In the context of threats to their financial sustainability, this paper uses Resource Dependency Theory to explore the challenges being faced by a sample of 10 small new public universities in England. It discusses the responses being taken and prospects for the future in this segment of the sector. It concludes that some of the most important…

In 2016, the North Carolina legislature implemented the North Carolina Fixed Tuition Program. This policy ensures that, once enrolled, an undergraduate student's tuition rate at any of the state's four-year public colleges will not increase for eight consecutive semesters of enrollment. While touted as an effort to increase affordability by…

Tuition discounting has become a common strategy used in higher education to generate enrollment; however, little academic study has been done on its impact on the overall financial condition of higher education institutions. Those studies that have been completed regarding tuition discounting have primarily analyzed the use of tuition discounting…

How have changes in the price of enrolling full time at public 2- and 4-year colleges affected student decisions about whether and where to enroll in college? Using local differences in the growth of tuition at community colleges and public 4-year colleges, we study the impact of public higher education tuition prices on the post-secondary…

This study examines the relationship between cost efficiency and privatization at 163 public research institutions in the United States between 2005 and 2015. We employ a spatial autoregressive (SAR) random-effects model and stochastic frontier analysis (SFA) to estimate the relationship between costs and four privatization variables: auxiliary…

After trailing the national average for five years, funding per student at public colleges and universities in Wisconsin overtook it in 2021. State and local tax and tuition funding per student dropped nationally after adjusting for inflation and rose in Wisconsin, though it remains lower for four-year campuses in Wisconsin. The state's colleges…

Christopher Martin argues that an interest in strong autonomy supports a right to debt-free higher education and that making tuition free is the best way of enacting that right. We argue that making higher education tuition free would, in the absence of other countervailing measure, maldistribute strong autonomy, even in ideal conditions. We also…

The most recent data on tuition, appropriations, and state grant aid present an economic outlook that appears favorable in the West. Tuition rates remained relatively flat for the past decade, total state funding to higher education increased across the region in the past year, and state grant aid continued to increase since 2010-11. Despite these…

Purpose: This study estimates the effect of the Truth-in-Tuition policy on the enrollment of first-year students, minority students and all students (total enrollment) in Illinois universities. Design/methodology/approach: Econometric models yield robust estimates using state- and time-fixed effects. This research uses the nonparametric…

Substantial increases in public university tuition often raise concerns about college affordability. But assessment of the impacts on low- and moderate-income families requires consideration of whether net tuition--tuition less grant aid--has increased commensurately. This paper describes recent shifts in net tuition by family income and…

Following a landmark court ruling in 2005, more than half of Germany's universities started charging tuition fees, which were subsequently abolished until 2015. We exploit the unusual lack of grandfathering in these policies to show that fees increase study effort and degree completion among incumbent students. However, fees also decrease…

The United States cannot meet its higher education goals without changing the way it funds public colleges and universities. Current funding models do not sufficiently advance fully scaled improvements. Instead, today's models create unfunded mandates: Colleges are required to increase completion rates, but they do not receive essential funding…

Growing concerns over student debt have led to a series of sweeping policy proposals from higher education associations, think tanks, and policymakers over the last decade to align state and federal higher education financing policy. The existing framework, in which states primarily subsidize institutions and the federal government primarily…

This dissertation studies the market for higher education and impacts of higher education policy on the market. In the first chapter, I estimate the short-run elasticity of supply of higher education using the rollout of state merit grant programs as plausibly exogenous variation in student demand for in-state higher education. I find that public…

This article aims to understand how access, equity and redress challenges are addressed at South Africa's public universities based on their current funding frameworks. Relying on a pragmatic research approach combining desk-research literature review and secondary data analysis, government funding and tuition fees were found to be the primary…