Blog (Kelchen on Education)

Which Private Colleges Always Lose Money?

I write this piece with the sounds of excavators and dump trucks in the background, as we are getting the 30-year-old pool at our house replaced this month. Pools should last a lot longer than that, but the original owner of the house decided to save money by installing the pool on top of a pile of logs and stumps left over from clearing the land. As those logs settled and decayed, the pool began to leak and we are left with a sizable bill to dig everything out and do things right. Even though we budgeted for this, it is still painful to see every load of junk exit and every load of gravel enter what I am calling the money pit.

On the higher education front, it has been a week with several announced or threatened closures. On Monday, the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee announced that it would close its Waukesha branch campus, marking at least the fourth of the 13 former University of Wisconsin Colleges to close in the last several years. Fontbonne University in St. Louis also announced its closure on Monday, although they get a lot of credit from me for giving students and at least some employees more than a year to adjust. Today, Northland College in Wisconsin announced that it will close at the end of this academic year unless they can raise $12 million—one-third of their annual budget—in the next three weeks. Closures just keep dripping out, and I am really concerned about a late wave of closures this spring once colleges finally get FAFSA information from the U.S. Department of Education.

The two topics blended together for me (along with my students’ budget analyses being due on Friday) on my run this morning, and I quickly jotted down the gist of this post. The coverage of both Fontbonne and Northland focused on the number of years that they had lost money, so I used IPEDS data to take a look at the operating margins (revenues minus expenses) private nonprofit colleges for the past ten years (2012-13 to 2021-22). This analysis included 924 institutions in the 50 states and Washington, DC and excluded colleges with any missing data or special-focus institutions based on the most recent Carnegie classifications.

You can download the dataset here, with highlighted colleges having closed since IPEDS data were collected.

The first thing is that the share of colleges with losses varied considerably across years, and a high share of losses is driven by investment losses. But with the exception of the pandemic-aided 2020-21 year, the next lowest year of operating losses was 2013-14 (9%). 2021-22 saw two-thirds of colleges post an operating loss as pandemic aid began to fade and investments had a rough year.

YearOperating loss (pct)
2012-1311.8
2013-149.1
2014-1531.6
2015-1656.2
2016-1712.8
2017-1820.4
2018-1937.2
2019-2043.8
2020-213.5
2021-2267.2

Below is the distribution of the number of years that each college posted an operating loss. Seventy-nine colleges never lost money, and most of these institutions have small endowments but growing enrollment. The modal college had an operating loss in three years, and 90% of colleges at least broke even in five years out of the last decade.

On the other hand, 19 colleges posted losses in eight or more years. Notably, nine of these colleges have closed in the last year or so, compared to nine of the other 905 colleges. (Let me know if I’m missing any obvious closures!) The list of colleges with eight or more closures is below, and closed colleges are highlighted.

NameStateLosses
Polytechnic University of Puerto Rico-OrlandoFL10
Roberts Wesleyan UniversityNY10
Trinity International University-FloridaFL9
Iowa Wesleyan UniversityIA9
Cambridge CollegeMA9
Fontbonne UniversityMO9
Medaille UniversityNY9
Bethany CollegeWV9
American Jewish UniversityCA8
Polytechnic University of Puerto Rico-MiamiFL8
Hawaii Pacific UniversityHI8
Great Lakes Christian CollegeMI8
Alliance UniversityNY8
Cazenovia CollegeNY8
Yeshiva UniversityNY8
Bacone CollegeOK8
University of Valley ForgePA8
Cardinal Stritch UniversityWI8
Alderson Broaddus UniversityWV8

On a related note, I wrote a piece for the Chronicle of Higher Education that reviews a new book that makes the case for more colleges declaring financial exigency in order to cut academic programs. I think that it is more important than ever for faculty, staff, and students to have a sense of the financial health of their college by being equipped to read budget documents and enrollment projections. That is crucial in order for shared governance to have a chance of working in difficult situations and to help avoid money pit situations like the one in my own backyard.

My 2024 Higher Education Finance Reading List

As a department head, I typically only teach one class per year. This spring, I get to teach my PhD class in higher education finance again—the eighth time that I have taught it in my eleven-year faculty career. Each time, I have updated the readings considerably as the field is moving quickly and I figure out what works best for the students. I use articles, working papers, news coverage, and other online resources to provide a current look at the state of higher education finance.

The format that I have taught the class using has also changed frequently over time due to what works best for the program and other events of the past several years. Here are reading lists from previous years and how I have taught the class:

Summer 2023: Accelerated five-week format, mix of asynchronous and online synchronous

Spring 2022: Online synchronous, meeting one evening per week

Spring 2020: Met one Saturday per month, started out in person but moved to Zoom halfway through due to the pandemic

Fall 2017: In person, meeting one evening per week

This spring, I am back to teaching the class in person one evening per week for the first time in nearly seven years. Here is the reading list I am assigning my students for the course. I link to the final versions of the articles whenever possible, but those without access to an academic library should note that earlier versions of many of these articles are available online via a quick Google search.

The higher education finance landscape and data sources

Chetty, R., Friedman, J. N., Saez, E., Turner, N., & Yagan, D. (2017). Mobility report cards: The role of colleges in intergenerational mobility. Working paper. (link)

Schanzenbach, D. W., Bauer, L., & Breitwieser, A. (2017). Eight economic facts on higher education. The Hamilton Project. (link)

Webber, D. A. (2021). A growing divide: The promise and pitfalls of higher education for the working class. The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 695, 94-106. (link)

Recommended data sources:

College Scorecard: https://collegescorecard.ed.gov/ (underlying data at https://collegescorecard.ed.gov/data/)

Equality of Opportunity Project: http://www.equality-of-opportunity.org/college

IPEDS: https://nces.ed.gov/ipeds/use-the-data

NCES Data Lab: https://nces.ed.gov/datalab/index.aspx

Postsecondary Value Commission’s Equitable Value Explorer: https://www.postsecondaryvalue.org/equitable-value-explorer/

ProPublica’s Nonprofit Explorer: https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/

Urban Institute’s Data Explorer: https://educationdata.urban.org/data-explorer/colleges/

Institutional budgeting

Barr, M.J., & McClellan, G.S. (2010). Understanding budgets. In Budgets and financial management in higher education (pp. 55-85). Jossey-Bass. (link)

