Stymied by how to manage anticipated funding decreases and spiraling costs? Bleak funding projections can result in significant reductions or elimination of programs, regardless of their impact on student achievement. Why? One culprit is the tendency to use past practices to define future spending. Because educators often use previous years'…

A year ago, Charles Miller, a former chairman of the University of Texas' Board of Regents, delivered the report of Commission on the Future of Higher Education to Secretary Margaret Spellings. Spellings hailed the report as a turning point: It was the day, she hoped, when U.S. colleges reoriented their mission to provide the highest possible…

In 2004, the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education published "Ensuring Access with Quality to California's Community Colleges", funded by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. That report called attention to the considerable challenges facing the community colleges and the importance of addressing these problems. A…

Using Castells' four principal functions of universities, this article examines several key dilemmas relating to governance of higher education in SE Asia, (specifically Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam). While all five nations value universities highly, and aspire to widen access to higher education, none can provide public…

Women are expected to own half the wealth in the United States by 2010. They also account for 58 percent of undergraduates at colleges today. Those statistics should loom large for higher-education fund raisers at a time when almost every institution is either in the middle of its largest fund-raising campaign ever or planning to announce one. But…

First Class Education, an organization based in Washington D.C., is trying to persuade the voting public to pass a law that could eliminate school libraries and many other educational support services. First Class Education promotes the idea that sixty-five percent of instructional money should be spent in the classroom. At first blush, this…

Since the well-known failures of many experimental colleges and programs in the 1960s and 1970s, policymakers and scholars are often cynical about the possibilities for organisational innovation, particularly within public universities. Public university innovation is possible, however, when organisational actors seek to institutionalise reform…

About 120 nations can borrow from an international bank for the purposes of financing domestic educational improvement. The United States is a donor to this bank, but by virtue of its economic development, it cannot borrow. Nevertheless, the virtues of having such a facility might be worth considering within the United States. This article briefly…

This paper is the last in a series of reports and initiatives in AGB's Cost Project. The project was designed to build governing board capacity to monitor institutional costs effectively and strategically. Costs and productivity are not new issues in higher education. AGB and its member governing boards have long recognized the importance of…

More than ever before, Californians recognize that preschool provides young children with a strong start in school and life. Research confirms that effective preschool not only prepares children for kindergarten, but benefits them in the long-term. Despite the benefits, only 48% of 3- and 4-year-old children attend preschool in California. While…

An ongoing controversy in the literature on the economics of higher education centers on whether the success of a school's athletic program affects alumni donations. This paper uses a unique data set to investigate this issue. The data contain detailed information about donations made by alumni of a selective research university as well as a…

The main developed countries raise higher educational funds actively by increasing the tuition fees, improving the rate of loan, striving for scientific research funds, improving the income of education and service as well as accepting all kinds of donations. According to Chinese realities, it should be increased higher educational funds to…

The 2005-6 executive compensation controversy at the University of California has been explained as the result of a massive breach of compliance with the University's compensation policies by the Office of the President (UCOP). For more than a decade, the explanation goes, UCOP failed to comply with its own compensation policies, embodied in the…

Unfortunately, Southern Regional Education Board (SREB) states are not immune to the economic slowdown sweeping the nation. States are taking action to bring budgets into balance while working to protect essential services and programs. In a 1991 report, "Coping With the Sluggish Economy," SREB noted the accelerated efforts to reshape schools and…

The goal of this paper is to explore the effects of micro-budgeting decisions and show how they might support or hamper district reform strategies. The study draws on public and private sector resource allocation literature to identify key elements of resource allocation decisions. These elements are used to highlight different allocation…