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Public Economics

Faculty

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Full-Text Articles in Education

Faculty Turnover At American Colleges And Universities: Analyses Of Aaup Data, Ronald G. Ehrenberg, Hirschel Kasper, Daniel Rees Nov 2012

Faculty Turnover At American Colleges And Universities: Analyses Of Aaup Data, Ronald G. Ehrenberg, Hirschel Kasper, Daniel Rees

Ronald G. Ehrenberg

This paper uses institutional level data collected by the American Association of University Professors as part of their annual survey of faculty members' compensation to analyze faculty turnover. Analyses of aggregate data over almost a twenty-year period highlight how remarkably stable faculty retention rates have been nationwide and how little they vary across broad categories of institutions. Analyses of variations in faculty retention rates across individual institutions stress the role that faculty compensation levels play. Higher levels of compensation appear to increase retention rates for assistant and associate professors (but not for full professors) and the magnitude of this effect …


Generation X: Redefining The Norms Of The Academy, Ronald Ehrenberg Oct 2012

Generation X: Redefining The Norms Of The Academy, Ronald Ehrenberg

Ronald G. Ehrenberg

[Excerpt] The members of Generation X are the young faculty members of today and the immediate future. The panelists at this session of the conference were asked to discuss the effects of this generation on academic norms and institutional governance and the types of new models that may be emerging for academia as a result of them. More specifically, they were asked if the attitudes and loyalties of these young faculty members really do differ from that of the Baby Boom Generation, how their attitudes and behavior affect graduate programs, what academic institutions will need to do to attract the …


A Brief Guide To The Aaup Salary Data, Ronald G. Ehrenberg Oct 2012

A Brief Guide To The Aaup Salary Data, Ronald G. Ehrenberg

Ronald G. Ehrenberg

[Excerpt] The AAUP data not only document faculty salary levels, but may also play a role in determining future levels. They represent average data for all full-time faculty members at the university, excluding faculty in medical colleges and health sciences. Thus, they can not be used to compare salaries within a discipline across institutions. They have long been used, however, by faculty on budget or finance committees to inform discussions with central administrators regarding the parameters of the next year’s budget (e.g. tuition increases, faculty salary increases, and endowment payout rates). Often, the faculty and administration will agree on a …


Faculty Retirement Policies After The End Of Mandatory Retirement, Ronald G. Ehrenberg, Michael J. Rizzo Oct 2012

Faculty Retirement Policies After The End Of Mandatory Retirement, Ronald G. Ehrenberg, Michael J. Rizzo

Ronald G. Ehrenberg

[Excerpt] The findings we report above have implications for both institutions and their faculty members. In some states, rapidly growing college age cohorts will require academic institutions to hire large numbers of new faculty in the years ahead to fill positions created to meet the expanding demand for enrollments. Nationally, institutions will have to replace a large number of retiring faculty members in the years ahead. This suggests that most institutions’ concern in upcoming years will not be how to encourage their faculty members to retire. Rather, their concern will be how to continue to draw on the skills of …


Introduction: Choices In Education, Ronald G. Ehrenberg Sep 2012

Introduction: Choices In Education, Ronald G. Ehrenberg

Ronald G. Ehrenberg

[Excerpt] Society has high expectations for our educational system, and social science research should contribute to helping meet these expectations. Research on the choices that participants in the system make, and on the consequences of these choices, is particularly useful and often provides information that is directly relevant to the policy debate. Thus the four chapters in this volume all address the choices, and the consequences of choices, made by students, teachers, and school administrators. They are grouped together in this book in the belief that providing them this way will increase their influence on public policy.


Cornell Confronts The End Of Mandatory Retirement, Ronald G. Ehrenberg, Michael W. Matier, David Fontanella Sep 2012

Cornell Confronts The End Of Mandatory Retirement, Ronald G. Ehrenberg, Michael W. Matier, David Fontanella

Ronald G. Ehrenberg

[Excerpt] In July 1995, the first author of this paper was appointed vice president of academic programs, planning and budgeting at Cornell and, at his initiative, a joint faculty-administrative committee was subsequently established, with him as chair, to look into how the university should respond to the elimination of mandatory retirement. In this chapter, we discuss the environment in which the university found itself when the committee was established, the recommendations of the committee, faculty reactions to the recommendations, and the actions that the university ultimately decided to pursue.


