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...

With only a small number of their students coming from families with the lowest incomes (10% from the bottom two family income quintiles), the nation's most selective private colleges and universities need to know why. Two ready ideological answers are (1) that low-income high-ability students...

Using data for 2008/09, we update a 2001/02 study that examined the pricing policies with respect to family income at highly selective private colleges and universities and the distribution of students by family income at these schools. We find significant reductions in net prices relative to...

Working from the financial aid records of individual students at 28 highly selective private colleges and universities, we were able to calculate both the price the low-income students at these schools actually pay for a year’s education, net of financial aid grants, and how the schools...

A sophisticated and widespread intuition is supported by our experience with business firms. And it is confirmed, influenced, and expanded by the formal microeconomic analysis of those firms and their markets. This paper asks if that theory and intuition are helpful for understanding colleges...

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 revenue...