In addition to the research I am going to be discussing in my blog, I am also going to find some sources I plan on using in my final paper, and tearing them apart here. The reason for doing this literature review is to put each and every source I plan on using through a rigorous test to make sure that when I construct my paper I do not use any bad sources that might affect the overall quality of my paper. To begin what I think is most crucial to any research is solidifying the background knowledge. Why waste time researching and compiling information on background knowledge when someone before you has already done the same thing! So I began my search by looking through various economic databases on college tuition. After reading through the history on college tuition summarized over and over in each paper , each one addressing something different about a time period and the ideas and beliefs on tuition I found what may touch on the history and growth of tuition and the many ideas per time period. The piece is titled How the Changing Market Structure of U.S. Higher Education Explains College Tuition by Harvard professor Caroline Hoxby. This is a great first source to find because she really summarizes the different time periods and their explanations about why tuition is rising. She also does combines various economic beliefs an readings to formulate a hypothesis as to why college tuition is rising. She looks at the increase in the competitive market of higher education and the market integration of universities. She then tries to justify the tuition rising in price due to the colleges having to compete and provide higher quality education which is what drives tuition to go up. She combines this with a study of how the universities who provided high quality education as well high subsidies and charge high tuition.
Here are a few quotes from Hoxby's piece I may want to use for my paper:
-"Market integration causes the average college, and even more the initially selective college, to supply a more expensive education, to students of higher ability who receive higher "wages" for their inputs and pay a higher price for their education"(Hoxby 39).
-"Colleges have been moving away from generic liberal arts curricula towards "market niches", where they serve particular student populations or particular vocational needs"(Hoxby 41).
-"These changes are beyond the control of any individual college are unlikely to be reversed. An increasing share of college choices are constrained by increasingly intense market forces"(Hoxby 41).
-"Tuition rises with demand, but market power explanations suggest that colleges take advantage of increased demand to increase their rents. If instead colleges are losing market power over time, then tuition is rising because the open market has ignited quality control"(Hoxby 7).
This material overall comes from a credible ivy league professor who has written 2 other papers on the topic of tuition rising in colleges. As well as publish many papers she has done a TED talk. I plan to use this in my research proposal in attempt to provide an example of how the cost of tuition is not in fact rising but due to the demand increasing has increased in dollar value but not for nothing.
Work Cited:
Hoxby, Caroline. “How the Changing Market Structure of U.S. Higher Education Explains College Tuition.” NBER digest, 1997, doi:10.3386/w6323.
PLEASE FIX YOUR BACKGROUND. The text is completely unreadable. Did you look at it after you wrote it? Can you read it?
ReplyDeleteAs I said in class, you will do much better with black text on a white background. White text on dark background is hard to read. And black on black is impossible to read.
That said, this is not a very good article to use to analyze the current economics of higher education. It is 20 years old -- probably written around the time you were born. Is that really the best source you can find? How does it fit with your argument?