Modelling the U.S. Market for Higher Education and Evaluating Public Funding Policies: Theory and Estimation

当前与高等教育资助模式相关的问题凸显了美国高等教育市场的突出特征：公立和私立部门相互竞争并存；大学内部和跨部门的特色高度分化；以及根据居住地、家庭收入和学历向学生收取差别学费的范围。令人惊讶的是，关于公立和私立大学之间相互作用的研究几乎没有为政策辩论提供信息。本研究提供了一个表征高等教育提供者相互作用的模型，可用于评估可供选择的公共资助政策。这项研究将至少在三个重要方面推进研究前沿。首先，pi将提供一个新的框架，其中包含了私立大学和公立大学之间竞争的重要特征。该框架将涵盖公立和私立院校在目标上的差异、资源上的差异以及学费和录取政策限制上的差异。其次，pi将对其模型进行实证检验。他们将收集关于公立和私立大学以及家长和学生选择的新数据集。他们建议开发新的估算器，可以处理由他们的模型生成的复杂定价和分类模式。最后，他们建议探讨其工作的政策含义。他们将研究州和联邦财政援助政策的变化，以及它们对学生成绩和成就的影响，以及社会弱势群体接受高等教育的机会。该研究为理解高等教育市场和研究教育政策问题开发、评估和应用了一个新的框架。这一框架极大地推动了研究的最新进展，提供了对私立和公立大学在目标和面临的限制方面的差异的详细分析。提出的研究将提供高等教育中公私竞争的第一个估计模型，因此是整合理论，计算和估计的前沿。一般均衡方法对于研究州和联邦政策的变化以及相关的入学和学费政策的变化尤为重要。该研究探讨了当前重要的公共政策问题。研究成果将通过会议、研讨会和研究论文传播，以促进成果的广泛获取。博士生将参与研究并开展相关研究，从而为他们的培训和本提案主题的知识体系做出贡献。

Current issues related to the funding model for higher education bring to the forefront striking features of this market in the U.S.: the coexistence of competing public and private sectors; a high degree of differentiation in college characteristics within and across sectors; and latitude for charging differential tuition to students based on place of residence, household income, and academic qualifications. Surprising little research on the interaction between colleges, public and private, is available to inform the policy debate. This research provides a model that characterizes the interaction of providers of higher education and can be used to evaluate alternative public funding policies. This research will advance the research frontier in, at least, three important dimensions. First, the PIs will provide a new framework that incorporates important features of competition between private and public universities. The framework will capture differences in objectives between public and private institutions, differences in resources, and differences in constraints on tuition and admission policies. Second, the PIs will undertake empirical testing of their model. They will assemble a new data set on public and private universities as well as on parental and student choices. They propose to develop new estimators that can deal with the complex pricing and sorting patterns generated by their model. Finally, they propose to explore the policy implications of their work. They will examine changes in state and federal financial aid policies, and their impact on student attainment and achievement, as well as access to higher education by disadvantaged groups of society. The research develops, estimates, and applies a new framework for understanding the market for higher education and for studying education policy issues. This framework significantly advances the state-of-the art in research providing a detailed analysis of the differences in objectives and constraints faced by private and public universities. The proposed research will provide the first estimated model of public-private competition in higher education and is thus on the frontier of integrating theory, computation, and estimation. The general-equilibrium approach is particularly important for study of changes in state and federal policies and the associated changes in admission and tuition policies. The research explores important current public policy issues. Research findings will be disseminated via conferences, seminars, and research papers to promote broad access to the results. Ph.D. students will participate in the research and develop related research, thus contributing both to their training and to the body of knowledge on the subject matter of this proposal.