This research brief explores why "projection estimates" are not an effective approach to budget planning by comparing past projections to CUPA-HR's database of real-world salaries. The results shed light on why data-informed and data-driven decisions are a more effective way to think about budget planning. In this brief you'll learn…

Tuition prices at colleges and universities are high. It is also true that salaries and benefits are the single biggest chunk of every higher education institution's (HEI) budget. And one of the largest and most difficult costs to contain is group employee health insurance. The situation is particularly difficult for smaller New England HEIs…

While state appropriations are the largest revenue source of the U.S. public university systems, they have declined significantly over the past several decades. Surprisingly, there is little empirical work on the effect of state appropriation cuts on the research productivity of public universities. Helping fill that gap, this paper is the first…

This case study provides the background for a discussion of the bankruptcy of a composite non-profit corporation under Chapter 11 of the Bankruptcy Code, and the possible alternatives available to bankruptcy. Topics considered include: reorganizations, the selection of a bankruptcy trustee or an examiner, duties of a non-profit board, the…

California had a long tradition of very low tuition for students enrolled in public higher education. The state broke with that policy in the 2000s, when recessions resulted in significant cuts to state funding for public colleges and universities--the University of California (UC), California State University (CSU), and California's community…

Mainstreaming gender within pre-primary education is a priority in tackling gender-related inequalities from the early years. Such mainstreaming requires the commitment of a variety of stakeholders within the education system and beyond, including different units within education ministries, pre-service and in-service teacher training providers,…

Decreasing government funding and regulated tuition policies have created a financially constrained environment for Canada's universities. The conventional response to such conditions is to cut programme offerings and services in an attempt to lower costs throughout the institution. However, we argue that three Canadian universities have reacted…

If cash-strapped universities want an easy way to save money, Lawrence B. Martin, a professor of anthropology at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, has an idea. By tallying faculty output in areas such as publication rates in scientific journals, Mr. Martin has concluded that there could be as much as $1-billion to $2-billion in…

With tax revenues beginning to rebound in most states and endowments on the rebound at many private and public institutions, colleges and universities are growing more hopeful about their financial outlook and instituting new strategies to take advantage of the opportunities. Yet as the economic recovery has slowed in the past few months,…

The tuition increase at the University of Florida--one of 11 public universities in Florida to win the approval of the state's Board of Governors to tack a "tuition differential" of 7 percent onto an 8 percent increase already approved by the state legislature--comes in response to an unprecedented reduction of some $340 million in state…

While colleges across the nation are coping with the recession, public universities in Florida, a state with finances that resemble a Ponzi scheme, have spent years doing without. The recession hit Florida early, and in a big way. Without an income tax, state government has long depended on property and sales taxes. As real estate and tourism have…

This policy brief revisits the long and storied literature on whether money matters in providing a quality education. Increasingly, political rhetoric adheres to the unfounded certainty that money doesn't make a difference in education, and that reduced funding is unlikely to harm educational quality. Such proclamations have even been used to…

In this paper the author explores how colleges whose primary mission is undergraduate education can strategically allocate resources in a way that reduces costs and prioritizes teaching and learning. He starts from a provocative thought-experiment--what would it cost to educate undergraduates at a hypothetical college built from scratch?--and uses…

Even though the author and his colleagues are part of a major research university, they agonize, in meeting after meeting, over the 5 to 10-percent yearly cuts they need to make in their chemistry department's budget. By and large, those end up coming from education, not research, especially in faculty replacements and teaching assistants. The…

The public higher education systems have received significant budget cuts in the 2009-10 fiscal year, with the University of California (UC) receiving $813 million less than in 2007-08, California State University (CSU) receiving $625 million less, and the community college system receiving $812 million less. It is important to understand the…