Counting Beans at the Community College: An Exercise in Economic Rationality. Working Paper Series.

This paper discusses the allocation of resources to retention efforts, and whether community college administrators should utilize a cost/benefit rationale. The author intends to provide a conceptual framework within which a broad range of choices regarding retention rates might be better understood. The author quotes Victor Fuchs in support of his arguments. According to Fuchs, the romantic view of reality assumes that resources are unlimited in relation to human wants. The monotechnic view presumes that most problems have a technological aspect, and those trained in that technology should be allowed to find solutions to the problem. In contrast with the romantic and monotechnic view, economic rationality is concerned with balancing societal costs and benefits of the many demands made upon scarce resources. Here, the social optimum is the point at which the benefit from an additional increment of education equals the cost of the resources used to attain that increment. The paper also presents the Equi-marginal Principle, which suggests that the consumer makes choices that allow "the greatest bang for the buck." This principle should and can be applied to choices within the educational sector, according to the article. (NB)