Jaquette, O., Kramer II, D. A., & Curs, B. R. (2018). Growing the pie? The effect of responsibility center management on tuition revenue. The Journal of Higher Education, 89(5), 637-676. (link)

Rutherford, A., & Rabovsky, T. (2018). Does the motivation for market-based reform matter? The case of responsibility-centered management. Public Administration Review, 78(4), 626-639. (link)

University of Tennessee System’s FY2024 budget: https://finance.tennessee.edu/budget/documents/

University of Tennessee System’s FY2022 annual financial report: https://treasurer.tennessee.edu/reports/

UTK’s Budget Allocation Model (responsibility center management) website: https://budget.utk.edu/budget-allocation-model/

Higher education expenditures

Archibald, R. B., & Feldman, D. H. (2018). Drivers of the rising price of a college education. Midwestern Higher Education Compact. (link)

Commonfund Institute (2023). 2023 higher education price index. (link)

Griffith, A. L., & Rask, K. N. (2016). The effect of institutional expenditures on employment outcomes and earnings. Economic Inquiry, 54(4), 1931-1945. (link)

Hemelt, S. W., Stange, K. M., Furquim, F., Simon, A., & Sawyer, J. E. (2021). Why is math cheaper than English? Understanding cost differences in higher education. Journal of Labor Economics, 39(2), 397-435. (link)

Korn, M., Fuller, A., & Forsyth, J. S. (2023, August 10). Colleges spend like there’s no tomorrow. ‘These places are just devouring money.’ The Wall Street Journal. (link)

The financial viability of higher education

Britton, T., Rall, R. M., & Commodore, F. (2023). The keys to endurance: An investigation of the institutional factors relating to the persistence of Historically Black Colleges and Universities. The Journal of Higher Education, 94(3), 310-332. (link)

Ducoff, N. (2019, December 9). Students pay the price if a college fails. So why are we protecting failing institutions? The Hechinger Report. (link)

Jesse, D., & Bauman, D. (2023, November 13). This small college was out of options. Will its creditors give it a break? The Chronicle of Higher Education. (link)

Massachusetts Board of Higher Education (2019). Final report & recommendations. Transitions in higher education: Safeguarding the interest of students (THESIS). (link)

Sullivan, G. W., & Stergios, J. (2019). A risky proposal for private colleges: Ten reasons why the Board of Higher Education must rethink its plan. Pioneer Institute. (link)

Tarrant, M., Bray, N., & Katsinas, S. (2018). The invisible colleges revisited: An empirical review. The Journal of Higher Education, 89(3), 341-367. (link)

State and sources of revenue

Chakrabarti, R., Gorton, N., & Lovenheim, M. F. (2020). State investment in higher education: Effects on human capital formation, student debt, and long-term financial outcomes of students. National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper 27885. (link)

Gándara, D. (2023). “One of the weakest budget players in the state”: State funding of higher education at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis. (link)

Kelchen, R., Ortagus, J. C., Rosinger, K. O., Baker, D., & Lingo, M. (2023). The relationships between state higher education funding strategies and college access and success. Educational Researcher. (link)

Kunkle, K., & Laderman, S. (2023). State higher education finance: FY 2022. State Higher Education Executive Officers Association. (link)

Ortagus, J. C., Kelchen, R., Rosinger, K. O., & Voorhees, N. (2020). Performance-based funding in American higher education: A systematic synthesis of the intended and unintended consequences. Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, 42(4), 520-550. (link)

Tennessee’s outcomes-based funding formula: https://www.tn.gov/thec/bureaus/ppr/fiscal-policy/outcomes-based-funding-formula-resources/2020-25-obf.html

Federal sources of revenue

Bergman, P., Denning, J. T., & Manoli, D. (2019). Is information enough? The effect of information about education tax benefits on student outcomes. Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, 38(3), 706-731. (link)

Black, S. E., Turner, L. J., & Denning, J. T. (2023). PLUS or minus? The effect of graduate school loans on access, attainment, and prices. National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper 31291. (link)

Graddy-Reed, A., Feldman, M., Bercovitz, J., & Langford, W. S. (2021). The distribution of indirect cost recovery in academic research. Science and Public Policy, 48(3), 364-386. (link)

Kelchen, R., & Liu, Z. (2022). Did gainful employment regulations result in college and program closures? Education Finance and Policy, 17(3), 454-478. (link)

Ward, J. D. (2019). Intended and unintended consequences of for-profit college regulation: Examining the 90/10 rule. Journal of Student Financial Aid, 48(3), Article 4. (link)

College pricing, tuition revenue, and endowments

Baker, D. J. (2020). “Name and shame”: An effective strategy for college tuition accountability? Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, 42(3), 1-24. (link)

Baum, S., & Lee, V. (2018). Understanding endowments. Urban Institute. (link)

Delaney, T., & Marcotte, D. E. (2023). The cost of public higher education and college enrollment. The Journal of Higher Education. (link)

Kelchen, R., & Pingel, S. (2023). Examining the effects of tuition controls on student enrollment. Research in Higher Education. (link)

Knox, L. (2023, December 4). Seeking an enrollment Hail Mary, small colleges look to athletics. Inside Higher Ed. (link)

Ma, J., & Pender, M. (2023). Trends in college pricing and student aid 2023. (link)

Webber, D. A. (2017). State divestment and tuition at public institutions. Economics of Education Review, 60, 1-4. (link)

Financial aid policies, practices, and impacts

Anderson, D. M., Broton, K. M., Goldrick-Rab, S., & Kelchen, R. (2020). Experimental evidence on the impacts of need-based financial aid: Longitudinal assessment of the Wisconsin Scholars Grant. Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, 39(3), 720-739. (link)

Billings, M. S., Clayton, A. B., & Worsham, R. (2022). FAFSA and beyond: How advisers manage their administrative burden in the financial aid process. Journal of Student Financial Aid, 51(2), Article 2. (link)

Dynarski, S., Page, L. C., & Scott-Clayton, J. (2022). College costs, financial aid, and student decisions. National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper 30275. (link)

LaSota, R. R., Polanin, J. R., Perna, L. W., Austin, M. J., Steingut, R. R., & Rodgers, M. A. (2022). The effects of losing postsecondary student grant aid: Results from a systematic review. Educational Researcher, 51(2), 160-168. (link)

