A great deal of attention is paid to the annual release of the U.S. News and World Report college rankings. According to national surveys of college freshman, enhanced earning potential is a major motivator in their choosing to attend college and in their selecting which college to attend. Thus you would expect the U.S. News and World Report rankings to be highly correlated with those institutions whose students earn a wage premium. This paper uses the data set High School and Beyond to test the effect on wage of attending a college identified by U.S. News and World Report as a “best college.” I find no statistically significant relationship between attending a U.S. News and World Report “best college” and wage earned.
This paper describes a class competition that introduces students to the concept of effective altruism and metrics used to evaluate the effectiveness of charities. A well-established strand of literature demonstrates that economics students are more likely to behave in a self-interested way than are students from other disciplines. An entirely separate strand of literature reveals that the act of charitable giving increases the happiness of the donor. This class exercise motivates students to increase their prosocial donative behavior by appealing to their selfinterest.
The Riverhouse Children’s Center is an actual day care business. The case is an example of a small niche-business common to locales across the United States. Riverhouse is atypical of private day care centers in that it is organized as a not-for-profit institution. The case reviews the benefits and pitfalls of obtaining not-for-profit tax status for a business. The case also presents the different pricing mechanisms embedded in the fee structure of the center. Case discussion questions lead students to suggest a restructuring of the revenue side of the business. Additionally, the case reveals that there may be non-monetary motivations for entrepreneurs and highlights the challenge of working within a tight budget.
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