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Randy Hodson’s research on workplace inequalities and dignity at work asks vital questions about the capacity of employment to provide the resources needed to support a decent life. A decent life involves not merely the capacity to meet basic needs but also the possibility of investing in upward mobility, for example by pursuing a college degree. Rising employment inequalities and slow-growing wages in the United States over the past several decades have challenged the capacity of ordinary workers to make these investments. Yet worries about college affordability are more likely to be expressed as a concern over the price of schooling than as a concern over the returns to work. In this chapter, I conduct an historical analysis of trends in the costs of college compared to trends in wages from the 1970s to the 2000s in order to evaluate how stagnating wages affected the possibilities for paying for college, using several different data sources on college costs and wages. I focus on the question of how much money a student worker could earn toward the costs of college. I show that over time student work became a significantly less lucrative undertaking and would have covered less of the costs of college over time even if college costs had remained stable. I conclude that we must pay attention to how the jobs crisis affects a range of institutions and growing stratification in opportunity in America. As Randy Hodson argued in his voluminous research, dignity at work has far-reaching consequences for the chances of a decent life.

The high value that Japanese place upon college prestige suggests that Japanese families will do whatever it takes to gain entry into the nation’s top colleges, including paying the high costs of preparation, tuition, or relocation. Of all the costs confronting parents of college-bound students, the greatest is that of migration, or the cost of attending college away from home. I use a 1995 cross-sectional dataset to examine how the pursuit of college quality factors into migration decisions among college students in Japan. My findings clearly show that the difference in university resources across regions is an important factor in determining migration decisions, while financial considerations are secondary.

The design and implementation of new strategic management initiatives, such as reengineering, have been common since the publication of Hammer and Champy’s (1993) popular book on reengineering. In the process of designing and implementing these new initiatives, however, managers have virtually ignored the cost management system. Activity‐based management (ABM) is a system that incorporates many of the concepts of strategic management reengineering and applies them to cost management. ABM consists of two viewpoints: a cost view and a process view. ABM is both an accurate cost accounting system (the cost view) and a performance evaluation tool (the process view). This paper presents the ten steps to design and implement an ABM system and offers an actual application.

Researchers have conducted numerous studies on workplace bullying (Björkqvist, Österman, & Hjelt-Bäck, 1994; Branch, Ramsay, & Barker, 2013; Cowan, 2012; Duffy & Sperry, 2007; Fritz, 2014; Harvey, et al., 2006; Liefooghe, 2010; Matthiesen & Einarsen, 2007; Yamada, 2000; Zabrodska & Kveton, 2013). Other studies specifically examined the corporate sector, European trends, and the impact on health and wellness for staff facing workplace bullying (Constanti & Gibbs, 2004; Djurkovic, McCormack, & Casimir, 2008; Query & Hanely, 2010; Thomas, 2005); yet, few studies considered the impact of workplace bullying on American higher education. More specifically, no empirical studies considered the impact of workplace bullying in America’s community colleges. Consequently, Hollis has replicated her study of four-year colleges and universities (2015) and applied the procedures to the community college setting. Consistent with the findings from respondents at four-year colleges and universities (n = 401), this data set revealed that community college respondents (n = 200) proportionally face workplace bullying as well. Sixty-two percent of respondents of four-year colleges and universities reported being affected by workplace bullying, while 64% of community colleges participants reported being affected by workplace bullying. Arguably, the impact on the community college and the first-generation students who pursue a community college education might be more severe as community colleges have fewer resources than four-year colleges and universities to spend on employee disengagement.

There has been a public outcry in recent years for better accountability of resources consumed for higher education. Legislators in various states have responded with performance criteria and mandates for accountability. It is hoped that through such measures, universities will become better custodians of public funds leading to better and more efficient utilization of limited resources. The criteria developed is diverse and touches upon a variety of issues. However, their effectiveness in providing change is not yet tested. Through an in‐depth review of the university accounting system, we propose here that the missing link is financial accountability in the traditional responsibility accounting/managerial accounting approach for assessing performance and seeking improvement.

As demand for access to colleges and universities prompts higher education systems for creative and efficient solutions, we examine technology-centric approaches to education delivery and their implications for policy, student outcomes, and resource allocation. Our work is framed by Kingdon’s adapted multiple streams theory of national policymaking. However, the real elephant in the room may be the skyrocketing costs of administration that may need wrangling before resources can be directed to the future potential savings obtained through developing infrastructure for, and delivery of, tech-centric teaching approaches. We provide examples and strategies, policy implications, and recommendations for research and practice.