Page, L. C., Sacerdote, B. I, Goldrick-Rab, S., & Castleman, B. L. (2023). Financial aid nudges: A national experiment with informational interventions. Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, 45(2), 195-219. (link)

Student debt and financing college

Baker, D. J. (2019). When average is not enough: A case study examining the variation in the influences on undergraduate debt burden. AERA Open, 5(2), 1-26. (link)

Black, S. E., Denning, J. T., Dettling, L. J., Goodman, S., & Turner, L. (2020). Taking it to the limit: Effects of increased student loan availability on attainment, earnings, and financial well-being. American Economic Review, 113(12), 3357-3400. (link)

Boatman, A., Evans, B. J., & Soliz, A. (2017). Understanding loan aversion in education: Evidence from high school seniors, community college students, and adults. AERA Open, 3(1), 1-16. (link)

Dinerstein, M., Yannelis, C., & Chen, C. (2023). Debt moratoria: Evidence from student loan forbearance. National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper 31247. (link)

Levine, P. B., & Ritter, D. (2023). The racial wealth gap, financial aid, and college access. Journal of Policy Analysis and Management. (link)

Free college/college promise programs

Carruthers, C. K., Fox, W. F., & Jepsen, C. (2023). What Knox achieved: Estimated effects of tuition-free community college on attainment and earnings. The Journal of Human Resources. (link)

Gándara, D., & Li, A. Y. (2020). Promise for whom? “Free-college” programs and enrollments by race and gender classifications at public, 2-year colleges. Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, 42(4), 603-627. (link)

Monaghan, D. B. (2023). How well do students understand “free community college”? Promise programs as informational interventions. AERA Open, 9(1), 1-13. (link)

Murphy, R., Scott-Clayton, J., & Wyness, G. (2017). Lessons from the end of free college in England. Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution. (link)

Perna, L. W., Leigh, E. W., & Carroll, S. (2018). “Free college:” A new and improved state approach to increasing educational attainment? American Behavioral Scientist, 61(14), 1740-1756. (link)

Map of college promise/free college programs (Penn AHEAD) (link)

Returns to education

Conzelmann, J. G., Hemelt, S. W., Hershbein, B. J., Martin, S., Simon, A., & Stange, K. M. (2023). Grads on the go: Measuring college-specific labor markets for graduates. Journal of Policy Analysis and Management. (link)

Darity, Jr., W. A., & Underwood, M. (2021). Reconsidering the relationship between higher education, earnings, and productivity. Postsecondary Value Commission. (link)

Deterding, N. M., & Pedulla, D. S. (2016). Educational authority in the “open door” marketplace: Labor market consequences of for-profit, nonprofit, and fictional educational credentials. Sociology of Education, 89(3), 155-170. (link)

Ma, J., & Pender, M. (2023). Education pays 2023: The benefits of higher education for individuals and society. The College Board. (link)

Webber, D. A. (2016). Are college costs worth it? How ability, major, and debt affect the returns to schooling. Economics of Education Review, 53, 296-310. (link)

Discovering Issues with IPEDS Completions Data

The U.S. Department of Education’s Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) is a great resource in the field of higher education. While it is the foundation of much of my research, the data are self-reported by colleges and occasionally include errors or implausible values. A great example of some of the issues with IPEDS data is this recent Wall Street Journal analysis of the finances of flagship public universities. When their great reporting team started asking questions, colleges often said that their IPEDS submission was incorrect. That’s not good.

I received grants from Arnold Ventures over the summer to fund two new projects. One of them is examining the growth in master’s degree programs over time and the implications for students and taxpayers. (More on the other project sometime soon.) This led me to work with my sharp graduate research assistant Faith Barrett to dive into IPEDS program completions data.

As we worked to get the data ready for analysis, we noticed a surprisingly large number of master’s programs apparently being discontinued. Colleges can report zero graduates in a given year if the program still exists, so we assumed that programs with no data (instead of a reported zero) were discontinued. But we then looked at years immediately following the apparent discontinuation and there were again graduates. This suggests that programs with missing data periods between when graduates were reported are likely either a data entry error (failing to enter a positive number of graduates) or not reporting zero graduates in an active program instead of truly missing (a program discontinuation). This is not great news for IPEDS data quality.

We then took this a step further by attempting to find evidence that programs that seem to disappear and reappear actually still exist. We used the Wayback Machine (https://archive.org/web/) to look at institutional websites by year to see whether the apparently discontinued program appeared to be active in years without graduates. We found consistent evidence from websites that programs continued to exist during their hiatus in IPEDS data. To provide an example, the Mental and Social Health Services and Allied Professions master’s program at Rollins College did not report data for 2015 after reporting 25 graduates in 2013 and 24 graduates in 2014. They then reported 30 graduates in 2016, 26 graduates in 2017, 27 graduates in 2018, 26 graduates in 2019, and 22 graduates in 2020. Additionally, they had active program websites throughout the period, providing more evidence of a data error.

The table below shows the number of master’s programs (defined at the 4-digit Classification of Instructional Programs level) for each year between 2005 and 2020 after we dropped all programs that never reported any graduates during this period. The “likely true discontinuations” column consists of programs that never reported any graduates to IPEDS following a year of missing data. The “likely false discontinuations” column consists of programs that reported graduates to IPEDS in subsequent years, meaning that most of these are likely institutional reporting errors. These likely false discontinuations made up 31% of all discontinuations during the period, suggesting that data quality is not a trivial issue.

Number of active programs and discontinuations by year, 2005-2020.

YearNumber of programsLikely true discontinuationsLikely false discontinuations
200520,679195347
200621,167213568
200721,326567445
200821,852436257
200922,214861352
201022,449716357
201122,816634288
201223,640302121
201324,148368102
201424,76631189
201525,17041097
201625,80836166
201726,33534435
201826,80438441
201927,572581213
202027,88374223

For the purposes of our analyses, we will recode years of missing data for these likely false discontinuations to have zero graduates. This likely understates the number of graduates for some of these programs, but this conservative approach at least fixes issues with programs disappearing and reappearing when they should not be. Stay tuned for more fun findings from this project!

There are two broader takeaways from this post. First, researchers relying on program-level completions data should carefully check for likely data errors such as the ones that we found and figure out how to best address them in their own analyses. Second, this is yet another reminder that IPEDS data are not audited for quality and quite a few errors are in the data. As IPEDS data continue to be used to make decisions for practice and policy, it is essential to improve the quality of the data.

