Tuition Rising: Why College Costs So Much, With a new preface [Paperback]

Ronald G. Ehrenberg (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 30, 2002 | ISBN-10: 0674009886 | ISBN-13: 978-0674009882

America's colleges and universities are the best in the world. They are also the most expensive. Tuition has risen faster than the rate of inflation for the past thirty years. There is no indication that this trend will abate.

Ronald G. Ehrenberg explores the causes of this tuition inflation, drawing on his many years as a teacher and researcher of the economics of higher education and as a senior administrator at Cornell University. Using incidents and examples from his own experience, he discusses a wide range of topics including endowment policies, admissions and financial aid policies, the funding of research, tenure and the end of mandatory retirement, information technology, libraries and distance learning, student housing, and intercollegiate athletics.

He shows that colleges and universities, having multiple, relatively independent constituencies, suffer from ineffective central control of their costs. And in a fascinating analysis of their response to the ratings published by magazines such as U.S. News & World Report, he shows how they engage in a dysfunctional competition for students.

In the short run, colleges and universities have little need to worry about rising tuitions, since the number of qualified students applying for entrance is rising even faster. But in the long run, it is not at all clear that the increases can be sustained. Ehrenberg concludes by proposing a set of policies to slow the institutions' rising tuitions without damaging their quality.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Unlike businesses, which strive to keep costs at a minimum, universities must spend to make themselves as attractive as possible to their constituents. Ehrenberg, a senior administrator and professor of economics at Cornell University, examines the factors influencing the spiraling tuition costs of the past decade: the need to spend money to have the best facilities, faculties, and learning tools in order to attract the best and brightest students, the need to spend for athletics and other programs to keep alumni support strong, the self-governing nature of university faculty, and the increasing pressure to spend in order to increase ratings in external publications. Observes Ehrenberg, "As long as lengthy lines of highly qualified applicants keep knocking at its door no institution has a strong incentive to unilaterally end the spending race." This highly readable examination of the American higher education system is an excellent addition to any public or academic library.DMark Bay, Univ. of Houston Lib.
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

Ron Ehrenberg's comprehensive and important analysis of rising college costs is based on both his professional expertise as an economist and his practical experience as a member of the central administration at one university: Cornell. With insight, candor, and rigor he examines the arms race' among selective universities, reviewing the role of each of the major participants-trustees, presidents, deans, faculty, local, state and federal governments, and, not least, tuitionpaying students-in ratcheting up the level of tuition. Pointing to the fate of hospitals and medical centers, he cautions that self-regulation and institutional restraint are needed to prevent loss of public confidence and possible federal regulation. This book deserves widespread attention, both within the academic community and beyond it.
--Frank Rhodes, former President, Cornell University

Balanced, sensible, and informed, Tuition Rising is a valuable addition to the literature on higher education. Giving the reader a lot of very useful empirical analysis, Ehrenberg demonstrates the value of being an economist. Anyone about to become a college administrator will want to read this book with great care.
--Henry Rosovsky, former Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Harvard University, and author of The University: An Owner's Manual

Ehrenberg demonstrates in convincing detail that private universities do not easily make economically efficient choices. The culprits are variously loose budget constraints, relatively little hierarchical authority, decentralized units that do not share the universities' goals, poor institutional design, poor public policies, political vulnerability, and the pious blindness of faculty. Tuition Rising is interesting, well-argued, and provocative. It ought to he required reading for presidents, provosts, and trustees of elite private research universities.
--Michael Rothschild, Dean, Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, Princeton University

What makes Tuition Rising so valuable and so much fun is its combination of facts, analysis, and administrative war stories. So, for instance, the importance to a college of national rankings, like US News's, is supported by careful econometric analysis (kept in the background, as are all technical jargon and argument), put under a microscope to understand the reasons for their often-quirky rankings, and then followed into Cornell's business school to see how "managing to the rankings"--the collegiate version of "teaching to the test"--can make sensible university-wide administration very difficult.
--Gordon Winston, Professor of Economics, Williams College

Economists are sometimes accused of possessing "an irrational passion for dispassionate rationality." This book describes what a first-rate economist learned in trying to introduce greater rationality to the decision-making of a great university, a place that emerges as passionate and ambitious, but markedly reluctant to make hard choices. The account is sobering, illuminating, and immensely entertaining. Both those who love universities and those who love rationality will enjoy this book.
--Michael McPherson, President, Macalester College

In Tuition Rising: Why College Costs So Much, Ronald Ehrenberg provides a concise and compelling explanation of the influence of academic governance processes on rising university expenditures and tuition charges… His book is a rare and insightful primer on the intersection of governance and finance.
--Edward P. St. John (Academe 20030901)

