I've been most drawn to the cost disease argument in the past couple years. I'd think the best way to measure that would be the cost of per capital salaries in general, and college educated salaries in particular (e.g. faculty but also staff). I wish I had data to drop in here, but I don't, so unfortunately I am not much help.
I am drafting a post on this! Tomorrow I'm posting about the wage share of expenditures per category, and next week or the week after will be the wages of the people in various categories. It won't exactly track with college-educated or not, but maybe it'll be close to what you're hoping for. I'm happy to cut the data further too, after you see the post and tell me what you think of it. Thanks for reading!
I can't wait to read it. It will be really valuable. One thing, though: I didn't really buy your argument that looking at instructional expenditure was a good test of whether cost disease was going on or not. Because cost disease can be happening to colleges in the other categories as well. Am I wrong?
Agreed. I think we should see it most strongly in instruction, because at least at liberal arts colleges there are usually hard limits on productivity in instruction (i.e. caps on the number of students per class AND caps on the number of courses per professor per year), but we could see it in other areas too (like institutional support, if you think all those managers are just making make-work). My post tomorrow disaggregates the wage share by expenditure category! Let me know what you think of it!
I've been most drawn to the cost disease argument in the past couple years. I'd think the best way to measure that would be the cost of per capital salaries in general, and college educated salaries in particular (e.g. faculty but also staff). I wish I had data to drop in here, but I don't, so unfortunately I am not much help.
I am drafting a post on this! Tomorrow I'm posting about the wage share of expenditures per category, and next week or the week after will be the wages of the people in various categories. It won't exactly track with college-educated or not, but maybe it'll be close to what you're hoping for. I'm happy to cut the data further too, after you see the post and tell me what you think of it. Thanks for reading!
I can't wait to read it. It will be really valuable. One thing, though: I didn't really buy your argument that looking at instructional expenditure was a good test of whether cost disease was going on or not. Because cost disease can be happening to colleges in the other categories as well. Am I wrong?
Agreed. I think we should see it most strongly in instruction, because at least at liberal arts colleges there are usually hard limits on productivity in instruction (i.e. caps on the number of students per class AND caps on the number of courses per professor per year), but we could see it in other areas too (like institutional support, if you think all those managers are just making make-work). My post tomorrow disaggregates the wage share by expenditure category! Let me know what you think of it!