Four Big Questions on Carnegie Classifications Changes

It is World Series time, so why not devote a blog post to one of the most fascinating inside baseball conversations within higher education? The Carnegie classifications have served for decades as perhaps the most prominent way to group colleges into buckets of reasonably similar institutions. Indiana University hosted the Carnegie classifications for a long time, but they ended up moving to the American Council on Education after a rather bizarre planned move to Albion College never ended up happening.

After multiple blue-ribbon panels and meetings across the higher education industry, ACE gave the public the first glimpse of what the Carnegie classifications may look like in 2025. There is still a lot of uncertainty about the final results, but the most concrete change is to the coveted Research I university criteria. Instead of being based on ten criteria, the only two criteria moving forward will be $50 million in research expenditures and 70 doctorates awarded. Other classifications are also likely to change, but many more details are needed before I can comment.

After thinking about this for a while and having a great conversation with The Chronicle of Higher Education on the proposed changes, here are the four big questions that I have at this point.

(1) This changes incentives for research universities, and expect plenty of strategy to reach R1 status. Colleges have always been able to appeal their preliminary classification, and it seems like some institutions have successfully shifted from R2 to R1 status before the final classifications were released. But it is a lot easier to game two clearly defined metrics than a complicated set of variables hidden behind some complicated statistical analyses.

Consider the research expenditures figure, which comes from the National Science Foundation’s Higher Education Research and Development survey. HERD data include research expenditures from a range of sources, including federal, industry, foundation, state, and institutional sources. While the first four of these sources are difficult to manipulate, colleges can tweak the amount of institutional funding in a way that meaningfully increases total funding. For example, if faculty are expected to spend 40% of their time on research, the institution can legitimately be seen as putting 40% of that person’s salary on a research line. Some colleges appear to already do this. For example, I found 35 institutions that reported total research expenses between $40 million and $60 million in 2021. The range of institutionally-funded research expenses ranged between $3.7 million and $31.4 million. So there is probably some room for colleges to increase their figures in completely legitimate ways.

The previous R1 criteria heavily rewarded doctoral degree production in a wide range of fields, and now that is gone. This means that health science-focused institutions will now qualify for R1 status, and universities can now feel comfortable reducing their breadth of PhD programs without losing their coveted R1 status. Humanities PhD programs really didn’t need this change, but it is happening anyway.

(2) Will Research I status have less meaning as the club expands? Between 2005 and 2021, the number of universities classified as Research I increased from 96 to 146. The Chronicle’s data team estimates that the number would grow to approximately 168 in 2025 based on current data. Institutions that gain Research I status are darn proud of themselves and have used their newfound status to pursue additional funding. But as the group of Research I institutions continues to grow, expect distinctions within the group (such as AAU membership) to become more important markers of prestige.

(3) Will other classifications of colleges develop? The previous Carnegie classifications were fairly stable and predictable for decades, and this looks likely to change in a big way in 2025. This provides a rare opportunity for others to get into the game of trying to classify institutions into similar groups. Institutional researchers and professional associations may try to rely on the old classifications for a while if the new ones do not match their needs, but there is also the possibility that someone else develops a set of criteria for new classifications.

(4) How will college rankings respond? Both the U.S. News and Washington Monthly rankings have historically relied on Carnegie classifications to help group colleges, with the research university category being used to define national universities and the baccalaureate colleges/arts and sciences category defining liberal arts colleges. But as more colleges have gained research university status, the national university category has swelled to about 400 institutions. The creation of a new research college designation and the unclear fate of master’s and baccalaureate institutions classifications are going to force rankings teams to respond.

I’m not just writing this as a researcher in the higher ed field, as I have been the Washington Monthly data editor since 2012. I have some thinking ahead about how to best group colleges for meaningful comparisons. And ACE will be happy to have colleges stop calling them about how their classification affects where they are located in the U.S. News rankings (looking at you, High Point).

If you made it to the end of this piece, you’re as interested in this rather arcane topic as I am. It will be interesting to see how this all plays out over the next year or two.

Making Sense of Changes to the U.S. News Rankings Methodology

Standard disclaimer: I have been the data editor for Washington Monthly’s rankings since 2012. All thoughts here are solely my own.

College rankings season officially concluded today with the release of the newest year of rankings from U.S. News and World Report. I wrote last year about things that I was watching for in the rankings industry, particularly regarding colleges no longer voluntarily providing data to U.S. News. The largest ranker announced a while back that this year’s rankings would not be based on data provided by colleges, and that is mostly true. (More on this below.)

When I see a set of college rankings, I don’t even look at the position of individual colleges. (To be perfectly honest, I don’t pay attention to this when I put together the Washington Monthly rankings every year.) I look at the methodology to see what their priorities are and what has changed since last year. U.S. News usually puts together a really helpful list of metrics and weights, and this year is no exception. Here are my thoughts on changes to their methodology and how colleges might respond.

Everyone is focusing more on social mobility. Here, I will start by giving a shout-out to the new Wall Street Journal rankings, which were reconstituted this year after moving away from a partnership with Times Higher Education. Fully seventy percent of these rankings are tied to metrics of social mobility, with a massive survey of students and alumni (20%) and diversity metrics (10%) making up the remainder. Check them out if you haven’t already. I also like Money magazine’s rankings, which are focused on social mobility.

U.S. News creeps slower in the direction that other rankers have taken over the last decade by including a new metric of the share of graduates earning more than $32,000 per year (from the College Scorecard). They also added graduation rates for first-generation students using College Scorecard data, but this is just for students who received federal financial aid. This is a metric worth watching, especially as completion flags get better in the Scorecard data. (They may already be quite good enough.)

Colleges that did not provide data were evaluated slightly differently. After a well-publicized scandal involving Columbia University, U.S. News was moving away from data sources from the Common Data Set—a voluntary data system also involving Peterson’s and the College Board. U.S. News mostly moved away from the Common Data Set, but still primarily used it for the share of full-time faculty, faculty salaries, and student-to-faculty ratios. If colleges did not provide data, then U.S. News used IPEDS data. To give an example of the difference, here is what the methodology mentioned for the percentage of full-time faculty:

“Schools that declined to report faculty data to U.S. News were assessed on fall 2021 data reported to the IPEDS Human Resources survey. Besides being a year older, schools reporting to IPEDS are instructed to report on a broader group of faculty, including those in roles that typically have less interaction with undergraduates, such as part-time staff working in university hospitals.”

