Project on Higher Education meets.

• Position: Dec 5, 1997

Members and guests of the NBER's Project on Higher Education, directed by NBER Research Associate Charles T. Clotfelter, also of Duke University, gathered in Cambridge on December 5, 1997. Their day-long meeting covered the following topics:

Charlotte Kuh, National Research Council, "Tenure Track and Non-Regular Faculty Employment Among Ph.D.s"

Discussant: John Siegfried, Vanderbilt University

Sandra Baum, Skidmore College, "The National Student Loan Survey: The Attitudes and Lifestyles of Borrowers in Repayment"

Discussant: Ronald G. Ehrenberg, NBER and Cornell University

Thomas J. Kane, NBER and Harvard University; and Cecilia E. Rouse and Douglas O. Staiger, NBER and Princeton University, "Estimating Returns to Schooling When Schooling is Misreported"

Discussant: Richard Murnane, NBER and Harvard University

Eric A. Hanushek, NBER and University of Rochester; and Ban Chuan Cheah and Charles Ka Yui Leung, University of Rochester, "Redistribution Through Education and Other Transfer Mechanisms"

Discussant: Michael Rothschild, NBER and Princeton University

Andrew Dick, University of Rochester; and Aaron Edlin and Eric Emch, University of California, Berkeley, "Savings Incentives in College Financial Aid"

Discussant: Malcolm Getz, Vanderbilt University

Sarah E. Turner, University of Virginia, and William G. Bowen, The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, "Choice of Major: The Changing (Unchanging) Gender Gap"

Discussant: Paula Stephan, Georgia State University

Over the past 14 years, employment in adjunct, part-time, and nontenure track jobs among Ph.D.s has grown steadily. This growth has occurred at the same time that the growth of tenure track academic employment has stagnated or been very slow. Kuh documents that change, and looks at the characteristics of various segments of the doctoral work force. It turns out that full time nontenure-track jobs primarily are research jobs, at least in the science and engineering fields. Part-time and adjunct jobs are primarily teaching positions. This change in the composition of academic employment affects the nature of the academic enterprise, which still relies on regular faculty for academic governance.

Baum reports on the responses of 1,100 student loan borrowers to a survey conducted during the summer of 1996. Average debt levels have risen sharply over the last decade, but they conceal considerable variance in borrowing patterns, with a small proportion of borrowers having very high debt levels. About...