Recent Research: Budgets and Taxes

The current public outrage over bailouts, excessive spending, and a staggering national debt are helping fuel the push for a federal balanced budget amendment.

While South Carolinians can take pride in our state’s higher educational system, costs and tuition have skyrocketed in recent years, even as graduation rates remain below 40 percent. At the same time, South Carolina’s leading universities have been drawn away from their core mission and increasingly become conduits for the Legislature’s economic development plans. The solution is to refocus on student performance, cut administrative costs and look to innovative technology that will improve both access and affordability.

The concept of privatization is relatively simple: a shifting of a government-provided service or aspects of it to a private business subject to the rigors of a competitive marketplace.

In this interesting paper, Show-Me Institute researcher Audrey Spalding analyzes a topic that has received little systematic study: the compensation of school superintendents. School superintendents are the CEOs of our public school districts. Missouri school districts spend roughly $ 9,500 per student in current operating expenses. This rises to nearly $ 13,000 per student when capital expenditures are included. Superintendents, with the approval of their boards, make important decisions about how these resources are allocated.