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Americans now obtain college degrees at a higher rate than at any time in recent decades in the hopes of improving their career prospects. At the same time, the rising costs of an undergraduate education have increased dramatically, forcing students and families to take out often unmanageable levels of student debt. The cumulative amount of student debt reached nearly $1.5 trillion in 2017, and calls for student loan forgiveness have gained momentum. Yet public policy to address college affordability has been mixed. While some policymakers support more public funding to broaden educational access, others oppose this expansion. Noting that public opinion often shapes public policy, sociologists Natasha Quadlin and Brian Powell examine public opinion on who should shoulder the increasing costs of higher education and why. Who Should Pay? draws on a decade’s worth of public opinion surveys analyzing public attitudes about whether parents, students, or the government should be primarily responsible for funding higher education. Quadlin and Powell find that between 2010 and 2019, public opinion has shifted dramatically in favor of more government funding. In 2010, Americans overwhelming believed that parents and students were responsible for the costs of higher education. Less than a decade later, the percentage of Americans who believed that federal or state/local government should be the primary financial contributor has more than doubled. The authors contend that the rapidity of this change may be due to the effects of the 2008 financial crisis and the growing awareness of the social and economic costs of high levels of student debt. Quadlin and Powell also find increased public endorsement of shared responsibility between individuals and the government in paying for higher education. The authors additionally examine attitudes on the accessibility of college for all, whether higher education at public universities should be free, and whether college is worth the costs. Quadlin and Powell also explore why Americans hold these beliefs. They identify individualistic and collectivist world views that shape public perspectives on the questions of funding, accessibility, and worthiness of college. Those with more individualistic orientations believed parents and students should pay for college, and that if students want to attend college, then they should work hard and find ways to achieve their goals. Those with collectivist orientations believed in a model of shared responsibility – one in which the government takes a greater level of responsibility for funding education while acknowledging the social and economic barriers to obtaining a college degree for many students. The authors find that these belief systems differ among socio-demographic groups and that bias – sometimes unconscious and sometimes deliberate – regarding race and class affects responses from both individualistic and collectivist-oriented participants. Public opinion is typically very slow to change. Yet Who Should Pay? provides an illuminating account of just how quickly public opinion has shifted regarding the responsibility of paying for a college education and its implications for future generations of students.
Previously uncollected essays of an architect whose love of people, buildings, and nature was reflected in the places he built. Architect Charles Moore (1925-1993) was not only celebrated for his designs; he was also an admired writer and teacher. Though he wrote clearly and passionately about places, he was perhaps unique in avoiding the tone and stance of the personal manifesto. Through his buildings, books, and travels, Moore consistently sought insights into the questions that always underlie architecture and design: What does it mean to make a place, and how do we inhabit those places? How do we continue to build upon but respect the landscape? How do we reconcile democracy and private land ownership? What is original? What is taste? What is the relationship between past and present? How do we involve inhabitants in making places? Finally, what is public life? As the world becomes smaller, and the uniqueness of places and landscapes gives way to sameness, Moore's celebration of the vernacular and of the surprising are more relevant than ever.The pieces in this book span the years 1952 to 1993 and engage a myriad of topics and movements, such as contextualism, community participation, collaboration, environmentally sensitive design, and historic preservation. The essays in this book reflect as well Moore's scholarship, humanism, urbanity, and great wit.
Financial Strategy for Public Managers is a new generation textbook for financial management in the public sector. It offers a thorough, applied, and concise introduction to the essential financial concepts and analytical tools that today's effective public servants need to know. It starts "at the beginning" and assumes no prior knowledge or experience in financial management. Throughout the text, Kioko and Marlowe emphasize how financial information can and should inform every aspect of public sector strategy, from routine procurement decisions to budget preparation to program design to major new policy initiatives. They draw upon dozens of real-world examples, cases, and applied problems to bring that relationship between information and strategy to life. Unlike other public financial management texts, the authors also integrate foundational principles across the government, non-profit, and "hybrid/for-benefit" sectors. Coverage includes basic principles of accounting and financial reporting, preparing and analyzing financial statements, cost analysis, and the process and politics of budget preparation. The text also includes several large case studies appropriate for class discussion and/or graded assignments.
