gender composition of the leaders of American colleges and universities -trustees, presidents/chancellors, and provosts/academic vice presidents - plays in influencing the rate at which academic institutions diversify their faculty across gender lines. Our analyses make use of institutional level panel data that we have collected on for a large sample of American academic institutions. We find that, other factors held constant including our estimate of the "expected" share of new hires at an institution that should be female, that institutions with female presidents/chancellors and female provosts/academic vice presidents, and those with a greater share of female trustees, increase their shares of female faculty at a more rapid rate. The magnitudes of the effects of these leaders are larger at smaller institutions, where central administrators may play a larger role in faculty hiring decisions. A critical share of female trustees must be reached before the gender composition of the board matters.

Labor Market Analysis Using SIPP

This paper examines the potentiality of the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP) for labor market analysis. We consider five areas of analysis: (1) labor force participation, employment, and unemployment; (2) labor market effects of income maintenance programs; (3) earnings; (4) work and retirement of the elderly; and (5) migration. We find that the SIPP is a potentially rich resource for labor market analysis, surpassing much of what is to be found in existing databases. We note some remaining problems and make recommendations for changes.Fields66_Labor_market_analysis_using_SIPP.pdf: 55 downloads, before Oct. 1, 2020