Are Universities Becoming More Unequal?

Yan Lau and Harvey Rosen
Additional contact information
Yan Lau: Reed College
Harvey Rosen: Princeton University

Working Papers from Princeton University, Department of Economics, Center for Economic Policy Studies.

Abstract: Observers have expressed concern about growing inequality in resources across universities. But are universities really becoming more unequal? We argue that the typical approach of examining endowment growth alone is not sensible. In line with the literature on household inequality, we focus instead on a comprehensive income measure. We find that although there is considerable inequality among institutions, concerns about the inexorable growth of inequality are overblown. Whether one looks at income, endowment wealth, or expenditure, inequality has been high but stable, exhibiting only negligible increases in recent years. Furthermore, there has been little mobility within the higher education sector.

JEL-codes: I23 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015-07
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-edu and nep-ltv
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://gceps.princeton.edu/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/245rosen.pdf

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pri:cepsud:245

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from Princeton University, Department of Economics, Center for Economic Policy Studies. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Bobray Bordelon ().