I don’t know if colleges are advantaged or disadvantaged by reporting Common Data Set data, but I would bet that institutional research offices around the country are running their analyses right now to see which method gives them a strategic advantage.

The reputation survey continues to struggle. One of the most criticized portions of the U.S. News rankings is their annual survey sent to college administrators with the instructions to judge the academic quality of other institutions. There is a long history of college leaders providing dubious ratings or trying to game the metrics by judging other institutions poorly. As a result, the response rate has declined from 68% in 1989 to 48% in 2009 and 30.8% this year. Notably, response rates were much lower at liberal arts colleges (28.6%) than national universities (44.1%).

Another interesting nugget from the methodology is the following:

“Whether a school submitted a peer assessment survey or statistical survey had no impact on the average peer score it received from other schools. However, new this year, nonresponders to the statistical survey who submitted peer surveys had their ratings of other schools excluded from the computations.”

To translate that into plain English, if a college does not provide data through the Common Data Set, the surveys their administrators complete get thrown out. That seems like an effort to tighten the screws a bit on CDS participation.

New research metrics! It looks like there is a new partnership with the publishing giant Elsevier to provide data on citation count and impact of publications for national universities only. It’s just four percent of the overall score, but I see this more of a preview of coming attractions for graduate program rankings than anything else. U.S. News is really vulnerable to a boycott among graduate programs in most fields, so introducing external data sources is a way to shore up that part of their portfolio.

What now? My biggest question is about whether institutions will cooperate in providing Common Data Set data (since apparently U.S. News would still really like to have it) and completing reputation surveys. The CDS data help flesh out institutional profiles and it’s a nice thing for U.S. News to have on their college profile pages. But dropping the reputation survey, which is worth 20% of the total score, would result in major changes. I have been surprised that efforts to stop cooperating with U.S. News have not centered on the reputation survey, but maybe that is coming in the future.

Otherwise, I expect to continue to see growth in the number of groups putting out rankings each year as the quantity and quality of federal data sources continue to improve. Just pay close attention to the methodology before promoting rankings!

The Potential Implications of Shorter Bachelor’s Degree Programs

I have been around higher education long enough that relatively few things would jolt me fully awake at 4:45 in the morning, which is typically when I read the news before getting out of bed for my daily workout. The news in last Friday’s Inside Higher Ed about the Northwest Commission on Colleges and Universities approving applications from two colleges to offer bachelor’s degree programs of between 90 and 94 credits instead of the typical 120 is exactly that. This would allow full-time students to more easily complete bachelor’s degrees in three years, although I expect more part-time students to take up these programs.

After reading this news, I immediately started thinking about the implications for the higher education ecosystem. (I do some of my best thinking while exercising.) Here are my thoughts after taking some more time to digest the issue.

Other accreditors will be pressured to follow suit. With the end of regional accreditation boundaries during the Trump administration, a few colleges have voluntarily turned to accreditors that have historically not served their area. And the U.S. Department of Education just cleared the first Florida public college to start the process of moving to a different accreditor following the state’s law that public institutions change accreditors every cycle. This means that any accreditor that does not follow with a process to allow for shorter degrees runs the risk of losing institutions to an accreditor that is willing to do so, and some states are likely to pressure colleges to switch to more amenable accreditors. But…

Will the U.S. Department of Education respond? During the Biden administration’s war of words with Florida regarding accreditation, ED posted a piece putting a stake in the ground against accreditation shopping. The Department of Education could potentially issue guidance saying that degrees shorter than historical norms would place accreditors under additional scrutiny, or this issue could come up when the federal National Advisory Committee on Institutional Quality and Integrity reviews accreditors. If ED responds, expect lawsuits as well as a great deal of pressure to state exactly how many credits must be required for a particular credential.

This upends the intricate network of cross-subsidies in higher education. It is a well-known fact within higher education industry insiders that certain activities subsidize others. For example, lower-division courses tend to subsidize upper-division courses and humanities and social science courses tend to subsidize laboratory science courses. Shorter bachelor’s degree programs in professional fields will cut the number of general education or elective courses that disproportionately come from lower-cost fields of study. It’s not just the lost tuition dollars that will affect colleges—it’s that the average cost of instruction per credit hour will likely rise.

This will primarily affect programs and colleges serving a larger share of adult learners. I don’t think that selective liberal arts colleges and flagship public universities will be cutting bachelor’s degrees too far below 120 credit hours unless state legislatures change funding models to require it. But students who are not looking for the traditional residential experience will be clamoring for quicker and cheaper options, and colleges that serve these students will follow suit. This will place pressures on the finances of colleges that are often struggling, but they will likely choose shorter programs over losing students entirely. Another item worth watching is whether there is a push to shorten master’s degrees to fewer than 30 credits. This could play out across most universities given fierce competition in this area.

Transfer students will see fewer benefits. It may become possible for a student who starts at a particular college to finish a bachelor’s degree in 90 credits by reducing general education credits. But since the number of credits within a major is less likely to change, transfer students will not benefit as much. Transfer students already frequently see a large number of credits not transfer in a way that helps them complete, and reducing general education credits may even make this worse.

I will be keeping a close eye on how this situation develops over the next few years, as it is potentially one of the biggest changes to occur in the last decade.

Changing Contributions to the Peer Review Process

One of the joys and challenges of being an academic is being able to help to shape the future of scholarship through the peer review process. Much has been written about the issues with academic peer review, most notably the limited incentives to spend time reviewing submissions and the increasing length of time between when an academic submits a paper to a journal and when they finally receive feedback. Heck, I wrote about this issue five years ago when The Review of Higher Education stopped accepting new submissions for about a year and a half due to this imbalance.

Throughout my ten years as a tenure-line faculty member, what I give to and take from the peer review system has changed considerably. When I was first starting on the tenure track, I was reliant on relatively quick reviews on my own submissions and was receiving 5-10 requests to review each year from legitimate journals. And since I keep a spreadsheet of the details of each journal submission, I can see that I received decisions on many articles within 2-4 months. I have never missed a deadline—typically around 30 days—to submit my thoughts as a reviewer, and have tried to accept as many requests as possible.

