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Journal Article
Trends in Expenditures by US Colleges and Universities, 1987-2013
This Economic Commentary studies trends in spending by US colleges and universities in broad expenditure categories between 1987 and 2013. The results reveal that spending per student has risen in most major spending categories. This is true for both public institutions and private institutions. However, spending has risen more dramatically in some categories than others. For example, research is one category that has witnessed among the highest spending growth, and in percentage terms, there has also been a large increase in student services spending.
Working Paper
Affirmative Action and Racial Segregation
Prior research suggests that statewide affirmative action bans reduce minority enrollment at selective colleges while leaving overall minority college enrollment unchanged. However, the effect of these bans on across-college racial segregation has not yet been estimated. This effect is theoretically ambiguous due to a U-shaped relationship across colleges between minority enrollment and college selectivity. This paper uses variation in the timing of affirmative action bans across states to estimate their effects on racial segregation as measured by standard exposure and dissimilarity indexes, ...
Journal Article
Do Affirmative Action Bans Cause Students to Move Across State Lines to Attend College?
This Economic Commentary studies whether statewide bans on affirmative action in admission to public universities cause students to move to a new state to attend college. Regression results using data from the decennial census and the American Community Survey provide little evidence that affirmative action bans result in migration across state lines to attend college. In addition to being of direct interest, these results provide a check on earlier research that treats different states roughly as separate higher education markets.
Journal Article
Trends in Revenues at US Colleges and Universities, 1987-2013
This Economic Commentary studies trends in inflated-adjusted revenues per student at US colleges and universities in broad revenue categories between 1987 and 2013. The findings show that, as is widely perceived, tuition revenue has risen over time at both public and private institutions. In recent years, tuition revenue at public institutions has been nearly as large a source of revenue as state and local government funding has been. Revenue from state and local governments has fluctuated at public institutions but has generally fallen over time, whereas funding from the federal government ...
Journal Article
COVID-19 and Education: A Survey of the Research
This Commentary reviews evidence on three areas of concern related to the COVID-19 pandemic and education in the United States for which research currently exists. First, the evidence suggests that the spread of the COVID-19 virus at K–12 schools has been low, although it may have spread through colleges at a higher rate. Second, while anecdotal evidence suggests that school closures have reduced labor force participation, the research evidence thus far does not find much support for this situation. Third, the limited research evidence does, however, suggest the COVID-19 pandemic is ...
Working Paper
State Appropriations and Employment at Higher Education Institutions
his paper studies the impacts of state appropriations on staffing and salaries at public higher education institutions in the United States using employment and revenue data from the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System, along with an instrumental variables strategy borrowed from Deming and Walters (2018) and Chakrabarti, Gorton, and Lovenheim (2020). The instrument sidesteps the potential endogeneity of state appropriations for a given institution in a given year by interacting an institution’s historical reliance on state appropriations with total state appropriations for all ...
Journal Article
COVID-19 and Education: An Updated Survey of the Research
This Economic Commentary surveys research on COVID-19 in relation to education in the United States. It is a companion to an earlier survey (Hinrichs, 2021) and focuses on the consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic that might persist even after life has returned to a relative normal. The evidence suggests that the pandemic led to lower enrollment at public schools and negatively impacted student learning. In addition, teacher turnover did not rise at the beginning of the pandemic, but it has risen in the years since.
Working Paper
Affirmative Action and Racial Segregation
A number of states have recently prohibited the use of affirmative action in admissions to public universities statewide. A growing body of research suggests that these affirmative action bans reduce minority enrollment at selective colleges while leaving overall minority college enrollment rates unchanged. The effect of these bans on racial segregation across colleges has not yet been estimated directly and is theoretically ambiguous due to a U-shaped relationship between minority enrollment and college selectivity. This paper uses variation in the timing of affirmative action bans across ...
Journal Article
Custom Comparison Groups in the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System
This Economic Commentary studies the behavior of colleges when they are asked to list a set of comparison group colleges in annual data reporting for the US Department of Education but are given little direction on how to do so. I find that, relative to themselves, colleges tend to list for comparison colleges that are more selective, are larger, and have better resources. One possible interpretation of these findings is that colleges overestimate where they stand relative to others, although an alternative interpretation is that colleges have accurate views but list comparison institutions ...
Journal Article
Trends in Employment at US Colleges and Universities, 1987–2013
This Economic Commentary studies employment at colleges and universities in the United States between 1987 and 2013. Some of the results from this analysis are in line with conventional wisdom. For example, I document that a declining proportion of faculty are full-time employees. On the other hand, some of the results are counter to popular belief. For example, I find that the share of college employees who are executives, administrators, or managers has not changed appreciably over time.