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Despite the widespread popularity of the U.S. News & World Report College rankings there has been no empirical analysis of the impact of these rankings on applications, admissions, and enrollment decisions, as well as on institutions' pricing policies. Our analyses indicate that a less favorable rank leads an institution to accept a greater percentage of its applicants, a smaller percentage of its admitted applicants matriculate, and the resulting entering class is of lower quality, as measured by its average SAT scores. While tuition levels are not responsive to less favorable rankings, institutions offer less visible price discounts in the form of slightly lower levels of expected self-help (loans and employment opportunities) and significantly more generous levels of grant aid. These decreases in net tuition are an attempt to attract additional students from their declining applicant pool.

Numerous studies have investigated the impact of class size on student outcomes. This analysis contributes to this discussion by isolating the impact of class size on student outcomes in higher education by utilizing a natural experiment at a selective institution which enables the estimation of class size effects conditional on the total number of students taught by a faculty member. We find that class size negatively impacts student assessments of courses and instructors. Large classes appear to prompt faculty to alter their courses in ways deleterious to students.

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There has been some controversy recently about whether and how much job security has been declining in the United States. This article uses data from the National Longitudinal Surveys to show that young men became more likely to change jobs over the period from 1971 to 1990. For whites, this increase is mostly attributable to an increase in the probability of involuntary job change. For nonwhites, the probability of voluntary and involuntary job change both increased.