The peer review system changed considerably in the late 2010s. As I got closer to tenure, I received more requests to review (25-30 legitimate requests per year) and accepted them all because I was in a position to do so. Decisions on my article submissions moved more toward the 4-6 month range, which was frustrating but not a big deal for me because I figured that I had already met the standards for tenure and promotion. My philosophy at that point became to be a giver to the field because of the privileged position that I was in. I needed to review at least 2-3 times as many submissions as I submitted myself to account for multiple reviewers and so grad students and brand-new faculty did not need to review.

Going through the tenure and promotion process exposed me to another crucial kind of reviewing: external reviews of tenure applications. Most research-focused universities expect somewhere between three and eight external letters speaking to the quality of an applicant’s scholarship. I am grateful to the anonymous reviewers who accepted my department chair’s invitation to write, and now a part of my job most years as a department head is soliciting letters from some of the most accomplished (and busiest) scholars in the world.

All of this is to say that being a full professor in a field that loses a lot of full professors to full-time administrative positions (the joy of specializing in higher education!) means that my priorities for external service have changed. I am focusing my reviewing time and energy in two areas that are particularly well suited for full professors at the expense of accepting the majority of journal review requests that I receive.

The first is that I just started as an associate editor at Research in Higher Education and am thrilled to join a great leadership team after being on the editorial board for several years. I took this position because I am a big fan of the journal and I believe that we can work to improve the author experience in two key areas: keeping authors updated on the status of their submissions and quickly desk rejecting manuscripts that are outside of the scope of the journal. Researchers, please send us your best higher education manuscripts. And reviewers, please say yes if at all possible.

The second is to continue trying to accept as many requests as possible for reviewing faculty members for tenure and/or promotion. I am doing 6-8 reviews per year at this point, and it is a sizable task to review tenure packets and relevant departmental, college, and university standards. But as a department head, I am used to doing faculty evaluations and rather enjoy reading through different bylaws. It is an incredible honor to review great faculty from around the country, and it is a job that I take seriously. (Plus, as someone who solicits letters from colleagues, a little karma never hurts!)

As I prepare to enter my second decade as a faculty member, I wanted to share my thoughts about how my role has changed and will continue to change. My apologies to my fellow associate editors and editors at other journals (I will complete my term on the editorial board at The Review of Higher Education and continue to be active there), but I will say no to many of you where I would have gladly accepted a few years ago. I hope you all understand as I rebalance my scholarly portfolio to try to help the field as much as possible.

Time to Step Away from Twitter

I joined Twitter back in February 2013, when I was in the final stages of completing my PhD at Wisconsin and looking for an academic job. Since then, I can’t emphasize enough how valuable Twitter has been to me professionally. I have made connections with wonderful people, started research collaborations, and disseminated my work to policymakers and journalists. And over the last decade, my trusty account (@rkelchen) has accumulated tens of thousands of tweets and more than 15,000 followers. Not too shabby for a fairly boring professor.

But now it’s time for me to step away from Twitter for at least a while. The platform is becoming more unstable, with more frequent outages, more spam and trolls, and people I deeply respect leaving Twitter. Twitter’s implementation of new usage limits take away the remaining value. A limit of reading 1,000 tweets per day sounds like a lot, but it’s a drop in the bucket of what journalists, industry insiders, and interested parties see on a regular basis. Yes, I could pay for Twitter Blue and be able to not hit the usage limits, but that is not relevant if the people I engage with also don’t pay for Blue. This seems like a desperate gambit from the new Twitter management to get more paid subscriptions, but most users are too skeptical of the future of Twitter to sign up. I’m in that boat, as well.

So I’m stepping away from Twitter at this point due to the benefits just no longer being there. If the rate limit is lifted, I will probably end up coming back in the short term. But it just doesn’t seem like there is much of a future on Twitter, so I’m downloading my archive of tweets and preparing to move on.

Here are the other ways to connect with me:

Blog: I am going to rely more heavily on my blog in the future, as this is a medium that is much more stable. You can sign up to receive updates by clicking on “follow” on the bottom right portion of the page, or you can send me your e-mail address and I will sign you up.

LinkedIn: I will also be posting on LinkedIn more heavily, so you can follow me there. I have maintained a presence there for quite a few years, and it seems like quite a few higher ed professionals have made the move over there. The discussions are pretty good, and there seem to be fewer trolls.

Bluesky: What the heck…I’ll give it a shot. Thanks to Dan Collier for the invite, and my username is a bit different there.

TBD: Are there other social networks I should be trying? Mastodon seems really confusing, TikTok isn’t exactly encouraged in Tennessee, and Facebook/Instagram are too personal.

I won’t be deleting the Twitter app from my phone, so you can still tag or message me and I will respond at some point. But it won’t be my primary mode of communication any longer.

So long, Twitter. It’s been a great ride, and I look forward to staying in touch with you all through other means.

The Supreme Court Just Blocked Student Loan Forgiveness. Now What?

In a conclusion to one of the most consequential Supreme Court sessions in many years, the Court released an opinion today on the Biden administration’s proposed plan to forgive up to $20,000 in federal student loan debt per borrower. After dismissing one case due to lack of standing from the plaintiffs, the Court voted 6-3 to block forgiveness in the second case (giving standing based on the servicer MOHELA).

This decision will have major implications for higher education policy. Here are the things that I will be looking for in the coming months and years:

Restarting student loan repayment was already going to be a nightmare, and this creates additional challenges. The first challenge is the sheer number of borrowers re-entering repayment. Roughly 43 million Americans have federal student debt, and the Biden administration estimated that about 20 million would have their loans completely forgiven by their proposal. I have little confidence that the Department of Education, student loan servicers, and colleges can smoothly handle 23 million borrowers that would have remained, let alone 43 million. Federal Student Aid badly needed additional resources to manage a return to repayment, but Republicans were only willing to provide the funds if it came with a rider blocking its use on debt relief. Since both parties agreed on no riders in last year’s omnibus spending bill, no additional funding was provided.

In an overlooked item due to yesterday’s important decision on college admissions, the Department of Education released information about how they plan to manage the return to repayment. ED plans to give a 90-day grace period for missed payments and is considering future grace periods. Needless to say, Republicans are not happy and may go to court to stop grace periods based on the agreement in this summer’s debt ceiling legislation.

