With predictions of a 20 to 30 percent increase in enrollment at colleges and universities in many states in the decade ahead, higher education institutions face unprecedented funding challenges. This is especially true given current economic downturns, state cutbacks to public universities, the growing inequality of wealth among private schools and the disparities in salaries between public and private faculty members.

The Cornell Higher Education Research Institute (CHERI) will address these and other issues during its annual policy research conference, titled "Financing Higher Education Institutions in the 21st Century," on the Cornell University campus. The conference will be Tuesday, May 22, and Wednesday, May 23, in 115 Ives Hall in the School of Industrial and Labor Relations. All presentations are free and open to the public.

Ronald Ehrenberg, CHERI director and the Irving M. Ives professor at Cornell, said this year's conference is timely given "the downturn in the stock market that is affecting endowment returns and annual giving and the declining financial positions of many state governments, which in turn are leading to cutbacks in the funding of public higher education."

Nine papers will be discussed that deal with politics and governance of public higher education, annual giving to private colleges and universities, funding changes faced by public higher education, state gains from public higher education and institutional objectives in enrolling transfer students. The authors and discussants of the papers come from a wide range of public and private higher education institutions and associations.

For more information about the conference, contact Lori Dailey at (607) 255-4424. For a preview of conference papers, visit the CHERI web site athttp://www.ilr.cornell.edu/cheri .