TY  - JOUR
AU  - Webber,Douglas A.
AU  - Ehrenberg,Ronald G.
TI  - Do Expenditures Other Than Instructional Expenditures Affect Graduation and Persistence Rates in American Higher Education
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 15216
PY  - 2009
Y2  - August 2009
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w15216
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w15216.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Douglas A. Webber
Cornell Higher Education Resarch Institute
271 Ives Hall
Ithaca, NY 14853-3901
E-Mail: daw225@cornell.edu

Ronald G. Ehrenberg
Cornell Higher Education Research Institute
271 Ives Hall East
Ithaca, NY  14853-3901
Tel: 607/255-3026
Fax: 607 255 4496
E-Mail: rge2@cornell.edu
AB  - During the last two decades, median instructional spending per full-time equivalent (FTE) student at American 4-year colleges and universities has grown at a slower rate than median spending per FTE student in a number of other expenditure categories including academic support, student services and research. Our paper uses institutional level panel data and a variety of econometric approaches, including unconditional quantile regression methods, to analyze whether these non instructional expenditure categories influence graduation and first-year persistence rates of undergraduate students.

Our most important finding is that student service expenditures influence graduation and persistence rates and their marginal effects are higher for students at institutions with lower entrance test scores and higher Pell Grant expenditures per student. Put another way, their effects are largest at institutions that have lower current graduation and first year persistence rates. Simulations suggest that reallocating some funding from instruction to student services may enhance persistence and graduation rates at those institutions whose rates are currently below the medians in the sample.
ER  -