How many borrowers are willing to start making payments? There is going to be a group of people who are livid about having to resume payments after not getting the loan forgiveness they were expecting. I am expecting a substantial group of borrowers to not make any payments until they get to the brink of default—which could take a while. These borrowers may still hold out hope for another forgiveness effort (more on that in the next section) and they may not proactively reach out to servicers to update their information if they have moved since March 2020. A particularly interesting group is the 20 million students who would have received complete forgiveness, as the frustration factor is likely higher among this group than among students who knew they would still have a balance remaining under this plan.

As a note, with income-driven repayment, students at least in theory should be able to start making some payments. But adding an expense back to the monthly budget is painful and income-driven repayment is still complicated to navigate. So there will be challenges even among people who are not as upset about this decision.

How will Democrats respond? The progressive wing of the Democratic Party has been pressuring the Biden administration to forgive all student debt and immediately pivot to using the Higher Education Act instead of the HEROES Act. That is likely not happening given today’s court decision. But a few moderate Democrats voted in favor of a Republican-led resolution disapproving of debt forgiveness and ending the repayment pause. The Biden administration will point to its expanded income-driven repayment plan, which could also face legal challenges in light of this decision. Free college and debt forgiveness were key issues in the 2020 Democratic presidential primary, and they will continue to be key issues in contested Democratic primaries for the next several years.

How will Republicans respond? By the time you read this, there will be plenty of press releases from Republican politicians celebrating the discussion. But there are still concerns about a future administration trying another avenue to forgiveness, particularly through income-driven repayment. There are some thoughtful efforts among Republicans to maintain income-driven repayment while reversing most of the Biden administration’s proposed changes. But Republicans are also seeking to limit borrowing for graduate students, which is something that I have been expecting for years.  

This week’s Supreme Court decisions are likely to influence the direction of American higher education for years to come, and some of the influences are not going to be immediately obvious. But the items discussed above are going to play an outsized role in policy discussions for a good while.

My 2023 Higher Education Finance Reading List

I have the pleasure of teaching my PhD class in higher education finance again at Tennessee this summer. Our students take classes year-round, and I am offering the class in a condensed five-week format this summer to best meet the needs of our students. That means a lot of reading for all of us in a short period of time, but I’m excited as always for this class.

The last three times that I taught the course (spring 2022, spring 2020, and fall 2017), I shared my reading list for the class on this blog. I do not use a textbook for the course because the field is moving so quickly and there are more topics to cover than a textbook could ever include. Instead, I use articles, working papers, and other online resources to provide a current look at the state of higher education finance. As a result, the reading list for my class changes considerably each time.

Here is the reading list I am assigning my students for the course. I link to the final versions of the articles whenever possible, but those without access to an academic library should note that earlier versions of many of these articles are available online via a quick Google search.

The higher education finance landscape and data sources

Chetty, R., Friedman, J. N., Saez, E., Turner, N., & Yagan, D. (2017). Mobility report cards: The role of colleges in intergenerational mobility. Working paper. (link)

Schanzenbach, D. W., Bauer, L., & Breitwieser, A. (2017). Eight economic facts on higher education. The Hamilton Project. (link)

Webber, D. A. (2021). A growing divide: The promise and pitfalls of higher education for the working class. The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 695, 94-106. (link)

Recommended data sources:

College Scorecard: https://collegescorecard.ed.gov/ (underlying data at https://collegescorecard.ed.gov/data/)

Equality of Opportunity Project: http://www.equality-of-opportunity.org/college

IPEDS: https://nces.ed.gov/ipeds/use-the-data

NCES Data Lab: https://nces.ed.gov/datalab/index.aspx

Postsecondary Value Commission’s Equitable Value Explorer: https://www.postsecondaryvalue.org/equitable-value-explorer/

ProPublica’s Nonprofit Explorer: https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/

Urban Institute’s Data Explorer: https://educationdata.urban.org/data-explorer/colleges/

Institutional budgeting

Barr, M.J., & McClellan, G.S. (2010). Understanding budgets. In Budgets and financial management in higher education (pp. 55-85). Jossey-Bass. (link)

Jaquette, O., Kramer II, D. A., & Curs, B. R. (2018). Growing the pie? The effect of responsibility center management on tuition revenue. The Journal of Higher Education, 89(5), 637-676. (link)

Rutherford, A., & Rabovsky, T. (2018). Does the motivation for market-based reform matter? The case of responsibility-centered management. Public Administration Review, 78(4), 626-639. (link)

University of Tennessee System’s FY2023 budget: https://finance.tennessee.edu/budget/documents/

University of Tennessee System’s FY2022 annual financial report: https://treasurer.tennessee.edu/reports/

UTK’s Budget Allocation Model website: https://budget.utk.edu/budget-allocation-model/

Higher education expenditures

Archibald, R. B., & Feldman, D. H. (2018). Drivers of the rising price of a college education. Midwestern Higher Education Compact. (link)

Cheslock, J. J., & Knight, D. B. (2015). Diverging revenues, cascading expenditures, and ensuing subsidies: The unbalanced and growing financial strain of intercollegiate athletics on universities and their students. The Journal of Higher Education, 86(3), 417-447. (link)

Commonfund Institute (2021). 2021 higher education price index. (link)

Griffith, A. L., & Rask, K. N. (2016). The effect of institutional expenditures on employment outcomes and earnings. Economic Inquiry, 54(4), 1931-1945. (link)

Hemelt, S. W., Stange, K. M., Furquim, F., Simon, A., & Sawyer, J. E. (2021). Why is math cheaper than English? Understanding cost differences in higher education. Journal of Labor Economics, 39(2), 397-435. (link)

State sources of revenue

Chakrabarti, R., Gorton, N., & Lovenheim, M. F. (2020). State investment in higher education: Effects on human capital formation, student debt, and long-term financial outcomes of students. National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper 27885. (link)

Gándara, D. (2020). How the sausage is made: An examination of a state funding model design process. The Journal of Higher Education, 91(2), 192-221. (link)

Kelchen, R., Lingo, M., Baker, D., Rosinger, K. O., Ortagus, J. C., & Wu, J. (2023). A typology and landscape of state funding formulas for public colleges and universities from 2004 to 2020. InformEd States. (link)

