This study examines trends in national and State of Arizona college and university administrative expenditures, in particular expenditure shares for administration versus those for instruction, public service, and research. Separate case studies for the Arizona Community Colleges and the Maricopa County Community College District (MCCCD) provide data to explore administrative expenditure trends in some detail in the state community college system and in one type of institution. The results are intended to increase understanding of higher education administrative expenditure patterns in the United States. Toward this goal, possible explanations for rising administrative costs are assessed using one theoretical framework, Organizational Complexity, and one mechanism, Organizational Distance and Budgetary Authority. A single research question with four sub-questions compares the community college expenditure patterns, over time, to those of four-year colleges and universities. An additional research question with two sub-questions examines data by functional category in order to identify how and why disproportionate changes in expenditure patterns occur.

This study examined the college student experience from a student perspective. The conceptual framework of Strauss' negotiated order was used to examine the relationship between structure and process in organizational settings. The ways in which students linked their immediate and larger social worlds were examined as an element in the adjustive processes of the organization. The data consisted of time activity reports, unstructured interviews, and a shadowing experience with a small sample of middle-class Mexican-American students at the University of Arizona. Content analysis of the data was conducted across three dimensions of "Making It On Campus"; Making the Grade, Making It With Others, and Making Money. Findings indicated that students perceived their experience from a generalized goal of becoming "On Your Own." Student coping strategies across the three areas of Making It became shared patterns of activities centered around attempts to organize their world, assert some control, and develop independence and autonomy.

The emergence of the global economy has forced the Australian government to revise economic strategies and to seek institutional changes. Higher education's new roles in research and human resource development, have been manifested in university commercialization activities. Mindful that Universities are prestige rather than profit maximizers, this study applies Schumpeter's (1942) theoretical model for the survival of a firm under financial stress. The model's responses, extended to education by Leslie and Miller (1973), include new products, new markets, restructuring, increased productivity and new supply factors. University entrepreneurial activities have monetary and non-monetary impacts. The non-monetary costs and benefits of Australian university enterprise were studied by Leslie (1992) and Leslie and Harrold (1993). In this study, academics at Curtin University of Technology (Perth, Western Australia) were selected as entrepreneurial or non-entrepreneurial subjects and surveyed on the non-monetary costs and benefits of entrepreneurial activities affecting Curtin's teaching, research and public service mission. This data were analyzed and subsequently compared with data obtained by Leslie (1992). Differences in academic perceptions were found among the Curtin respondents by gender, academic status, discipline area, entrepreneurship and non-entrepreneurship, and entrepreneurial revenue importance. Using the Leslie data inter-institutional differences were examined and an order of entrepreneurial institutional types proposed, with Curtin University described as a frontier entrepreneurial university. The taxonomy of costs and benefits developed by Leslie (1992) was revised with the addition of personal social costs, stress, networking and professional development. An estimate was made of the dollar value of non-monetary items; non-monetary benefits were three times the dollar value of monetary benefits; non-monetary costs were less than half the monetary cost levels. The ratio of non-monetary costs to benefits was 1:3.5. Academics in the disciplines of engineering and science had more favorable perceptions of entrepreneurial costs and benefits than respondents in business studies. Health science respondents were described as having pessimistic perceptions. Future research may look at the levels of commercial revenue and investigate the effects of the amount of financial success or failure on the entrepreneurial efforts of academics. In university enterprise successes seem to foster success and the favorable perceptions of academics.