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This book began as a collection of papers presented at a conference entitled ‘The Future Business of Higher Education'held at Oxford University. The contributions range from those who grapple with the question of what a University should do, through those concerned with making Higher Education more efficient, to some who were already planning for some technologically inevitable virtual future. These disparate leanings led to inevitable conflict and a challenge in editing into book form. In compiling and editing the chapters the editor has tried to preserve some of the diversity of opinion presented at Oxford. By doing so it is apparent that some individual contributors would find unacceptable much of what others in the book have to say. The traditionalists clash with the modernizers, the Left with the Right, Public with Private and the theorists with the practitioners. It is this very divergence of philosophical opinion as to the future of Higher Education that makes this book such an enjoyable and stimulating read.

This book discusses the adjustment of universities to the changing financial environment. Its authors analyze the relationship between higher education inputs and outputs, assess the available information about the determinants of university costs, survey the influence of market conditions and pricing strategies on students'demands for attendance at institutions of higher education, summarize research on the objectives for institutions of higher education held by different participants and funders, analyze how universities determine their priorities and relative funding for different activities and disciplines, and explore the economics of universities'research functions.In addition, the book addresses three questions regarding the external fiscal environment facing American universities. What are the recent and emerging changes in the key economic variables affecting these institutions? What mechanisms have universities used in the past to cope with tighter financial constraints? What are the implications for university research activities as these institutions adjust to their fiscal constraints?Stephen A. Hoenack is Professor at the Hubert H. Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs and Director of the Management Information Division at the University of Minnesota. Eileen L. Collins is a Senior Economist in the National Science Foundation's Division of Science Resource Studies.