Kunkle, K., & Laderman, S. (2023). State higher education finance: FY 2022. State Higher Education Executive Officers Association. (link)

Ortagus, J. C., Kelchen, R., Rosinger, K. O., & Voorhees, N. (2020). Performance-based funding in American higher education: A systematic synthesis of the intended and unintended consequences. Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, 42(4), 520-550. (link)

Shaw, K., Asher, L., & Murphy, S. (2023). Mapping community college finance systems to develop equitable and effective finance policy. HCM Strategists. (link)

Tennessee’s outcomes-based funding formula: https://www.tn.gov/thec/bureaus/ppr/fiscal-policy/outcomes-based-funding-formula-resources/2020-25-obf.html

Federal sources of revenue

Bergman, P., Denning, J. T., & Manoli, D. (2019). Is information enough? The effect of information about education tax benefits on student outcomes. Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, 38(3), 706-731. (link)

Black, S. E., Turner, L. J., & Denning, J. T. (2023). PLUS or minus? The effect of graduate school loans on access, attainment, and prices. National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper 31291. (link)

Graddy-Reed, A., Feldman, M., Bercovitz, J., & Langford, W. S. (2021). The distribution of indirect cost recovery in academic research. Science and Public Policy, 48(3), 364-386. (link)

Kelchen, R., & Liu, Z. (2022). Did gainful employment regulations result in college and program closures? Education Finance and Policy, 17(3), 454-478. (link)

Ward, J. D. (2019). Intended and unintended consequences of for-profit college regulation: Examining the 90/10 rule. Journal of Student Financial Aid, 48(3), Article 4. (link)

The financial viability of higher education

Ducoff, N. (2019, December 9). Students pay the price if a college fails. So why are we protecting failing institutions? The Hechinger Report. (link)

EY-Parthenon (2018). Transitions in higher education: Safeguarding the interests of students. (link)

Kelchen, R. (2020). Examining the feasibility of empirically predicting college closures. Brookings Institution. (link)

Massachusetts Board of Higher Education (2019). Final report & recommendations. Transitions in higher education: Safeguarding the interest of students (THESIS). (link)

Sullivan, G. W., & Stergios, J. (2019). A risky proposal for private colleges: Ten reasons why the Board of Higher Education must rethink its plan. Pioneer Institute. (link)

Tarrant, M., Bray, N., & Katsinas, S. (2018). The invisible colleges revisited: An empirical review. The Journal of Higher Education, 89(3), 341-367. (link)

College pricing, tuition revenue, and endowments

Baker, D. J. (2020). “Name and shame”: An effective strategy for college tuition accountability? Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, 42(3), 1-24. (link)

Baum, S., & Lee, V. (2018). Understanding endowments. Urban Institute. (link)

Cheslock, J. J., & Riggs, S. O. (2023). Ever-increasing listed tuition and institutional aid: The role of net price differentials by year of study. Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis. (link)

Hatch, B., Myskow, W., & Trivedi, I. (2022, August 15). Stopping the enrollment slide. The Chronicle of Higher Education. https://www.chronicle.com/article/stopping-the-slide.

Kramer II, D. A., Ortagus, J. C., & Lacy, T. A. (2018). Tuition-setting authority and broad-based merit aid: The effect of policy intersection on pricing strategies. Research in Higher Education, 59(4), 489-518. (link)

Ma, J., & Pender, M. (2022). Trends in college pricing and student aid 2021. The College Board. (link)

Webber, D. A. (2017). State divestment and tuition at public institutions. Economics of Education Review, 60, 1-4. (link)

Financial aid policies, practices, and impacts

Anderson, D. M., Broton, K. M., Goldrick-Rab, S., & Kelchen, R. (2020). Experimental evidence on the impacts of need-based financial aid: Longitudinal assessment of the Wisconsin Scholars Grant. Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, 39(3), 720-739. (link)

Bird, K., & Castleman, B. L. (2016). Here today, gone tomorrow? Investigating rates and patterns of financial aid renewal among college freshmen. Research in Higher Education, 57(4), 395-422. (link)

Dynarski, S., Page, L. C., & Scott-Clayton, J. (2022). College costs, financial aid, and student decisions. National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper 30275. (link)

Guzman-Alvarez, A., & Page, L. C. (2021). Disproportionate burden: Estimating the cost of FAFSA verification for public colleges and universities. Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, 43(3), 545-551. (link)

Kelchen, R., Goldrick-Rab, S., & Hosch, B. (2017). The costs of college attendance: Examining variation and consistency in institutional living cost allowances. The Journal of Higher Education, 88(6), 947-971. (link)

Student debt and financing college

Baker, D. J. (2019). When average is not enough: A case study examining the variation in the influences on undergraduate debt burden. AERA Open, 5(2), 1-26. (link)

Black, S. E., Denning, J. T., Dettling, L. J., Goodman, S., & Turner, L. (2020). Taking it to the limit: Effects of increased student loan availability on attainment, earnings, and financial well-being. National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper 27658. (link)

Boatman, A., Evans, B. J., & Soliz, A. (2017). Understanding loan aversion in education: Evidence from high school seniors, community college students, and adults. AERA Open, 3(1), 1-16. (link)

Ritter, D., & Webber, D. (2019). Modern income-share agreements in postsecondary education: Features, theory, applications. Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia Discussion Paper 19-06. (link)

Scott-Clayton, J. (2018). What accounts for gaps in student loan default, and what happens after. Brookings Institution Evidence Speaks Report #57. (link)

Returns to education

Darity, Jr., W. A., & Underwood, M. (2021). Reconsidering the relationship between higher education, earnings, and productivity. Postsecondary Value Commission. (link)

Deterding, N. M., & Pedulla, D. S. (2016). Educational authority in the “open door” marketplace: Labor market consequences of for-profit, nonprofit, and fictional educational credentials. Sociology of Education, 89(3), 155-170. (link)

Doyle, W. R., & Skinner, B. T. (2017). Does postsecondary education result in civic benefits? The Journal of Higher Education, 88(6), 863-893. (link)

Ma, J., & Pender, M. (2023). Education pays 2023: The benefits of higher education for individuals and society. The College Board. (link)

Webber, D. A. (2016). Are college costs worth it? How ability, major, and debt affect the returns to schooling. Economics of Education Review, 53, 296-310. (link)