IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/cdl/cshedu/qt7pb373fw.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Can Public Research Universities Compete?

Author

Listed:
  • Brint, Steven

Abstract

Many leaders of public research universities worry about falling behind private research universities at a time when private university finances have improved dramatically and state support for higher education has declined. In this paper, I provide grounds for a more optimistic view of the competitive position of public research universities. I develop two "business models" for higher education: the public research university model is based on high volume of enrollments and low cost per student, while the private university model is based on low volume and high cost. I show that the private model, at its best, generates a high proportion of future leaders, stronger educational reputations, and leads to the accumulation of more institutional wealth. However, the public model remains viable and successful, principally because it typically generates larger faculties. The total societal contribution of public research universities, as measured by human capital development and research publication, is greater than that of private universities.

Suggested Citation

  • Brint, Steven, 2006. "Can Public Research Universities Compete?," University of California at Berkeley, Center for Studies in Higher Education qt7pb373fw, Center for Studies in Higher Education, UC Berkeley.
    • Handle: RePEc:cdl:cshedu:qt7pb373fw
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.escholarship.org/uc/item/7pb373fw.pdf;origin=repeccitec
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Liwen Vaughan & Debora Shaw, 2005. "Web citation data for impact assessment: A comparison of four science disciplines," Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 56(10), pages 1075-1087, August.
    2. Charles T. Clotfelter, 1996. "Buying the Best: Cost Escalation in Elite Higher Education," NBER Books, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc, number clot96-1.
    3. James Monks & Ronald G. Ehrenberg, 1999. "The Impact of US News and World Report College Rankings on Admission Outcomes and Pricing Decisions at Selective Private Institutions," NBER Working Papers 7227, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Gordon C. Winston, 1997. "Why Can't a College be More Like a Firm?," Williams Project on the Economics of Higher Education DP-42, Department of Economics, Williams College.
    2. Gordon Winston & David Zimmerman, 2004. "Peer Effects in Higher Education," NBER Chapters, in: College Choices: The Economics of Where to Go, When to Go, and How to Pay For It, pages 395-424, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    3. Tao, Hung-Lin, 2007. "Monetizing college reputation: The case of Taiwan's engineering and medical schools," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 26(2), pages 232-243, April.
    4. Takao Kato & Chad Sparber, 2013. "Quotas and Quality: The Effect of H-1B Visa Restrictions on the Pool of Prospective Undergraduate Students from Abroad," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 95(1), pages 109-126, March.
    5. Gordon C. Winston, 1999. "Subsidies, Hierarchy and Peers: The Awkward Economics of Higher Education," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 13(1), pages 13-36, Winter.
    6. Polishchuk, L., 2010. "Collective Reputation in Higher Education: An Equilibrium Model," Journal of the New Economic Association, New Economic Association, issue 7, pages 46-69.
    7. Tan, Clifford, 2013. "The contribution of university rankings to country's GDP per capita," MPRA Paper 53900, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    8. John Bailey Jones & Fang Yang, 2016. "Skill-Biased Technical Change and the Cost of Higher Education," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 34(3), pages 621-662.
    9. D. Randall Smith, 2019. "The Lure of Academic and Social Reputations Versus Athletic Success: Influences on Enrollment Yield at NCAA Division I Institutions," Research in Higher Education, Springer;Association for Institutional Research, vol. 60(6), pages 870-904, September.
    10. Brian Jacob & Brian McCall & Kevin Stange, 2018. "College as Country Club: Do Colleges Cater to Students’ Preferences for Consumption?," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 36(2), pages 309-348.
    11. Arnaud Chevalier & Xiaoxuan Jia, 2016. "Subject-Specific League Tables and Students' Application Decisions," Manchester School, University of Manchester, vol. 84(5), pages 600-620, September.
    12. Brigida Blasi & Sandra Romagnosi & Andrea Bonaccorsi, 2018. "Universities as celebrities? How the media select information from a large research assessment exercise," Science and Public Policy, Oxford University Press, vol. 45(4), pages 503-514.
    13. Gordon C. Winston, 1996. "The Economic Structure of Higher Education : Subsidies, Customer-Inputs, and Hierarchy," Williams Project on the Economics of Higher Education DP-40, Department of Economics, Williams College.
    14. Augusto Cerqua & Giorgio Di Pietro, 2017. "Natural disasters and university enrolment: evidence from L’Aquila earthquake," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 49(14), pages 1440-1457, March.
    15. Mike Thelwall, 2012. "Journal impact evaluation: a webometric perspective," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 92(2), pages 429-441, August.
    16. Jeongeun Kim, 2018. "The Functions and Dysfunctions of College Rankings: An Analysis of Institutional Expenditure," Research in Higher Education, Springer;Association for Institutional Research, vol. 59(1), pages 54-87, February.
    17. Kane, Thomas J., 1997. "Beyond Tax Relief: Long-Term Challenges in Financing Higher Education," National Tax Journal, National Tax Association, vol. 50(2), pages 335-49, June.
    18. Carolina Castagnetti & Luisa Rosti, 2011. "Who skims the cream of the Italian graduate crop? Wage employment versus self-employment," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 36(2), pages 223-234, February.
    19. Ellen Hazelkorn, 2011. "Measuring World-class Excellence and the Global Obsession with Rankings," Chapters, in: Roger King & Simon Marginson & Rajani Naidoo (ed.), Handbook on Globalization and Higher Education, chapter 29, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    20. Siegfried, John & Getz, Malcolm, 2006. "Where do the children of professors attend college?," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 25(2), pages 201-210, April.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cdl:cshedu:qt7pb373fw. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Lisa Schiff (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://escholarship.org/uc/cshe/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.