A commonly used metric for measuring college costs, drawn from data in the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS), is expenditure per full-time equivalent (FTE) student. This article discusses an error in this per FTE calculation when using IPEDS data, especially with regard to community colleges. The problem is that expenditures…

The coronavirus pandemic has led to the most difficult semester in generations on college campuses across the United States. With that semester now wrapping up, public colleges and universities are facing costs that already dwarf the $7.6 billion in federal stimulus funds that are on their way to these institutions. Absent dramatic new action from…

We use data from 2015-2016 to document faculty representation and wage gaps by race-ethnicity and gender in six fields at selective public universities. Consistent with widely available information, Black, Hispanic, and female professors are underrepresented and White and Asian professors are overrepresented in our data. Disadvantaged minority and…

The article presents a theoretical framework, "institutional phase theory", that charts the process by which higher education faculties in the USA were broadened by race, gender, and to a certain extent class over the past 40 years. Drawing upon institutional ethnographies of three very different universities--a top-ranked private…

Outsourcing--defined as an "institution's decision to contract with an external organization to provide a traditional function or service" (IHEP, 2005)--is nothing new to higher education. For decades, institutions have been "contracting out" or "privatizing" a variety of operational functions, hoping to reduce costs,…

American public higher education is in trouble. Besieged by declining state and Federal support for more than 30 years, public colleges and universities are facing a "game-changing" set of challenges that threaten to alter the very nature of the institutions. As two recessions withered state budgets in the first decade of the 21st…

Fewer than one-third of degree-seeking, full-time freshmen in the nation's public four-year institutions graduate in four years. To help raise this rate, SREB examined many strategies that public institutions are using to help more students earn bachelor's degrees, with particular attention to students in regional colleges and universities who…

This study examined the coverage of sexual orientation topics within 77 public university secondary teacher preparation programs across seven US states, and represented programs preparing 8,300-11,500 teachers annually. Findings indicated that 40% of programs did not address sexual orientation as a diversity topic. Further, even programs that did…