Collaborative Research: Accounting for the Rise in College Tuition

合作研究：大学学费上涨的原因

• 批准号: 1730078
• 负责人: Richard Grey Gordon
• 金额: $ 13.97万
• 依托单位: Indiana University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Continuing Grant
• 财政年份: 2017
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2017-07-01 至 2020-06-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1730078&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Collaborative; Research; Accounting; Rise; College

Abstract: Collaborative Research: Accounting for the Rise in College TuitionPersistent rising college tuition and student debt in the U.S. are growing public policy concerns, yet factors driving their growth remain unresolved. With its combination of extensive public subsidies, complicated financial aid rules, segmented market structure, and widespread use of differential tuition pricing, the higher education market functions quite differently from many other markets. In addition, most traditional colleges are non-profit institutions that pursue objectives that differ from those of profit-maximizing firms. In addition, the incentives colleges face are less well understood. This research project develops a new approach to quantify the determinants of U.S. college tuition and how they contribute to tuition inflation, as well as assess the impact of programs aimed at expanding college access and easing the burden of student debt. Focusing on explaining the aggregate trends in college tuition increases, it will shed light on differences across college types and investigates ways to promote educational opportunity across the socioeconomic spectrum. The methods used in this research can also serve as a template for future students and researchers interested in studying the complex higher education market. The results of this research can help policy makers develop better policies to increase higher education attainment for the American workforce, hence improving U.S. competitiveness.The proposed research develops an equilibrium structural model that includes life-cycle decision-making by households, imperfect competition and price discrimination in the higher education sector, student loan borrowing, and uninsurable post-graduation earnings risk. Relative to the existing literature, the presence of forward-looking behavior and higher expected post-graduation earnings endogenously motivates college attendance and facilitates taking the model to the data. The model is then used to test and quantify various hypotheses for the rise in college tuition---an approach which permits counterfactual analysis and decomposition of tuition drivers. Lastly, the project will use the model to study the efficacy of recent and proposed reforms whose goals are to restrain the growth of tuition and student debt. The results of this research project will help guide policies aimed at improving college education, thereby increasing the U.S.?s human capital and competitiveness.

摘要：合作研究：美国持续上涨的大学学费和学生债务正日益引起公共政策的关注，但推动其增长的因素仍未得到解决。 由于其广泛的公共补贴，复杂的财政援助规则，分割的市场结构和广泛使用的差别学费定价相结合，高等教育市场的功能与许多其他市场完全不同。此外，大多数传统大学都是非营利机构，追求的目标与利润最大化的公司不同。 此外，大学面临的激励机制也不太为人所知。 该研究项目开发了一种新的方法来量化美国大学学费的决定因素以及它们如何导致学费上涨，并评估旨在扩大大学入学机会和减轻学生债务负担的计划的影响。重点是解释大学学费上涨的总体趋势，它将揭示不同类型大学之间的差异，并研究如何在社会经济领域促进教育机会。本研究中使用的方法也可以作为未来有兴趣研究复杂的高等教育市场的学生和研究人员的模板。 本研究的结果可以帮助政策制定者制定更好的政策来提高美国劳动力的高等教育程度，从而提高美国的竞争力。拟议的研究开发了一个均衡结构模型，其中包括家庭的生命周期决策，高等教育部门的不完全竞争和价格歧视，学生贷款借款和不可保险的毕业后收入风险。相对于现有的文献，前瞻性行为和较高的预期毕业后收入的存在内生地激励大学出勤率，并促进模型的数据。然后，该模型被用来测试和量化的各种假设，在大学学费上涨---一种方法，允许反事实分析和分解的学费驱动程序。最后，该项目将使用该模型来研究最近和拟议中的改革的有效性，这些改革的目标是抑制学费和学生债务的增长。 这一研究项目的结果将有助于指导旨在改善大学教育的政策，从而增加美国？人力资本和竞争力。