The meteoric rise in charter schools has several implications for traditional public schools and their students. One understudied implication is the geographic competition for students. Given traditional public school boundaries are often fixed while charter school boundaries are more flexible, charter schools can draw students away from existing…

Financial challenges have forced many publicly funded academic institutions in Ontario to adopt a corporate model and to use market tools to compete in the higher education market and maintain their enrolment and revenue levels. This study has analyzed how competition affects publicly funded universities in Ontario. Competition was examined by…

Industry bodies, research and educational organisations have lobbied intensely for increased funding for training in the STEM disciplines. It is time to reassess this advocacy. Undergraduate commencements in STEM fields have increased strongly since 2009, yet the current employment prospects for these graduates are poor. Advocates have not made a…

When Valencia College became the first recipient of the Aspen Prize for Community College Excellence last month, an unsung sector earned uncommon recognition. Now that the speeches are over and the prize money has been awarded, the Aspen Institute is sharing early lessons from its yearlong effort to determine the top community college in the…

School choice policies are intended to provide students in poorly performing schools the option of transferring to a better school. The associated loss of funding to new competitors is expected, in turn, to benefit students who remain in their assigned schools by spurring improved performance among the educators in them. The prospects for such…

With the diminishing model of the welfare state, public education in Kuwait is facing the challenges of the competition of private schools, while the private sector has always struggled against the monopolistic power of the public schools that educate a broad spectrum of K-12 students. This article presents estimates of the effect of private…

By offering admission to more students than ever and introducing tuition plans attractive to middle-income families, many colleges have larger first-year classes. Poor job prospects are boosting enrollments, and recession is driving students to look for education bargains. However, the trend does not apply to all groups or institutions. (MSE)

Buying students with academic scholarships is self-defeating. It is unfair to students paying full price, unjust awards undermine reputation, competition can spiral, students are counseled to choose schools for aid alone, and parents are offended when scholarships are not offered and when their "scholarship" students get average grades. (MSE)

Pennsylvania State University will turn 14 of its two-year campuses into four-year colleges, changing the face of higher education in the state and raising concerns for competing institutions. Three campuses will retain two-year status. The change is due to overcrowding at the University Park flagship campus, and because too few two-year campus…

Factors in the rise of college costs are discussed, including increased expenditures, enrollment leveling; state and federal funding patterns, competition, and the declining numbers of traditional college age students. (MSE)

Federal policy regarding equal opportunity for men and women in intercollegiate athletics under Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 is viewed as a form of distributive policy that fails to incorporate principles of supply (spaces on teams) and differential demand among men and women. The result is seen to be another form of…

A recent court ruling that the proportion of intercollegiate athletes who are women must equal the proportion of undergraduates who are women is criticized on the grounds that it may compel colleges and universities to distort resource allocations for college athletics and thereby overvalue them. It is argued that such a change would serve no one…