The Impact of Dual Enrollment on College Degree Attainment: Do Low-SES Students Benefit?

Dual enrollment in high school is viewed by many as one mechanism for increasing college admission and completion of low-income students. However, little evidence demonstrates that these students discretely benefit from dual enrollment and whether these programs narrow attainment gaps vis-à-vis students from middle-class or affluent family backgrounds. Using the National Education Longitudinal Study (N = 8,800), this study finds significant benefits in boosting rates of college degree attainment for low-income students while holding weaker effects for peers from more affluent backgrounds. These results remain even with analyses from newer data of college freshman of 2004. This report conducts sensitivity analyses and found that these results are robust to relatively large unobserved confounders. However, expanding dual enrollment programs would modestly reduce gaps in degree attainment

An empirical investigation of the financial growth life cycle

Purpose - This paper empirically examines the financing of small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) through a financial growth life cycle model. Reporting and analysing a large primary data set across six age categories, a number of statistical tests are conducted to test the financial growth life cycle model (Berger and Udell, 1998). Design/methodology/approach - Data in publicly available databases is generally unsuitable to examine the financial life cycle model, thus a questionnaire survey was employed to collect data. Because of the well-documented reticence of SME owners to reveal detailed financial information (Avery et al., 1998), data was requested in percentage form. This innovative methodology was successful, as 92 percent of respondents disclosed detailed financing data. A response rate of 42.6 percent across six industry sectors provided data to employ parametric techniques. Findings – Analysis of respondents’ capital structures across age groups indicates distinct changes in sources of finance employed by firms over time. Financing choices are consistent with Myers’s (1984) pecking order hypothesis, and the importance of profitability in financing SMEs is emphasised. Contrary to conventional wisdom, respondents in the youngest age category report a relatively high use of debt financing. This is explained by the provision of firm owners’ personal assets to secure firm debt. Originality/value - The key contribution of this paper is to provide an empirical examination of the financial growth life cycle model by combining a number of statistical tests. This approach is significantly different to that traditionally adopted in empirical investigations of SME financing, which is to examine the applicability of theories developed in corporate finance on panel data. Additionally, it presents data on personal sources of finance employed by firm owners, which is typically not available, even in comprehensive secondary databases

Designers of collaboration mandates for sustainable natural resource management must address public agencies’ concerns about losing autonomy and influence

With climate change now influencing entire regions, there is a greater need for organizational collaboration to manage natural resources sustainably. Using California’s Sustainable Groundwater Management Act, which mandates collaboration between groundwater sustainability agencies, as a case study, Brian An and Shui-Yan Tang examine what drives integrative collaborations between agencies. They find that agencies are more likely to joint integrative collaborations if their mission addresses a broader focus, their core stakeholder groups have less concentrated interests in the policy issue, and their organizational culture is less rigid and risk averse

Estão os Alunos de Matrícula Dupla Preparados para Entrar na Faculdade? Evidências do Estudo Nacional de Artes de Wabash

