Higher Ed
Higher education is in the middle of something. And it is not a slow change either. Fresh from rebounding back from COVID, there have been fundamental changes starting with a spate of small colleges shutting down to declining enrollments in parts of the country. The sticker-price tuition has risen faster than inflation for years, though the reality is that the inflation-adjusted real net-tuition has not changed significantly in a decade. However, government restrictions and cuts on loans and research grants have come at the same time as a loss of confidence in higher ed among the general public. The demographics are shifting, and the institutions that were built for a different century now need to adapt and develop new strategies and solutions. And then there is AI.
I am an institutional researcher – someone who looks at data, and does research at a university, on the university itself. I also have a background in applied microeconomics, specializing in industrial organization and labor economics, both of which provide great starting points to try to understand what is actually going on. The writing here will cover a swathe of topics related to higher ed – everything from enrollment trends, tuition policy, institutional finance, market structure, and the economics of college closures, mergers, and survival. Some posts will be analytical, others personal, and some will be purely educational.
Recent writing
Posts in this section will appear below as they are published. A few are in the queue.
On the horizon
A few pieces I am actively working on or expect to publish in the next month or two:
The demographic cliff is already here. A look at New England K-12 and college enrollment data and what it could mean for institutions of different types.
Monopolistic competition and the university market. Why every institution is simultaneously competing and not competing. One of the chapters from the microeconomics series, market structure applied to higher ed.
Mergers and Acquisitions in Higher Ed – The Northeastern strategy. Northeastern University has purchased/merged so as to open campuses in several cities over the last decade. This is a case study in how an incumbent IHE uses geographic expansion to expand.
Executive compensation in higher ed. Presidents and senior administrators at universities earn salaries that are often comparable to those at private firms (but without any stake in equity). This is an applied look at the principal-agent problem in these contexts.