Colleges and universities in the US differ markedly in their access to economic resources, hence in what they can do for their students. National (IPEDS) data are used here to describe the resulting hierarchy that's reflected in schools' spending on their students, the prices those students pay,...

Data on institutional saving in US higher education have not been available until now, yet they are useful in several ways. They describe how various types of schools are doing financially, and whether their present behavior is sustainable. They complete the picture of sources and uses of...

College tuition is frequently compared, in press and politics, to the US median family income. That is, however, a highly misleading benchmark since schools with need-based financial aid rarely charge students from median income families the reported sticker price. Working from the financial aid...

It is increasingly clear that price competition is escalating in the market for higher education. We attempt to understand how price competition would work in higher education and explore the likely long run equilibrium structure of prices in that context. We draw inferences using both...

Data on 2,822 Vanderbilt University graduates are used to investigate alumni giving behavior during the eight years after graduation. A two stage model accounting for incidental truncation is used to first estimate the likelihood of making a contribution and second estimate the average gift size...

This brief paper asks if the proposition that "growth is goodʺ applies with equal force to private business and to private colleges and universities. An increasing appreciation of the fundamental differences in economic structure between business firms and academic institutions suggests that...