The Ascendancy of American Research Universities, 1870-1940

经济学家将20世纪描述为典型的“美国世纪”和“人力资本世纪”（见Goldin and Katz 2008）。然而，令人惊讶的是，很少有研究详细探讨美国在过去100年里的巨大经济进步与高等教育机构所扮演的角色之间的联系。这项拟议中的研究是一个长期项目的一部分，该项目将探索自1870年至今，公众对高等教育的支持是如何影响美国经济增长的。在过去的十年中，州和地方政府平均投入了大约7%的财政收入来支持公立高等教育，今天总计约为780亿美元（SHEEO 2007, 45）。联邦政府也为高等教育提供了大量支持，既直接给院校，也给消费者（学生）。国家教育统计中心（Sonnenberg 2003）汇编的最新数据显示，联邦政府在2003财政年度为高等教育项目贡献了585亿美元。今天的政策制定者常常把他们对高等教育的支持放在鼓励发展高科技或培训能够在以知识和信息为基础的日益全球化的经济中竞争的劳动力的大背景下。尽管高等教育的公共投资是一个国家或地区经济发展的核心这一观点经常被引用，但很少有研究探讨这个问题。拟议中的项目将试图通过汇编和分析1870年至1940年间美国高校发展的以前未被探索的非常详细的数据来填补这一空白。这段时期被戈尔丁和卡茨（1999）称为？造型的时期?在美国高等教育的发展中起着重要作用。本项目将寻求回答的核心问题包括：现代美国研究型大学的发展对当地经济增长的影响是什么？什么经济和政治力量促成了美国研究型大学在19世纪末和20世纪初的迅速崛起？在这个早期阶段，公立和私立大学之间的竞争是什么性质的，为它们后来的发展奠定了基础？拟议研究的主要目标之一将是收集、编码、清理和分析以前未开发的个别公立和私立高等教育机构的数据。机构层面的数据从1870年到1918年每年发布一次，此后每两年发布一次。我们将能够收集的数据包括机构？学校所在地、宗教信仰、开办年份、教师、学生和毕业生人数、总收入、各种来源的收入、财产、奖学金和私人捐赠。这些数据将与基于机构所在地的十年一次的人口、制造业和农业普查数据相匹配，以衡量社会对高等教育的公共和私人投资的经济影响。更广泛的影响拟议的研究将扩大我们对高等教育和研究的公共投资与经济增长之间关系的理解。我们将在该基金的支持下创建并公开的机构级数据集将为其他对美国高等教育感兴趣的研究人员提供宝贵的信息来源，并为其历史发展的长期趋势提供洞察力。此外，这项研究的结果将与今天的政策制定者有关，他们正在努力应对非常紧张的预算限制，并质疑公立高等教育投资的回报。最后，这项研究将雇用许多本科生研究人员，希望他们对经济学研究感兴趣，并因此决定继续深造。

Economists have described the Twentieth Century as quintessentially both the "American Century" and the "Human Capital Century" (see Goldin and Katz 2008). Yet there is surprisingly little research that explores the details of the connection between the dramatic economic progress of the United States over the last 100 years and the role that postsecondary institutions have played. The proposed research is part of a longer-term project that will explore how public support for higher education has influenced American economic growth from 1870 to present. Over the past decade state and local governments have devoted an average of approximately seven percent of their revenues to support public higher education, today amounting to about $78 billion (SHEEO 2007, 45). The federal government also provides significant support for higher education, both directly to the institutions, but also to its consumers (students). The latest data compiled by the National Center for Education Statistics (Sonnenberg 2003) show that the federal government contributed $58.5 billion to postsecondary educational programs in FY 2003. Policymakers today often couch their support for higher education in the broad context of encouraging the development of high-technology or training a workforce that can compete in an increasingly global economy based on knowledge and information. Despite the oft-cited argument that public investment in higher education is central to a country's or region's economic progress, little research has explored the question. The proposed project will seek to fill this void by compiling and analyzing previously unexplored and very detailed data on the development of American colleges and universities from 1870 to 1940 ? a time period that Goldin and Katz (1999) dub the ?formative period? in the development of American higher education.The central questions this project will seek to answer include: What was the impact of the development of modern American research universities on local economic growth? What economic and political forces contributed to the rapid ascendancy of American research universities in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries? What was the nature of the competition between public and private colleges and universities in this early period that set the stage for their subsequent development?One of the primary objectives of the proposed research will be to collect, code, clean, and analyze previously unexplored data on individual public and private postsecondary educational institutions. The institutional-level data were published annually from 1870 to 1918 and biennially thereafter. The data we will be able to collect include the institution?s location, religious affiliation, year opened, numbers of faculty, students and graduates, total income, income from various sources, property, fellowships and scholarships, and private endowments. These data will be matched with decennial population, manufacturing, and agricultural census data based on the location of the institution in order to measure the economic impact of society's public and private investments in higher education.Broader ImpactThe proposed research will broaden our understanding of the relationship between public investment in postsecondary education and research and economic growth. The institutional-level dataset that we will create and make public under the auspices of the grant will provide an invaluable source of information for other researchers interested in higher education in the U.S. and in discerning long-run trends in its historical development. Further, the results of the research will be relevant to policymakers today who grapple with very tight budget constraints and question the return to investments in public higher education. Finally, the research will employ numerous undergraduate researchers who hopefully will become interested in economics research and consequently decide to pursue graduate education.