academic labor market

Doug Henwood dhenwood at panix.com
Wed Jul 3 15:35:52 PDT 2002


"Studying Ourselves: The Academic Labor Market"

BY: RONALD G. EHRENBERG

ILR-Cornell University

National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER)

Document: Available from the SSRN Electronic Paper Collection:

http://papers.ssrn.com/paper.taf?abstract_id=314636

Paper ID: NBER Working Paper No. W8965

Date: May 2002

Contact: RONALD G. EHRENBERG

Email: Mailto:rge2 at cornell.edu

Postal: ILR-Cornell University

Higher Education Research Institute

Ithaca, NY 14853-3901 UNITED STATES

Phone: 607-255-3026

Fax: 607-255-4496

ABSTRACT:

This paper addresses three academic labor market issues; the

declining salaries of faculty employed at public colleges and

universities relative to their private institution counterparts,

the growing dispersion of average faculty salaries across

academic institutions within both the public and private

sectors, and the impacts of the growing importance and costs of

science on the academic labor market and universities. The

decline in the salaries of faculty in public institutions

relative to their private sector counterparts is attributed

primarily to private institutions' tuition levels rising by more

in real terms than public institutions' tuition levels. The

growing dispersion in average faculty salaries across

institutions within each sector is attributed primarily to the

growing disperion of endowment per student levels across private

institutions and the growing dispersion of state appropriations

per student across public institutions. Finally, controlling for

other factors, those universities whose real research

expenditures per faculty from institutional funds are growing

the most experience the greatest increase in their

student/faculty ratio, other variables held constant.



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