Responsibility center management (RCM) is a market-based budget model that may benefit certain academic institutions. While there are supporters and opponents of the model, there is a lack of hard evidence about the potential impact of RCM on a variety of institutional variables, hence the need for this study. This study brought together the…

Responsibility center management (RCM) budgeting systems devolve budget responsibility while creating funding formulas that provide incentives for academic units to generate revenues and decrease costs. A growing number of public universities have adopted RCM. The desire to grow tuition revenue has often been cited as a rationale for adoption.…

Objective: International reverse transfer students are international students who begin their postsecondary journey at a four-year institution but subsequently transfer to a community college. In this qualitative study, we examine the lived experiences of international reverse transfers to understand the reasons for reverse-transfer and to…

A growing number of public colleges and universities in the United States have hired management consulting firms to help develop strategies aimed at increasing institutional effectiveness and efficiency. The purpose of this paper is to explore the frames and strategies of consultants in US public higher education reform efforts. Drawing upon a…

With tuition revenues replacing state appropriations as the primary source of public university funding, it becomes difficult for universities to use historically based budget allocations and inflexible tuition structures to subsidize high-cost programs. It is argued here that combining targeted subsidies with a flexible tuition structure and…

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…

Since 2003, more than 40 athletics programs have joined the National Junior College Athletic Association (NJCAA) ranks. Membership now represents about 500 colleges, and Wayne Baker, the group's executive director, expects to keep adding colleges. Membership in the association began declining slightly in the early 1990s, as private two-year…

In this article, the author discusses the Democratic victories that have raised expectations on college campuses in part because a number of the gubernatorial candidates, including Deval L. Patrick, emphasized themes of access and affordability in their campaigns. Mr. Patrick, the governor-elect of Massachusetts, traveled to the University of…

Competition between public and private colleges has existed since the 19th century and was recently heightened by competition in a period of declining enrollments. Several states are working to prevent conflict, build relationships, and foster cooperative action by supporting or creating state associations of all public and private institutions.…

Every state in the union has "sunshine" laws that apply to public higher education, and the leaders of public institutions deal directly or indirectly with these laws almost daily. Sunshine statutes go to the very heart of institutional functioning, influencing presidential searches and selection, board deliberations, research and…