The crisis in private university education: A stimulation experiment

Abstract

This investigation presents a narrative and quantitative description of the private university crisis. It proposes a theoretical explanation in the form of a dynamic, mathematical model of a hypothetical system at the organization level—a private university operating in a hypothetical environment (i.e., one with a ten percent inflation rate). The demographic submodels simulate the application and acceptance rates of both students and faculty (disaggregated into high- and low-performance types) and interfaces these with a set of financial submodels simulating university budgeting practices. After consideration of the general static, dynamic, and causal structure of the model, four policy simulations are described. In the context of the structural and environmental assumptions embodied in the model, of the four tests, only an externally subsidized tuition equalization program averts collapse of the private university.