As students increasingly incur debt to finance their undergraduate education, there is heightened concern about the long-term implications of loans on borrowers, especially borrowers from low socioeconomic backgrounds. Drawing upon the concepts of cultural capital and habitus (Bourdieu & Passeron, 1977), this research explores how student debt and social class intersect and affect individuals’ trajectory into adulthood. Based on 50 interviews with young adults who incurred $30,000–180,000 in undergraduate debt and who were from varying social classes, the findings are presented in terms of a categorization schema (income level by level of cultural capital) and a conceptual model of borrowing. The results illustrate the inequitable payoff that college and debt can have for borrowers with varying levels of cultural resources, with borrowers from low-income, low cultural capital backgrounds more likely to struggle throughout and after college with their loans.

Regardless of how they are budgeted, information technology (IT) costs must be paid. Most schools offer some computing services at no cost to the individual or unit and some that are charged back to users and units. Typically, common good services are centrally funded, and services that differentially benefit specific individuals or units are charged for. How services are funded often reflects a school’s philosophy about IT and about finances. Preferably, IT funding mechanisms deliberately help shape and influence an institution’s IT and services philosophy, as opposed to an IT or service philosophy being unintentionally shaped by fiscal policies that follow no particular strategy. Levying fees to users on an individual or departmental basis may yield a different demand and expectation of IT services than when costs are borne by a central budget. Quantity and quality, degree of centralization, and administrative complexity of services are major variables in determining funding. Also at stake is the degree to which an institution wishes to endorse, suppress, control or expand IT services. These issues are specifically illustrated through a case study of the formulation of a new budget and cost accounting model to both finance an institution‐wide network upgrade and to maintain that network.

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the impact of AACSB accreditation on the autonomy and costs of limited resource institutions whose missions are primarily teaching.

To evaluate the research questions, a content analysis of all publications in the EBSCO Business Source Premier Database for the period January 1, 1990 through December 15, 2012 was conducted.

The findings indicate that in the process of becoming AACSB accredited, faculty members of the subject institutions shift their focus more toward research and less toward teaching activities, and that the institutions become less autonomous and more like their benchmark AACSB institutions. In addition, the costs of AACSB accreditation are likely to be significant for the subject institutions.

The findings of the study point to the need for additional theoretical and empirical research related to the research questions. First, there is a need to formulate a conceptual framework for clearly identifying and measuring the implicit and explicit costs, including all of the opportunity costs, associated with accreditation. In addition, there is a compelling need to develop a conceptual framework and measurement system that will allow business schools to better assess their quality and productivity. For limited resource institutions whose missions are primarily teaching this system should comport with the schools’ teaching missions.

The findings suggest that the subject institutions seeking AACSB accreditation should carefully consider a number of questions before pursing accreditation. First, is the institution's mission congruent with AACSB standards or will its mission have to be changed? If AACSB accreditation is deemed to be appropriate, how will the associated changes in resource needs and resource allocation serve to further the institution's mission? And, what are the incremental costs of accreditation, and does the institution have the resource base to sustain accreditation?

The study is the first to conduct a detailed content analysis to evaluate some of the costs and benefits of AACSB accreditation for limited resource institutions whose missions are primarily teaching.

Leaders at higher education institutions (HEIs) in the USA experience substantial pressure to contain costs while advancing their educational missions. The purpose of this paper is to explore the association between publicly stated academic cost-containment objectives found in HEI’s strategic plans and mission statements, which help to unify stakeholders and link strategy to an organization’s purpose.

This paper analyzes mission statements and strategic plans of 57 small, private HEIs in the Northeastern USA. HEIs in this sample published strategic plans with an explicit cost-containment goal. Mission statements were analyzed for readability. Thematic analysis was conducted using the balanced scorecard approach. Associations between a stated academic cost containment goal and mission statement themes are presented using logistic regression.

Mission statements of HEIs focused on academic cost containment are wordier and more varied. They tend not to mention “liberal arts,” a potential signal of a high-quality, high-cost school; less selective schools may be more likely to emphasize academic cost cutting.

This paper contributes to the literature demonstrating mission statements’ role in goal setting. Further, it considers college costs from college administrators’ perspectives. Given the small sample size, future work should expand the sample and use case studies to explore how mission shapes or constrains strategic objectives.

This is the first paper using qualitative and quantitative analysis to explore the association between the mission statements of small HEIs and academic cost containment goals in strategic plans, documents intended to support differentiation in a crowded market.