Ronald G. Ehrenberg is the Irving M. Ives Professor of Industrial and Labor Relations
and Economics at
Cornell
University
and a Stephen H. Weiss Presidential Fellow. He also is Director of the Cornell Higher Education Research Institute and is an elected member of the Cornell Board of Trustees (effective July 1,
2006). From
July 1, 1995
to
June 30, 1998
he served as Cornell's Vice President for Academic Programs, Planning and Budgeting.
As Vice President for Academic Programs, Planning and Budgeting, Ehrenberg had
a variety of responsibilities. He supervised the office of Institutional Planning
and Research, the office of Statutory College Affairs, the office of Space Planning
& Utilization, and the office of Academic Programs and Special Projects. He
integrated academic planning across the colleges in
Ithaca
(with an emphasis on strengthening Cornell's social sciences) and between the
Ithaca
and
Medical
College
campuses. He participated as one of four administrators in the central review
of tenure and promotion decisions, one of four members of the Executive Budget
Group which formulated budget policies, and as one of six members of the Capital
Funding & Priorities Committee which approved all capital projects. He also
supervised a number of academic units including the Cornell-in-Washington Program,
the Cornell Institute for Public Affairs, the Cornell Plantations (capital projects),
the Cornell University Press, the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, and Cornell's
Air Force, Army, and Navy ROTC units. He assisted the Provost in discussions with
Academic Deans and the University Faculty Committee, and for the Provost served
on the Library Board and chaired the Cornell Institute for Social and Economic
Research Board. He worked with the Academic Affairs and Campus Life, the Building
and Properties, the Executive, and the Land Grant and Statutory College Affairs
committees of the Cornell Board of Trustees, as well as with various Trustee subcommittees
and task forces. Finally, he chaired Cornell's NCAA certification review. A March
12, 1998 Cornell Chronicle article summarizes a few of his major accomplishments as Vice-President and
includes comments on his performance from administrative and faculty colleagues.
Ehrenberg received a B.A. in mathematics from
Harpur
College
(SUNY Binghamton) in 1966 and a Ph.D. in economics from
Northwestern
University
in 1970. A member of the Cornell faculty for 32 years, he has authored or co-authored
over 120 papers and 20 books. He was the founding editor of Research in Labor Economics, and has served as co-editor of the Journal of Human Resources. He has served, or is serving, on several editorial boards and as a consultant
to numerous governmental agencies and commissions and university and private research
corporations. He is a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research,
a research fellow at IZA (
Berlin
), was a member of the Executive Committee of the American Economic Association,
chaired the AAUP Committee on Retirement and the Economic Status of the Profession,
and is Past President of the Society of Labor Economists. He currently also serves
on the National Research Council's Board of Higher Education and its committee
on Gender Differences in the Careers of Science, Engineering and Mathematics Faculty,
and the NACUBO Endowment Advisory Panel. He is a founding member of the National
Academy of Social Insurance (Unemployment Insurance section), a National Associate
of the
National
Academies
of Science and Engineering and
Institute
of
Medicine
, and a member of the National Academy of Education, a Fellow of the Society
of Labor Economists, and a fellow of the TIAA-CREF Institute.
A noted labor economist and coauthor of the leading textbook, Modern Labor Economics: Theory and Public Policy (9th ed.), his recent research has focused on higher education issues. He is
the editor of American University: National Treasure or Endangered Species (Cornell University Press, 1997) and the author of Tuition Rising:
Why
College
Costs So Much (Harvard University Press, 2000). A paperback edition of the latter was published
in the fall of 2002. He is the editor of Governing Academia (Cornell University Press, 2004), What's Happening to Public Higher Education? (ACE/Praeger, 2006), and coeditor of Science and the University (
University
of
Wisconsin Press
, forthcoming).
Ehrenberg has supervised the dissertations of 38 Ph.D. students and served on
committees for countless more. He is also passionate about undergraduate education,
involves undergraduate students in his research, and has co-authored papers with
a number of these undergraduates. In 2003, ILR-Cornell awarded him the General Mills Foundation Award for Exemplary Undergraduate Teaching. In 2005, he was named a Stephen H. Weiss Presidential Fellow, the highest award
for undergraduate teaching that exists at Cornell.
Finally, Ehrenberg has served as a consultant to faculty and administrative groups
and trustees at a number of colleges and universities on issues relating to tuition
and financial aid policies, faculty compensation policies, faculty retirement
policies, and other budgetary and planning issues. Among the institutions he has
worked with are Brandeis University, Oberlin College, Northeastern University,
The University of North Carolina, the University of Chicago, Vanderbilt University,
the U.S. Naval Academy, the National Technical Institute for the Deaf at the Rochester
Institute of Technology, Smith College, and the Suffolk University Law School,
and Albany University (SUNY).
