Since the early 1980s, the rapidly increasing cost of the college, coupled with what many saw as insufficient attention to teaching, led to a barrage of protest. Buy the best looks actually behind these criticisms - the economic factors that are actually driving institutions that are described as machines without brakes.

In his design, Charles Clotfelter studies the rise in spending in the arts and sciences in four elite institutions: Harvard, Duke, Chicago and Carlton. Argues that rising costs have nothing to do with increasing faculty salaries or low productivity compared to large-scale efforts to improve quality, provide new services to students, pay for large investments in new facilities and equipment (including computers), and ensure income-earning students Low through expensive financial aid.

In Clotfelter's view, rising costs arise from the aspirations of noble institutions, and have become possible by steadily increasing demand for places in elite colleges and universities in the country. Only if this demand is slowed down will universities be pressed for discounts or competencies.

Buying the best is the first study to use the internal historical records of certain institutions, as opposed to the unreliable aggregate records provided by the federal government for the use of investigative researchers. As such, you have the advantage of allowing Clotfiler to draw more realistic conclusions from what has been reported so far.

While acknowledging the obvious shortcomings of a small sample, Clotfelter points out that the institutions studied are important for the disproportionate impact on them, and similar elite institutions, engaged in research and training of future leaders. The book contains an introduction by William G.

Bowen, president of the Mellon Foundation, and Harold T. Shapiro, President of Princeton University.

"The concern about rising costs goes like a thread through the countless criticisms of higher education that have been published in recent years ... One of the great contributions of Clotfelter's work is the rejection of easy explanations of the problems that concern us.

, Those who are responsible for the future of higher education and observers who are still expecting a wider range of effort from certain colleges and universities can now adjust their focus.An analysis, we can face more directly (with less romantic) the real options ahead and we seek to employ limited resources more effectively In the service of teaching and research. " - William J. Bowen, President of Mellon Foundation, Harold T.

Shapiro, President of Princeton University, from the foreword originally published in 1996. The Princeton Legacy Library uses state-of-the-art printing technology to make it available again to the deceptive printed books of the Princeton University print list.

These versions preserve the original texts of these important books as they are presented in consistent versions of paperback and printed copies. The Princeton Legacy Library aims to increase access to the rich scientific heritage found in thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905..

I want that book.