The Cornell Higher Education Research Institute (CHERI), which sheds light on the most pressing problems faced by universities, has been awarded $1.5 million to support its research and outreach activities.

CHERI received a $525,000 grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and an additional $1 million from the Atlantic Philanthropies (USA) donor group. The Mellon Foundation award, which renews a three-year grant, started this fall, while the Atlantic Philanthropies award, which renews a four-year grant, will be apportioned over five years, starting in the fall of 2002.

CHERI's mission is to identify pressing national issues in higher education, such as rising tuition and declining state support for higher education, and determine how to manage them best. Directed since its inception in 1998 by Ronald G. Ehrenberg, the Irving M. Ives Professor of Industrial and Labor Relations and Economics at Cornell University, CHERI has rapidly emerged as one of the leading centers in the nation for research on the finance and governance of higher education.

Ehrenberg, who previously served as Cornell's vice president for academic programs, planning and budgeting, is the author of an influential book Tuition Rising: Why College Costs So Much (Harvard University Press, 2000). The book, which shows why tuition at U.S. private colleges and universities has risen faster than the national rate of inflation and what can be done to contain costs, was cited in such publications as The Chronicle of Higher Education and The Washington Post for its useful findings and recommendations. An initial grant from Mellon and matching gift from the Atlantic Philanthropies in 1998 helped support the research and writing of the book.

CHERI explores issues of importance to higher education at an annual conference of leading educators. This year's conference, on governance of higher education, will take place on Cornell's campus June 4-5, 2002. CHERI also conducts surveys on university practices and publishes articles in the popular press as well as a series of scholarly working papers, which are available on its web site, <www.ilr.cornell.edu/CHERI/&gt;. Details on the conference and other upcoming activities also are available on the web site."At a time of shrinking resources and increased pressure to do more with less, the efforts of groups like CHERI have assumed a new urgency," said Cornell President Hunter Rawlings. "We are fortunate to have this important work on higher education taking place in the center of our campus."

Ehrenberg says the renewed grants will support research on public higher education in lean times, increasing disparities in resources between public and private colleges and universities, and growing inequality of resources across higher education institutions within each of the public and private sectors.

"During the past 20-plus years, faculty salaries at public institutions, where most American students are educated, have declined relative to faculty salaries at private institutions," said Ehrenberg. "CHERI will trace the implications of those changes "

Also of interest to Ehrenberg and CHERI is how the growing importance and costs of science at universities has influenced university resource allocation behavior.

Past CHERI papers have explored such topics as how financial aid effects enrollment and retention at universities, how tuition reciprocity agreements between universities function today, and the demands of athletics programs on university budgets. Some of the research has been undertaken by Cornell undergraduates, working in partnership with Ehrenberg, and has been supported by the Computer-Assisted Survey Team (CAST), a group of professional statisticians and student researchers in Cornell's School of Industrial and Labor Relations.