Screen LibraryBuying the best : cost escalation in elite higher education /
Since the early 1980s, the rapidly increasing cost of college, together with what many see as inadequate attention to teaching, has elicited a barrage of protest. Buying the Best looks at the realities behind these criticisms--at the economic factors that are in fact driving the institutions that ha...
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| Main Authors: | |
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| Corporate Authors: | |
| Published: |
Princeton University Press,
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| Publisher Address: | Princeton, N.J. : |
| Publication Dates: |
[1996] ©1996 |
| Literature type: | eBook |
| Language: | English |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: |
http://www.degruyter.com/doi/book/10.1515/9781400864270 http://www.degruyter.com/doc/cover/9781400864270.jpg |
| Summary: |
Since the early 1980s, the rapidly increasing cost of college, together with what many see as inadequate attention to teaching, has elicited a barrage of protest. Buying the Best looks at the realities behind these criticisms--at the economic factors that are in fact driving the institutions that have been described as machines without brakes. In designing his study, Charles Clotfelter examines the escalation in spending in the arts and sciences at four elite institutions: Harvard, Duke, Chicago, and Carleton. He argues that the rise in costs has less to do with increasing faculty salaries or lowered productivity than with a broad-based effort to improve quality, provide new services to students, pay for large investments in new facilities and equipment (including computers), and ensure access for low-income students through increasingly expensive financial aid.In Clotfelter's view, spiraling costs arise from the institutions' lofty ambitions and are made possible by steadily intensifying demand for places in the country's elite colleges and universities. Only if this demand slackens will universities be pressured to make cuts or pursue efficiencies. Buying the Best is the first study to make use of the internal historical records of specific institutions, as opposed to the frequently unreliable aggregate records made available by the federal government for the use of survey researchers. As such, it has the virtue of allowing Clotfelter to draw much more realistic comparative conclusions than have hitherto been reported. While acknowledging the obvious drawbacks of a small sample, Clotfelter notes that the institutions studied are significant for the disproportionate influence they, and comparable elite institutions, exercise upon research and upon the training of future leaders. The book contains a foreword by William G. Bowen, President of the Mellon Foundation, and Harold T. Shapiro, President of Princeton University."Concern about ever-rising costs runs like a |
| Carrier Form: | 1 online resource (272 pages) : illustrations |
| ISBN: | 9781400864270 |
| Index Number: | LB2342 |
| CLC: | G649.712 |
| Contents: |
Frontmatter -- Contents -- List of Figures -- List of Tables -- Foreword / Preface -- List of Abbreviations -- Chapter 1. The Problem of Rising Costs -- Chapter 2. A Peculiar Institution -- Chapter 3. Boom Times for Selective Institutions -- Chapter 4. Patterns and Trends in Expenditures -- Chapter 5. The Sources of Rising Expenditures -- Chapter 6. Administrative Functions -- Chapter 7. The Allocation of Faculty Effort -- Chapter 8. Classes and Course Offerings -- Chapter 9. Ambition Meets Opportunity -- Notes to the Chapters -- Bibliography -- Index. |