This working paper is attracting interest for its examination of an area seen by many as difficult to examine: productivity (or not) and its causes. With the need for more productivity that is currently highlighted by federal and state governments, and by large philanthropies affiliated with higher education, this is a topic that promises to be in our top ten for the next few years.

The entire 50-page document can be downloaded here (PDF). A discussion of it, titled "Unconventional Wisdom," can be found here. And a very nice blog post, titled "Cst-Effectiveness, or Cost?," examining the discussion of it can be found here. Its abstract reads:

Productivity in academic degrees granted by American colleges and universities is declining. While there is some evidence this is caused by an uncontrollable cost disease, we examine two additional explanations. First, few popular programs and strategies in higher education are cost-effective, and those that are may be underutilized. Second, a lack of rigorous evidence about both the costs and effects of higher education practices intersects with a lack of incentive to use cost-effectiveness as a way to guide decision-making. Rather than simply a cost disease, we argue that the problem is more a system disease—one that is partly curable.