Student aid in higher education has recently become a hot-button issue. Parents trying to pay for their children's education, college administrators competing for students, and even President Bill Clinton, whose recently proposed tax breaks for college would change sharply the federal government's financial commitment to higher education, have staked a claim in its resolution. In The Student Aid Game, Michael McPherson and Morton Owen Schapiro explain how both colleges and governments are struggling to cope with a rapidly changing marketplace, and show how sound policies can help preserve the strengths and remedy some emerging weaknesses of American higher education.
 McPherson and Schapiro offer a detailed look at how undergraduate education is financed in the United States, highlighting differences across sectors and for students of differing family backgrounds. They review the implications of recent financing trends for access to and choice of undergraduate college and gauge the implications of these national trends for the future of college opportunity. The authors examine how student aid fits into college budgets, how aid and pricing decisions are shaped by government higher education policies, and how competition has radically reshaped the way colleges think about the strategic role of student aid. Of particular interest is the issue of merit aid. McPherson and Schapiro consider the attractions and pitfalls of merit aid from the viewpoint of students, institutions, and society.
 The Student Aid Game concludes with an examination of policy options for both government and individual institutions. McPherson and Schapiro argue that the federal government needs to keep its attention focused on providing access to college for needy students, while colleges themselves need to constrain their search for strategic advantage by sticking to aid and admission policies they are willing to articulate and defend publicly.

The Student Aid Game

Education & Teaching

McPherson, Michael

Schapiro, Morton

Higher & Continuing Education

Princeton University Press

The United States has long been a model for accessible, affordable education, as exemplified by the country's public universities. And yet less than 60 percent of the students entering American universities today are graduating. Why is this happening, and what can be done? Crossing the Finish Line provides the most detailed exploration ever of college completion at America's public universities. This groundbreaking book sheds light on such serious issues as dropout rates linked to race, gender, and socioeconomic status.
 Probing graduation rates at twenty-one flagship public universities and four statewide systems of public higher education, the authors focus on the progress of students in the entering class of 1999--from entry to graduation, transfer, or withdrawal. They examine the effects of parental education, family income, race and gender, high school grades, test scores, financial aid, and characteristics of universities attended (especially their selectivity). The conclusions are compelling: minority students and students from poor families have markedly lower graduation rates--and take longer to earn degrees--even when other variables are taken into account. Noting the strong performance of transfer students and the effects of financial constraints on student retention, the authors call for improved transfer and financial aid policies, and suggest ways of improving the sorting processes that match students to institutions.
 An outstanding combination of evidence and analysis, Crossing the Finish Line should be read by everyone who cares about the nation's higher education system.

Crossing the Finish Line: Completing College at America's Public Universities (The William G. Bowen Series, 59)

Bowen, William G.

Chingos, Matthew M.

Crossing the Finish Line: Completing College at America's Public Universities (The William G. Bowen Series)

Review\n“Baum and McPherson provide a novel and convincing analysis of the role higher education plays in our unequal society and propose realistic policies and practices that can help us to achieve lasting change. This invaluable book is essential reading for college and university leaders, for policymakers who want to understand the enterprise they oversee, and for anyone concerned with making our society less unjust.”―Harry Brighouse, coauthor of Educational Goods\n“In this gem of a book, Baum and McPherson explore the disturbing underbelly of America’s system for handing out economic opportunity. Combining their deep expertise about higher education, these economists present an assessment that is sober without being dismal, dismissing quick fixes but offering hope based on sensible long-term policies.”―Charles T. Clotfelter, Duke University\n“This highly readable, eye-opening book affirms the essential contributions of higher education in the United States while also showing why it alone cannot ensure upward mobility and economic growth. It is also a call to action, identifying policies to broaden the impact of institutions and situate them within a more equitable and productive economy.”―David Baime, senior vice president for government relations, American Association of Community Colleges\n“This book’s unique contribution is to examine higher education not in isolation but in the context of inequality in American society, from children’s earliest experiences in life to what they encounter as adults in the labor market. Baum and McPherson draw on this more complete picture of higher education’s role to detail a set of institutional actions and policy changes that would foster a more equal society.”―Matthew M. Chingos, coauthor of Game of Loans: The Rhetoric and Reality of Student Debt\n“Written by two of the nation’s most respected experts on education, this book rejects the increasingly popular idea that reforms in higher education can level the playing field, explaining why we must pay more attention to opportunity-enhancing measures in the precollege years and the labor market. Baum and McPherson provide a well-informed, realistic, and comprehensive account of how to create more opportunity in America.”―Isabel Sawhill, author of The Forgotten Americans: An Economic Agenda for a Divided Nation\n“This important contribution provides not just a highly readable description of the current state of American higher education, it challenges us to do better. As the authors show, the stakes are high. May this compelling call to action lead to lasting and meaningful change.”―Morton Schapiro, president of Northwestern University\nWhy higher education is not a silver bullet for eradicating economic inequality and social injustice\nWe often think that a college degree will open doors to opportunity regardless of one’s background or upbringing. In this eye-opening book, two of today’s leading economists argue that higher education alone cannot overcome the lasting effects of inequality that continue to plague us, and offer sensible solutions for building a more just and equitable society.\nSandy Baum and Michael McPherson document the starkly different educational and social environments in which children of different races and economic backgrounds grow up, and explain why social equity requires sustained efforts to provide the broadest possible access to high-quality early childhood and K–12 education. They dismiss panaceas like eliminating college tuition and replacing the classroom experience with online education, revealing why they fail to provide better education for those who need it most, and discuss how wages in our dysfunctional labor market are sharply skewed toward the highly educated. Baum and McPherson argue that greater investment in the postsecondary institutions that educate most low-income and marginalized students will have a bigger impact than just getting more students from these backgrounds

