Today's financial and economic challenges require that higher education leaders become prudent fiscal managers and aggressive revenue generators. Maximizing and forecasting revenue has become an important item on the agenda for every strategic-planning and institutional research team. Private institutions strive to maximize public resources through tuition-based government programs while public institutions maneuver to exploit private revenues.

This volume presents edited versions of some of the best papers articles from a forum on institutional revenue production sponsored by the Cornell Higher Education Research Institute (CHERI). The chapters provide different perspectives on revenue generation and how institutions are struggling to find an appropriate balance between meeting public expectations and maximizing private market forces. The problems raised by the contributors do not have simple solutions, but we hope that the insights provided about options and alternatives will enable campus leaders, institutional researchers, and policy-makers to better understand evolving patterns in public and private revenue reliance.