Early in the twenty-first century, a quiet revolution occurred. For the first time, the major developed economies began to invest more in intangible assets, like design, branding, and software, than in tangible assets, like machinery, buildings, and computers. For all sorts of businesses, the ability to deploy assets that one can neither see nor touch is increasingly the main source of long-term success. But this is not just a familiar story of the so-called new economy. Capitalism without Capital shows that the growing importance of intangible assets has also played a role in some of the larger economic changes of the past decade, including the growth in economic inequality and the stagnation of productivity. Jonathan Haskel and Stian Westlake explore the unusual economic characteristics of intangible investment and discuss how an economy rich in intangibles is fundamentally different from one based on tangibles. Capitalism without Capital concludes by outlining how managers, investors, and policymakers can exploit the characteristics of an intangible age to grow their businesses, portfolios, and economies.
"Enhancing the performance of the civil service has been a central objective of the United States since the Civil Service Reform Act of 1978 authorized a performance-based component to federal salary structures. In 2003, the National Commission on the Public Service, also known as the Volcker Commission, recommended that explicit pay-for-performance (PFP) systems be adopted more broadly throughout the federal government. The authors compare several proposals aimed at enhancing the role of PFP in the federal government: a White House proposal (the Working for America Act), which recommends that the entire federal workforce be converted to PFP systems by 2010; and three bills in the 110th Congress. This occasional paper examines the advantages and pitfalls of explicit PFP schemes compared with the largely seniority-based salary system that still covers more than half of federal civil servants. The authors consider why using PFP in the public sector is challenging, what can be learned from the social science literature, recent practical experience, and growing congressional opposition to PFP."--Rand web site
The government has acknowledged that its program of compensation and rewards is a roadblock in its movements to reinvent government operations. In its report, From Red Tape to Results: Creating a Government That Works Better and Costs Less, the National Performance Review recommends that government agencies design their own compensation programs to help improve operations. In New Strategies for Public Pay, leading experts examine current civil service compensation systems; analyze proposals for reform; discuss issues of equity and fairness, merit pay, collective bargaining, labor market influences, and more; and offer viable compensation alternatives, which have proven to work in private industry, to current government pay systems.
Only a few years ago, the U.S. financial system and economy were near collapse. Global financial institutions teetered and fell, while at once-mighty U.S. companies, panicked CEOs slashed jobs. The financial chaos inflicted catastrophic damage: double-digit unemployment; crashing house and stock prices; federal budget deficits in the trillions, and a wider gap between the country’s haves and have-nots. Today many Americans still feel shell-shocked. But while there remains much to be nervous and frustrated about, it is impressive how much progress has been made in righting the wrongs that got us into this mess. The economy is growing and steadily creating jobs; house prices are stable and stock prices are up; debt burdens have eased for most households and the financial system has shored up its foundations to an impressive degree. American companies are as competitive globally as they have been in a half century. This dramatic turn in the economy’s fortunes occurred because of what government did to stem the financial panic and combat the effects of Great Recession. Policymakers’ unprecedented actions – from Congress’ auto and bank bailouts and fiscal stimulus, to the Federal Reserve’s zero interest rates and quantitative easing – remain intensely controversial, but ultimately they will be judged a success. Serious problems remain, including the government’s mounting debt load and a burgeoning number of disenfranchised workers, but we are on our way to addressing them. Our economic future has arguably never been brighter.
In an assessment of the pros and cons of public sector privatization, Sclar (urban planning, Columbia U.), who is affiliated with the Economic Policy Institute in Washington, DC, warns that outsourcing services may not result in leaner US government. He examines alternatives and offers tips for public sector reform. Annotation copyrighted by Book News Inc., Portland, OR
Two young women, dormitory mates, embark on their education at a big state university. Five years later, one is earning a good salary at a prestigious accounting firm. With no loans to repay, she lives in a fashionable apartment with her fiancé. The other woman, saddled with burdensome debt and a low GPA, is still struggling to finish her degree in tourism. In an era of skyrocketing tuition and mounting concern over whether college is "worth it," Paying for the Party is an indispensable contribution to the dialogue assessing the state of American higher education. A powerful exposé of unmet obligations and misplaced priorities, it explains in vivid detail why so many leave college with so little to show for it. Drawing on findings from a five-year interview study, Elizabeth Armstrong and Laura Hamilton bring us to the campus of "MU," a flagship Midwestern public university, where we follow a group of women drawn into a culture of status seeking and sororities. Mapping different pathways available to MU students, the authors demonstrate that the most well-resourced and seductive route is a "party pathway" anchored in the Greek system and facilitated by the administration. This pathway exerts influence over the academic and social experiences of all students, and while it benefits the affluent and well-connected, Armstrong and Hamilton make clear how it seriously disadvantages the majority. Eye-opening and provocative, Paying for the Party reveals how outcomes can differ so dramatically for those whom universities enroll.