The College Cost Disease
Title | The College Cost Disease PDF eBook |
Author | Robert E. Martin |
Publisher | Edward Elgar Publishing |
Pages | 209 |
Release | 2011-01-01 |
Genre | Study Aids |
ISBN | 1849806179 |
College cost per student has been on the rise at a pace that matches - or exceeds - healthcare costs. Unlike healthcare, though, teaching quality has declined, and rapidly rising costs and declining quality are not trends easily forgiven by society. The College Cost Disease addresses these problems, providing a behavioral framework for the chronic cost/quality consequences with which higher education is fraught. Providing many compelling insights into the issues plaguing higher education, Robert Martin expounds upon H. R. Bowen's revenue theory of cost by detailing experience good theory, the principal/agent problem, and non-profit status. Reputation competition dominates higher education. Students and their parents, and public opinion in general, associate higher tuition with higher quality and greater accolades; price is used as a proxy for quality only when consumers are uncertain about quality prior to purchase. Higher education services are the most complex types of ?experience goods'; a service whose quality can only be determined after a purchase has been made. Applying formal economic theory to higher education, Robert Martin examines how and why attempts to control costs are controversial and the damaging effects these controversies have on institutions' reputations. Arguing that the college access problem cannot be solved until colleges and universities find a way to control their costs, this book brings to the fore the leading ideas that will bring about much-needed budgetary reform in higher education.
The Cost Disease
Title | The Cost Disease PDF eBook |
Author | William J. Baumol |
Publisher | Yale University Press |
Pages | 273 |
Release | 2012-09-25 |
Genre | Business & Economics |
ISBN | 0300179286 |
Traces the fast-rising prices of health care and education in the United States and other major industrial nations, examining the underlying causes which have to do with the nature of providing labor-intensive services.
Why Does College Cost So Much?
Title | Why Does College Cost So Much? PDF eBook |
Author | Robert B. Archibald |
Publisher | Oxford University Press |
Pages | 302 |
Release | 2011 |
Genre | Business & Economics |
ISBN | 0190214104 |
College tuition has risen more rapidly than the overall inflation rate for much of the past century. To explain rising college cost, the authors place the higher education industry firmly within the larger economic history of the United States.
The Cost Disease
Title | The Cost Disease PDF eBook |
Author | William J. Baumol |
Publisher | Yale University Press |
Pages | 287 |
Release | 2012-09-25 |
Genre | Business & Economics |
ISBN | 030018848X |
The exploding cost of health care in the United States is a source of widespread alarm. Similarly, the upward spiral of college tuition fees is cause for serious concern. In this concise and illuminating book, well-known economist William J. Baumol explores the causes of these seemingly intractable problems and offers a surprisingly simple explanation. Baumol identifies the "cost disease" as a major source of rapidly rising costs in service sectors of the economy. Once we understand that disease, he explains, effective responses become apparent. Baumol presents his analysis with characteristic clarity, tracing the fast-rising prices of health care and education in the U.S. and other major industrial nations, then examining the underlying causes of the phenomenon, which have to do with the nature of providing labor-intensive services. The news is good, Baumol reassures, because the nature of the disease is such that society will be able to afford the rising costs.
Cost and Price Increases in Higher Education
Title | Cost and Price Increases in Higher Education PDF eBook |
Author | Jerry Trombella |
Publisher | |
Pages | 248 |
Release | 2010 |
Genre | College costs |
ISBN |
The Amateur Hour
Title | The Amateur Hour PDF eBook |
Author | Jonathan Zimmerman |
Publisher | JHU Press |
Pages | 309 |
Release | 2020-10-27 |
Genre | Education |
ISBN | 1421439107 |
The first full-length history of college teaching in the United States from the nineteenth century to the present, this book sheds new light on the ongoing tension between the modern scholarly ideal—scientific, objective, and dispassionate—and the inevitably subjective nature of day-to-day instruction. American college teaching is in crisis, or so we are told. But we've heard that complaint for the past 150 years, as critics have denounced the poor quality of instruction in undergraduate classrooms. Students daydream in gigantic lecture halls while a professor drones on, or they meet with a teaching assistant for an hour of aimless discussion. The modern university does not reward teaching, so faculty members at every level neglect it in favor of research and publication. In the first book-length history of American college teaching, Jonathan Zimmerman confirms but also contradicts these perennial complaints. Drawing upon a wide range of previously unexamined sources, The Amateur Hour shows how generations of undergraduates indicted the weak instruction they received. But Zimmerman also chronicles institutional efforts to improve it, especially by making teaching more "personal." As higher education grew into a gigantic industry, he writes, American colleges and universities introduced small-group activities and other reforms designed to counter the anonymity of mass instruction. They also experimented with new technologies like television and computers, which promised to "personalize" teaching by tailoring it to the individual interests and abilities of each student. But, Zimmerman reveals, the emphasis on the personal inhibited the professionalization of college teaching, which remains, ultimately, an amateur enterprise. The more that Americans treated teaching as a highly personal endeavor, dependent on the idiosyncrasies of the instructor, the less they could develop shared standards for it. Nor have they rigorously documented college instruction, a highly public activity which has taken place mostly in private. Pushing open the classroom door, The Amateur Hour illuminates American college teaching and frames a fresh case for restoring intimate learning communities, especially for America's least privileged students. Anyone who wants to change college teaching will have to start here.
Going Broke by Degree
Title | Going Broke by Degree PDF eBook |
Author | Richard K. Vedder |
Publisher | American Enterprise Institute |
Pages | 296 |
Release | 2004 |
Genre | Business & Economics |
ISBN | 9780844741970 |
Economist Richard Vedder examines the causes of the college tuition crisis and explores ways to reverse this alarming trend.