Publications

05 Jul 2016
Working Paper Summaries

The Impact of Campus Scandals on College Applications

Keywords: by Michael Luca, Patrick Rooney, and Jonathan Smith; Education

11 Aug 2016
Cold Call Podcast

Why College Rankings Keep Deans Awake at Night

the rating system. He said that federal financial aid should go to those schools that perform the best. The President eventually abandoned the idea after hearing from many college presidents that there is simply no way to reliably rate... View Details

Keywords: Re: William C. Kirby; Education

January 2009 (Revised May 2009)
Case

College Summit: Rethinking the Relationship Between Growth and Impact

By: Stacey M. Childress and Geoff Eckman Marietta

College Summit, a nonprofit organization "committed to the day when every student who can make it in college makes it to college," was faced with an important strategic decision. After growing rapidly at more than 30% a year for the last several years, founder and CEO,... View Details

Keywords: Secondary Education; Growth and Development Strategy; Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Mission and Purpose; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Nonprofit Organizations; Education Industry

05 May 2022
HBS Case

College Degrees: The Job Requirement Companies Seek, but Don't Really Need

Employers struggling to find workers during the current labor shortage might want to rethink their hiring criteria by taking a new look at job candidates who lack college degrees. American employers have routinely defaulted to requiring... View Details

Keywords: by Jay Fitzgerald

February 2022
Teaching Note

Linda Oubré at Whittier College

By: Debora L. Spar and Julia Comeau

Teaching Note for HBS Case No. 721-057. View Details

Keywords: Higher Education; Diversification; Board; California; United States

October 26, 2013
Editorial

A Welcome to College Parents

By: Debora L. Spar

February 2018
Teaching Note

Earlham College Basketball: Turnaround Strategy

By: Juan Alcacer and Anne Marie Knott

Teaching Note for HBS No. 718-497. View Details

May 1989
Article

The College Admissions Problem Revisited

By: A. E. Roth and M. Sotomayor

Keywords: Higher Education; Problems and Challenges

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January 1979 (Revised January 1992)
Case

Organizations in Crisis: Waterford College

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27 Jan 2015
Working Paper Summaries

College Admissions as Non-Price Competition: The Case of South Korea

Keywords: by Christopher Avery, Alvin E. Roth & Soohyung Lee; Education

September 2022
Background Note

Highly Selective College Admissions

By: Randolph B. Cohen

03 Nov 2016
Op-Ed

Forget About Making College Affordable; Make it a Good Investment

America’s more than $1 trillion in student loan debt. Indeed, some college graduates with student loans have not secured employment sufficiently remunerative to meet their financial obligations. Others are struggling to escape a heavy... View Details

Keywords: by Joseph Fuller; Education

01 Feb 2022
Cold Call Podcast

Making Diverse Leadership a Priority at Whittier College

Keywords: Re: Debora L. Spar

2016
Working Paper

College Tuition, Public Finance and New Business Starts

By: Gareth Olds

A growing public discourse cites the rising cost of education and student debt overhang as a contributor to slow economic growth. A parallel discussion explores the causes of the secular decline in business dynamism and entrepreneurship rates in the United States over... View Details

Keywords: Cost; Higher Education; Entrepreneurship

August 2000
Case

Developing Nurse Practitioners at the College of St. Catherine

By: Clayton M. Christensen and Sarah S. Khetani

Margaret McLaughlin has just begun her new appointment as the Dean of Health Professions at the College of St. Catherine in Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota. As an education leader, her charge is to develop Minnesota's health care workforce for the future. She is... View Details

Keywords: Trends; Debates; Decision Choices and Conditions; Higher Education; Teaching; Growth and Development; Technological Innovation; Leading Change; Goals and Objectives; Value Creation; Health Industry

Spring 2013
Article

Salience in Quality Disclosure: Evidence from the U.S. News College Rankings

By: Michael Luca and Jonathan Smith

How do rankings affect demand? This paper investigates the impact of college rankings, and the visibility of those rankings, on students' application decisions. Using natural experiments from U.S. News and World Report College Rankings, we present two main... View Details

Keywords: Rank and Position; Demand and Consumers; Quality; Decisions; Newspapers; United States

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2025
Working Paper

Workplace Segregation Between College and Non-college Workers

By: Francis Dillon, Edward L. Glaeser and William Kerr

We measure the level and growth of education segregation in American workplaces from 2000 to 2020. American workplaces show an educational segregation, measured by the degree to which the establishment has mostly workers of similar education levels, that is... View Details

Keywords: Isolation; Segregation; Mobility; Learning; Human Capital; Competency and Skills; Demographics

2022
Article

Values and Inequality: Prosocial Jobs and the College Wage Premium

By: Nathan Wilmers and Letian Zhang

Employers often recruit workers by invoking corporate social responsibility, organizational purpose, or other claims to a prosocial mission. In an era of substantial labor market inequality, commentators typically dismiss these claims as hypocritical: prosocial... View Details

Keywords: Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact; Equality and Inequality; Wages; Recruitment

2008
Working Paper

Unraveling Yields Inefficient Matchings: Evidence from Post-season College Football Bowls

By: Guillaume R. Frechette, Alvin E. Roth and M. Utku Unver

Many markets have "unraveled" and experienced inefficient, early, dispersed transactions, and subsequently developed institutions to delay transaction timing. However, it has previously proved difficult to measure and identify the resulting efficiency gains. Prior to... View Details

Keywords: Games, Gaming, and Gambling; Television Entertainment; Market Timing; Market Transactions; Marketplace Matching; Sports Industry