منابع بودجه و اثرات کیفی در آموزش عالی

Economists have suggested that the quality of higher education is not independent of the sources of funds used to fund that education. This paper examines the relationship between student measures of teaching quality and institutional revenue sources. The results indicate that a greater reliance on private subsides is associated with higher measures of teacher quality. A greater reliance on public subsidies, however, leads to lower teacher quality ratings. The importance of these results for shaping public policy decisions is also discussed.

More than two hundred years have passed since Adam Smith argued that the performance of institutions of higher education is influenced by the sources of their operating revenue. Economists and public policy-makers continue to debate the merits of private and public subsidies to higher education. However, there has been little research that examines the empirical relationship between the teaching performance of institutions of higher education and the sources of funds. This paper makes use of teaching quality ratings based on student surveys as a measure of performance. While student satisfaction is only one of many possible measures of academic performance, it is still an important measurement of educational performance. Students purchase education for many reasons. Higher education can be thought of as both a pure consumption good and as an investment in human capital. Students expect to obtain satisfaction from the consumption of the good and/or higher future earnings as a result of the consumption of the good. It is important to measure both the consumer satisfaction and consumer investment returns from the consumption of the good. The data in this paper focus on student satisfaction and not investment returns. The results confirm that the source of educational funds is related to students' perception of educational quality in an important manner.

As suggested by Smith, the results presented in this paper do find a relationship between revenue sources and teaching quality. However, a greater reliance on private funding and endowment income does not lead to lower teaching quality ratings as predicted. The results suggest private subsidies allow schools to be more selective and to devote more resources to individual students. Recent studies of higher education (McPherson, Winston, & Schapiro, 1993 and Clotfelter, 1996) indicate that many elite institutions have attempted to do exactly this in recent years. These results suggest that such efforts increase teaching quality as predicted by Friedman and Friedman (1979). Increased reliance on either state or federal government funding is associated with teaching quality. Consistent with the predictions of Stubblebine (1965) and Lindsay (1976), educational policy outcomes decided in the political market place are not likely to achieve the outcomes desired by the ultimate consumers of the subsidized good. In addition, by reducing the correlation between an institution's ultimate success and the satisfaction of the students, the government may allow the institution to pay less attention to student demands. However, these results should be interpreted with some caution. An increased reliance on either state or federal funding may be related to other institutional characteristics not controlled for in the analysis. These characteristics, and not the sources of funding, may be the primary influences driving student satisfaction. The public policy implications of these results are dependent on the purpose of educational subsidies. If the goal of government policy is to increase the quality of education, then alternative policies may be needed. However, if increasing access to education or enhancing basic research is the primary goal of public subsidies, then alternative programs may not be necessary. However, student perceptions of teaching quality are significantly impacted by the source of educational funds.