An invaluable primer on the role economic reasoning plays in campus
debate and decision making
Campus Economics provides college and university administrators,
trustees, and faculty with an essential understanding of how college
finances actually work. Sandy Baum and Michael McPherson explain the
concepts needed to analyze the pros, the cons, and the trade-offs of
difficult decisions, and offer a common language for discussing the many
challenges confronting institutions of higher learning today, from
COVID-19 to funding cuts and declining enrollments.
Emphasizing the unique characteristics of the academic enterprise and
the primacy of the institutional mission, Baum and McPherson use
economic concepts such as opportunity cost and decisions at the margin
to facilitate conversations about how best to ensure an institution's
ongoing success. The problems facing higher education are more urgent
than ever before, but the underlying issues are the same in good times
and bad. Baum and McPherson give nontechnical, user-friendly guidance
for navigating all kinds of economic conditions and draw on real-world
examples of campus issues to illustrate both institutional constraints
and untapped opportunities.
Campus Economics helps faculty, administrators, trustees, and
government policymakers engage in constructive dialogue that can lead to
decisions that align finite resources with the pursuit of the
institutional mission.
