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

目前与高等教育融资模式相关的问题凸显了美国高等教育市场的显著特征：公立和私营部门竞争并存；不同部门内部和不同部门之间的大学特点存在高度差异化；根据居住地、家庭收入和学历向学生收取不同学费的自由度。令人惊讶的是，几乎没有关于公立和私立大学之间相互作用的研究为政策辩论提供信息。这项研究提供了一个模型，描述了高等教育提供者之间的互动关系，并可用于评估其他公共资助政策。这项研究将至少在三个重要维度上推进研究前沿。首先，私人机构督导计划将提供一个新的架构，把私立大学和公立大学之间的竞争的重要特征融合在一起。该框架将反映公立和私立机构在目标上的差异、资源上的差异，以及在学费和招生政策限制方面的差异。其次，私人投资机构将对其模型进行实证测试。他们将收集有关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计器，以处理他们的模型产生的复杂定价和排序模式。最后，他们建议探索他们工作的政策影响。他们将研究州和联邦财政援助政策的变化，以及它们对学生成就和成就的影响，以及社会弱势群体接受高等教育的机会。这项研究开发、评估和应用了一个新的框架，用于理解高等教育市场和研究教育政策问题。这一框架极大地推进了研究的最新水平，详细分析了私立大学和公立大学在目标和限制方面的差异。这项拟议的研究将提供高等教育中公私竞争的第一个估计模型，因此处于整合理论、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招生和学费政策的相关变化尤为重要。这项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.