No Longer Forced Out: How One Institution Is Dealing With The End Of Mandatory Retirement, Ronald G. Ehrenberg Sep 2012

No Longer Forced Out: How One Institution Is Dealing With The End Of Mandatory Retirement, Ronald G. Ehrenberg

Ronald G. Ehrenberg

: [Excerpt] Why should academic institutions or their faculty care about the end of mandatory retirement for tenured faculty, which became effective in January 1994? From the perspective of an individual tenured faculty member who wants to continue her career beyond age seventy, the elimination is a welcome event. In the past, faculty members who wanted to remain active after reaching seventy had to negotiate their status with institutions that were under no legal obligation to allow them to continue. Now, however, tenured faculty members have the legal right to continue indefinitely in their tenured appointments. From the point of …


American Higher Education In Transition, Ronald G. Ehrenberg Sep 2012

American Higher Education In Transition, Ronald G. Ehrenberg

Ronald G. Ehrenberg

[Excerpt] In public higher education, tuition increases in recent decades have barely offset a long-run decline in state appropriations per full-time equivalent student. State appropriations per full-time equivalent student at public higher educational institutions averaged $6,454 in fiscal year 2010; at its peak in fiscal year 1987, the comparable number (in constant dollars) was $7,993 (State Higher Education Executive Officers 2011, figure 3), translating into a decline of 19 percent over the period. Even if one leaves out the "Great Recession," real state appropriations per full-time equivalent student were still lower in fiscal year 2008 than they were 20 years …


Do Historically Black Institutions Of Higher Education Confer Unique Advantages On Black Students? An Initial Analysis, Ronald G. Ehrenberg, Donna S. Rothstein Sep 2012

Do Historically Black Institutions Of Higher Education Confer Unique Advantages On Black Students? An Initial Analysis, Ronald G. Ehrenberg, Donna S. Rothstein

Ronald G. Ehrenberg

[Excerpt] Despite the declining relative importance of HBIs in the production of black bachelor's degrees, in recent years they have become the subject of intense public policy debate for two reasons. First, court cases have been filed in a number of southern states that assert that black students continue to be underrepresented at traditionally white public institutions, that discriminatory admissions criteria are used by these institutions to exclude black students (e.g., basing admissions only on test scores and not also on grades), and that per student funding levels, program availability, and library facilities are substantially poorer at public HBIs than …


Financial Forces And The Future Of American Higher Education, Ronald G. Ehrenberg, Michael J. Rizzo Sep 2012

Financial Forces And The Future Of American Higher Education, Ronald G. Ehrenberg, Michael J. Rizzo

Ronald G. Ehrenberg

Recent shifts in state funding are altering the most basic realities of American higher education, from student access to faculty research.


Don't Blame Faculty For High Tuition: The Annual Report On The Economic Status Of The Profession, 2003-04, Ronald Ehrenberg Sep 2012

Don't Blame Faculty For High Tuition: The Annual Report On The Economic Status Of The Profession, 2003-04, Ronald Ehrenberg

Ronald G. Ehrenberg

[Excerpt] The bottom line is that although faculty and staff salary in-creases obviously contribute to increases in tuition, other factors have played more important roles during the last quarter century. These factors include the escalating costs of benefits for all employees, reductions in state support of public institutions, growing institutional financial-aid costs, expansion of the science and research infrastructure at research universities, and the increasing costs of information technology. If tuition and fee increases had been held to the rate of average faculty salary increases during this period, average tuition and fees would be substantially lower today in both the …


Career's End: A Survey Of Faculty Retirement Policies, Ronald G. Ehrenberg Sep 2012

Career's End: A Survey Of Faculty Retirement Policies, Ronald G. Ehrenberg

Ronald G. Ehrenberg

There are almost as many ways to retire from the academy as there are types of schools. But, as a recent study shows, institutional planning can prevent unpleasant surprises.


Unequal Progress: The Annual Report On The Economic Status Of The Profession 2002-03, Ronald Ehrenberg Sep 2012

Unequal Progress: The Annual Report On The Economic Status Of The Profession 2002-03, Ronald Ehrenberg

Ronald G. Ehrenberg

[Excerpt] Most colleges and universities adopted budgets for the 2002-03 academic year in the spring and early summer of 2002. At that time, a pessimist might have cited several factors – negative rates of return from institutional endowments, a rising unemployment rate, an economic recession, and large increases in college and university enrollments, for example - to predict that faculty members would not see their earnings increase substantially in real terms in the coming year. The good news is that, overall and on average, the pessimists' worst fears proved incorrect. The bad news is that the overall aver-ages don't tell …