Can College Level the Playing Field?: Higher Education in an Unequal Society

Politics & Social Sciences

Baum, Sandy

Social Sciences

Why and how American colleges and universities need to change in order to meet the nation's pressing needs
American higher education faces some serious problems―but they are not the ones most people think. In this brief and accessible book, two leading experts show that many so-called crises―from the idea that typical students are drowning in debt to the belief that tuition increases are being driven by administrative bloat―are exaggerated or simply false. At the same time, many real problems―from the high dropout rate to inefficient faculty staffing―have received far too little attention. In response, William G. Bowen and Michael S. McPherson provide a frank assessment of the biggest challenges confronting higher education and propose a bold agenda for reengineering essential elements of the system to meet them. The result promises to help shape the debate about higher education for years to come.
Lesson Plan shows that, for all of its accomplishments, higher education today is falling short when it comes to vital national needs. Too many undergraduates are dropping out or taking too long to graduate; minorities and the poor fare worse than their peers, reinforcing inequality; and college is unaffordable for too many. But these problems could be greatly reduced by making significant changes, including targeting federal and state funding more efficiently; allocating less money for "merit aid" and more to match financial need; creating a respected “teaching corps” that would include nontenure faculty; improving basic courses in fields such as math by combining adaptive learning and face-to-face teaching; strengthening leadership; and encouraging more risk taking.
It won't be easy for faculty, administrators, trustees, and legislators to make such sweeping changes, but only by doing so will they make it possible for our colleges and universities to meet the nation’s demands tomorrow and into the future.

Lesson Plan: An Agenda for Change in American Higher Education (The William G. Bowen Series)

Lesson Plan: An Agenda for Change in American Higher Education (The William G. Bowen Series, 90)

An invaluable primer on the role economic reasoning plays in campus debate and decision making\nCampus Economics provides college and university administrators, trustees, and faculty with an essential understanding of how college finances actually work. Sandy Baum and Michael McPherson explain the concepts needed to analyze the pros, the cons, and the trade-offs of difficult decisions, and offer a common language for discussing the many challenges confronting institutions of higher learning today, from COVID-19 to funding cuts and declining enrollments.\nEmphasizing the unique characteristics of the academic enterprise and the primacy of the institutional mission, Baum and McPherson use economic concepts such as opportunity cost and decisions at the margin to facilitate conversations about how best to ensure an institution’s ongoing success. The problems facing higher education are more urgent than ever before, but the underlying issues are the same in good times and bad. Baum and McPherson give nontechnical, user-friendly guidance for navigating all kinds of economic conditions and draw on real-world examples of campus issues to illustrate both institutional constraints and untapped opportunities.\nCampus Economics helps faculty, administrators, trustees, and government policymakers engage in constructive dialogue that can lead to decisions that align finite resources with the pursuit of the institutional mission.

Campus Economics: How Economic Thinking Can Help Improve College and University Decisions

Reference

Rivers of the Sun

Science & Math

Nature & Ecology

South Point Pr

Economic Analysis, Moral Philosophy, and Public Policy

This book shows through argument and numerous policy-related examples how understanding moral philosophy can improve economic analysis, how moral philosophy can benefit from economists' analytical tools, and how economic analysis and moral philosophy together can inform public policy. Part I explores the idea of rationality and its connections to ethics, arguing that when they defend their formal model of rationality, most economists implicitly espouse contestable moral principles. Part II addresses the nature and measurement of welfare, utilitarianism and cost-benefit analysis. Part III discusses freedom, rights, equality, and justice - moral notions that are relevant to evaluating policies, but which have played little if any role in conventional welfare economics. Finally, Part IV explores work in social choice theory and game theory that is relevant to moral decision making. Each chapter includes recommended reading and discussion questions.

Business & Money

Hausman, Daniel

Satz, Debra

Business Culture

Cambridge University Press

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