We examine whether dual enrolled students display greater levels of college readiness than nonparticipants. Advocates assert that dual enrollment improves students’ college readiness, but despite these assertions, few researchers have evaluated this relationship. Moreover, researchers that do consider whether dual enrollment improves college readiness examine this relationship while students participate in dual enrollment or shortly thereafter. Unlike traditional measures of college readiness that tend to emphasize the cognitive domain of college readiness, we use measures that integrate both cognitive and noncognitive domains of college readiness. We find that students who participated in dual enrollment tend to be more college ready than those who did not earn college credit in high school. The exception is that there is no statistical difference between dual enrollees and non-accelerators in their key transition knowledge and skills. The magnitude of the dual enrollment effect is second only to gender. Examinamos si los estudiantes de matriculas duales muestran mayores niveles de preparación para la universidad que los que no participan en ese programa. Los defensores afirman que la doble inscripción mejora la preparación para la universidad de los estudiantes, pero a pesar de estas afirmaciones, pocos investigadores han evaluado esta relación. Por otra parte, los investigadores que si consideran que la doble matrícula mejora la preparación universitaria examinan esta relación mientras los estudiantes participan en doble inscripción o poco después. A diferencia de las medidas tradicionales de preparación para la universidad que tienden a enfatizar el dominio cognitivo de preparación para la universidad, utilizamos medidas que integran dominios cognitivos y no-cognitivos de preparación para la universidad. Encontramos que los estudiantes que participaron en la doble matrícula tienden a ser más preparados para la universidad que los que no ganan créditos universitarios en la escuela secundaria. La excepción es que no hay diferencia estadística entre los inscritos en matriculas duales y los que no en conocimientos y habilidades importantes para  los estudios universitarios. El efecto de magnitud de las matriculas duales sólo es superado por el género.Examinamos se os alunos de inscrição duplas mostram níveis mais elevados de preparação para a faculdade do que aqueles que não participam nesse programa. Os defensores argumentam que a dupla inscrição melhor preparação para os estudantes universitários, mas apesar destas afirmações, poucos pesquisadores avaliaram essa relação. Além disso, os pesquisadores acreditam que, se a dupla prontidão faculdade de inscrição melhora a examinar esta relação, enquanto os alunos participam de matrícula dupla ou pouco depois. Ao contrário de medidas tradicionais de prontidão para faculdade que tendem a enfatizar o domínio cognitivo de preparação para a faculdade, usamos medidas que integram domínios cognitivos e não-cognitivas na preparação para a faculdade. Descobrimos que os alunos que participaram do programa da matrícula dupla tendem a estar mais preparados para a faculdade do que aqueles que não ganham créditos universitários na escola. A exceção é que não há diferença estatística entre os alunos de dupla inscrição e os que não em conhecimentos e habilidades importantes para a faculdade. A magnitude do efeito da dupla inscrição só é superado por gênero

A FLEXIBLE GENERAL CLASS OF MARGINAL AND CONDITIONAL RANDOM INTERCEPT MODELS FOR BINARY OUTCOMES USING MIXTURES OF NORMALS

Random intercept models for binary data are useful tools for addressing between subject heterogeneity. Unlike linear models, the non-linearity of link functions used for binary data force a distinction between marginal and conditional interpretations. This distinction is blurred in probit models with a normally distributed random intercept because the resulting model implies a probit marginal link as well. That is, this model is closed in the sense that the distribution associated with the marginal and conditional link functions and the random effect distribution are all of the same family. In this manuscript we explore another family of random intercept models with this property. In particular, we consider instances when the distributions associated with the conditional and marginal link functions and the random effect distribution are mixtures of normals. We show that this flexible family of models is related to several others presented in the literature. Moreover, we also show that this family of models offers considerable computational benefits. A diverse series of examples illustrates the wide applicability of the approach

Small-world networks and management science research: a review

This paper reviews the literature on small-world networks in social science and management. This relatively new area of research represents an unusual level of crossdisciplinary research within social science and between social science and the physical sciences. We review the findings of this emerging area with an eye to describing the underlying theory of small worlds, the technical apparatus, promising facts, and unsettled issues for future research

A Performance Evaluation of OWL 2 DL Reasoners using ORE 2015 and Very Large Bio Ontologies

In this paper, we evaluate the reasoning performance of six prominent OWL 2 DL reasoners, using two collections of ontologies: ORE 2015 and the 21 largest ontologies from the NCBO BioPortal. We observed that the majority of the reasoners were unable to successfully perform over half of the reasoning tasks in the NCBO BioPortal dataset which includes some very large ontologies. Despite of being a representative selection of the state-of-the-art OWL 2 DL reasoners, it came to our attention that many of them are no longer being actively maintained. These findings serve as a cautionary message to the OWL 2 reasoning community, emphasizing the need to focus research efforts towards keeping up with the growing requirements posed by new and very large ontologies and knowledge graphs.publishedVersio