Economic Evaluation in Education: Cost-effectiveness and Benefit-cost Analysis

The past decade has seen increased attention to cost-effectiveness and benefit-cost analysis in education as administrators are being asked to accomplish more with the same or even fewer resources, philanthropists are keen to calculate their “return on investment” in social programs, and the general public is increasingly scrutinizing how resources are allocated to schools and colleges. Economic Evaluation in Education: Cost-Effectiveness and Benefit-Cost Analysis (titled Cost-Effectiveness Analysis: Methods and Applications in its previous editions) is the only full-length book to provide readers with the step-by-step methods they need to plan and implement a benefit-cost analysis in education. Authors Henry M. Levin, Patrick J. McEwan, Clive Belfield, Alyshia Brooks Bowden, and Robert Shand examine a range of issues, including how to identify, measure, and distribute costs; how to measure effectiveness, utility, and benefits; and how to incorporate cost evaluations into the decision-making process. The updates to the Third Edition reflect the considerable methodological development in the evaluation literature, and the greater empiricism practiced by education researchers, to help readers learn to apply more advanced methods to their own analyses.

Henry M. Levin is the Director of the Center for Benefit Cost Studies in Education, the William H. Kilpatrick Professor of Economics and Education at Teachers College, Columbia University, and the David Jacks Professor of Higher Education and Economics, Emeritus, at Stanford University.  He has been engaged in cost-effectiveness and benefit-cost studies in education and other fields since 1970.  He is the author of 22 books and about 300 scholarly articles on these topics as well as others in the economics of education and educational policy.

Patrick J. McEwan is a Professor of Economics at Wellesley College and the Director of Latin American Studies at Wellesley College. His research interests include the impact and cost evaluation of education and social policy in Latin America, especially Chile and Honduras. His work has been published in the American Economic Review, the Journal of Public Economics, Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, and other journals of economics and education policy. For more information on his research, visit www.patrickmcewan.net.

Clive R. Belfield is a Professor in the Department of Economics at Queens College, City University of New York. He is also Principal Economist at the Center for Benefit-Cost Studies in Education at Teachers College, Columbia University, Faculty Member for The Evaluators’ Institute at Claremont Graduate University, and a Research Affiliate at the Community College Research Center, Teachers College, Columbia University. He received his Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Exeter, England. His research interests are economic evaluation of education programs. He has authored three books and over 75 articles in the field of the Economics of Education.

A. Brooks Bowden is an Assistant Professor of Methods and Policy in the Educational Leadership, Policy, and Human Development Department at North Carolina State University. She is the Director of Training and Associate Director at the Center for Benefit-Cost Studies of Education at Teachers College, Columbia University. She received her Ph.D. in Education Policy with a specialization in Economics from Columbia University. She specializes in program evaluation and economic analysis, focusing on applications and methodology of the ingredients method of cost analysis. She recently co-authored publications for the American Journal of Evaluation, the Journal of Research on Educational Effectiveness, the Journal of Benefit-Cost Analysis, and the Journal of Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis. 

Robert D. Shand is the Novice G. Fawcett postdoctoral researcher in educational studies at The Ohio State University. He completed his Ph.D. in Economics and Education at Teachers College, Columbia University. As a former K-12 teacher, his research focuses on how educational practitioners use evidence on effectiveness and costs to improve decision-making and how teachers improve over time through formal training and learning from colleagues.