Avoiding Tunnel Vision in the Study of Higher Education Costs

Robert Archibald (rbarch@wm.edu) and David Feldman
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Robert Archibald: Department of Economics, College of William and Mary

No 53, Working Papers from Department of Economics, College of William and Mary

Abstract: Much of the literature on the causes of rising costs in higher education focuses on specific features and pathologies of decision-making within colleges and universities. We argue that this inward-looking focus on the specifics of higher education as an industry is a form of tunnel vision that can lead to poor public policy decisions. In this paper we show that cost disease and capital-skill complementarity are two crucially important causes of rising costs in higher education. These two economy-wide forces are something higher education shares with other skilled-labor-intensive services.

Keywords: discrete games; cost disease; capital-skill complementarity (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I22 I23 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 23 pages
Date: 2007-06-05
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-edu, nep-hrm and nep-lab
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