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 336 pages
• Publisher: Harvard University Press (October 30, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0674009886
• ISBN-13: 978-0674009882
• Product Dimensions: 6.1 x 0.7 x 9.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #137,445 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #70 in Books > Education & Reference > Schools & Teaching > Funding

More About the Author

Ronald G. Ehrenberg is the Irving M. Ives Professor of Industrial and Labor Relations and Economics at Cornell University and a Stephen H. Weiss Presidential Fellow. He also is the Director of the Cornell Higher Education Research Institute. He was an elected member of the Cornell University Board of Trustees (2006-2010) and was appointed by Governor Paterson and then confirmed by the New York State Senate to be a member of the Board of Trustees of the State University of New York (SUNY)from 2010-2013.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

41 of 59 people found the following review helpful

1.0 out of 5 stars Writing from the Ivory Tower July 10, 2003

By A Customer

Format:Paperback

Tuition Rising is serious disappointment. The entire book is a long-winded justification of why college cost so much. Instead of exploring on a few fundamental social or governmental changes affecting college tuition, the author simply discusses in-depth each expense that schools have. For example, there is a whole chapter on parking and transportation, and another chapter just about cooling systems.

While Ehrenberg rambles on about the minutia of college finances, he never really explains why colleges' expenses rise at a much faster rate than other sectors of the economy. Many businesses must pay for transportation, cooling, and everything else that colleges do, do not have skyrocketing prices.

Tuition Rising does not ever mention the possibility that government financial aid programs have given universities the green light to spend excessively, since many students can get loans or grants to cover the cost increases. College costs are no longer subject to free-market economics, which generally causes prices to be low. In fact, Ehrenberg thinks the problem of college affordability can be alleviate with more federal financial aid!

This book is at best a boring compilation of college expenditures. Worse yet, Tuition Rising makes high tuition increases seem unavoidable, or even justified.

4 of 6 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Valuable Source of Information and Insight March 19, 2006

By Wanda B. Red VINE™ VOICE

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

Ronald Ehrenberg builds his analysis on his considerable experience as an economist and a senior administrator working in finance at Cornell University. He successfully manages to link his own practical experience in one school with larger issues facing higher education in general.

The title is a little misleading: The book is not only about tuition but about every source of revenue and every expense that a university or college faces. Ehrenberg thus presents a complex analysis, though in terms that any attentive reader can understand. This is no small achievement. The anecdotes of his experiences at Cornell really make this book fascinating to read, but do not rob it of its general applicability.

I've worked at an institution of higher education not that much different from Cornell for more than 20 years, and I learned a lot from reading this book. I'd like to give it to every member of the faculty and staff at my school so that they would understand better the constraints under which we all operate -- and have a healthier sense too of the challenges to come. Legislators and parents (and students too) ought to learn from it. It is going to take more than one constituency working together to fix the problem he describes.

Unlike another reviewer here, I did not see this book at all as an attempt to justify high college expenses but to explain them. Ehrenberg is very clear that many factors are to blame: from federal policies on financial aid and the reimbursement of indirect research expenses to recalcitrant faculty members who lack the will to cut anything from their budgets, from the increasingly popular college ratings game to local activists who distrust any activity the nonprofit-in-their midst undertakes. He even occasionally includes himself among the culprits. He writes about everything from the problematic combination of voluntary retirement and lifelong tenure to misconceptions about the cost of Title IX. The chapter on parking is alone worth the price of the book. Who knew how much a parking space costs to maintain each year? Read the book, and you will find out.

One myth that this book should explode is that universities are not competitive. Ehrenberg points out, accurately, that universities and colleges are in a kind of "arms race" for prestige and for the best students and faculty. There is not a sufficient brake of price pressure to rein in the increasing costs that this race involves. The price of a college education is also not well understood because of the effect of financial aid, and education is one of those sectors of the economy that is less able than others to take advantage of productivity gains. It will be interesting to see what comes in the years ahead as the pressure to reduce expenses in higher education grows. This book is an excellent place to start in understanding this challenge.

In looking toward the future, I do have one small criticism. This book was first published in 2000; it was revised and a new preface added in 2002. But most of the evidence and discussion is based on research from the 1990s. College finances are constantly changing, so there are some parts of the analysis that are dated. For example, US News and World Report has already altered some of the criteria that Ehrenberg criticizes here (e.g., the report of yield rates), so his analysis of the effects of the ratings is a little out of date. There are, I'm sure, other examples. I wish that he would revise it again, but perhaps that would be asking for a different book.

5 of 9 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars High school counselor February 11, 2001

By A Customer

Format:Hardcover

As a high school guidance counselor I can see the immediate value of Mr. Ehrenberg's book. In fact, it is the best book on the subject which I have read. It should also be of tremendous value to parents of college bound children and to college administrators. The language is highly accessible and the author makes his points clearly and succinctly. This book is a welcome addition to the field, and perhaps the very best of its kind.