Attention Economy


Saturday, October 6, 2018

Economics of Higher Education

State Cuts to Higher Education Threaten Access and Equity by Michael Mitchell, Michael Leachman, Kathleen Masterson, and Samantha Waxman
“A decade since the Great Recession hit, state spending on public colleges and universities remains well below historical levels. Overall state funding for public two- and four-year colleges in the school year ending in 2018 was more than $7 billion below its 2008 level, after adjusting for inflation. In the most difficult years after the recession, colleges responded to significant funding cuts by increasing tuition, reducing faculty, limiting course offerings, and in some cases closing campuses. Funding has rebounded slightly since then, but costs remain high and services in some places have not returned”.

Why Is College in America So Expensive?
Amanda Ripley notes:
“…U.S. colleges spend, relative to other countries, a startling amount of money on their nonteaching staff, according to the OECD data. Some of these people are librarians or career or mental-health counselors who directly benefit students, but many others do tangential jobs that may have more to do with attracting students than with learning. Many U.S. colleges employ armies of fund-raisers, athletic staff, lawyers, admissions and financial-aid officers, diversity-and-inclusion managers, building-operations and maintenance staff, security personnel, transportation workers, and food-service workers”.

Full Tuition Paying Foreign Students are Subsidizing American Students
https://qz.com/849612/china-sends-330000-students-to-the-us-each-year-and-trump-could-change-that/