This mixed methods dissertation investigates the impact that cost-disaggregating tools like the Delaware Cost Study (DCS) have on the expenditure patterns at large, public research universities. It draws on public budgeting and higher education finance literature to form a theory of action that hypothesizes that expense management at such…

Purpose and Method of Study: This study focused on the relationship between the cost of undergraduate education (COUE) and graduation rates in four-year institutions in Oklahoma. The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between the cost of undergraduate education (COUE) and graduation rates at four-year higher education…

This study examines the effect of responsibility center management (RCM), a decentralized budget model, on total operating costs at the University of New Hampshire (UNH) and the University of Arizona (UofA). Both universities in the study implemented RCM with the primary goal of controlling costs, among other goals. To address the research…

Chapter 1 studies how the interaction of student information with constraints dictated by market design determines higher education choices and outcomes. I study strategic application incentives in imperfect implementations of centralized assignment mechanisms in higher education. I ask whether, in markets with both a central match for public…

The purpose of this qualitative, phenomenological study is to identify recruitment tools, which may effectively increase international student enrollment at a public, state-assisted university in Texas that does not actively recruit internationally through international travel or dedicated recruitment plans structured for international students.…

Postsecondary education (PE) is vital to meet the needs of the changing economy. The cost to attend PE continues to increase, which has elevated student loans. The ratio of debt to potential future income should be a factor considered when choosing to pursue PE. Bakersfield College (BC) and California State University, Bakersfield (CSUB) are both…

In the first chapter, I analyze the growth patterns of postsecondary education costs in re-cent years. It shows the trends of college revenue, expenditure and other financial items using data drawn from the Delta Data Project between 1987 and 2010. Connections between various categories of revenue/spending and state-level macroeconomic indicators…

This study examined how the presence of formal tenure systems at publicly-funded two-year colleges in the Mountain States' region of the United States relates to differences in the common institutional performance factors of graduation rate, retention rate, and unrestricted instructional cost per FTE student as reported to the Integrated…

This thesis is a combination of two papers studying the effect of state funding for higher education on the price of education and student enrollment at institutions. The first paper evaluates the effectiveness of student aid in decreasing the price of higher education by investigating what portion of student aid dollars reach targeted students…

The number of students entering universities in Lebanon has steadily increased in the past ten years. This trend makes it imperative that the different stakeholders, like students, parents, schools, universities, and education officials, understand what influences the decision of a student to choose a specific college. Understanding these factors…

I develop and structurally estimate an equilibrium model of the college market. Students, who are heterogeneous in both abilities and preferences, make college application decisions, subject to uncertainty and application costs. Colleges observe only noisy measures of student ability and set up tuition and admissions policies to compete for more…

Public undergraduate higher education institutions face a number of seemingly intractable problems. Among those problems are cost, accountability and access. The Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award process is designed to help organization of any type address problems of organizational performance. This process has been used by manufacturing,…