Profiting Higher Education: What Students, Alumni and Employers Think About For-Profit Colleges

The for-profit higher education sector has attracted significant attention over the past few years -- both from enthusiasts and from critics. For-profit colleges and universities -- most notably large, national and online schools such as the University of Phoenix, DeVry University and ITT Technical Institute -- have seen a steep increase in student enrollment, from serving about 4.7 percent of the undergraduate student population in the 2000 -- 2001 academic year to about 13.3 percent in the 2011 -- 2012 academic year, peaking at nearly 14 percent in the 2010 -- 2011 academic year. And they have become increasingly visible through their ubiquitous advertisements and proactive -- some would say aggressive -- recruitment strategies. Largely missing from the discussion so far have been the perspectives of for-profit students themselves and those of employers who might hire them. This study gives voice to these central stakeholders

Why Let the People Decide? Elected Officials on Participatory Budgeting

This report documents findings from interviews with U.S. elected officials regarding their experience with participatory budgeting (PB). It also includes recommendations for policymakers, PB advocates and funders looking to improve and expand PB

Public Spending, By The People: Participatory Budgeting in the United States and Canada in 2014-15

From 2014 to 2015, more than 70,000 residents across the United States and Canada directly decided how their cities and districts should spend nearly $50 million in public funds through a process known as participatory budgeting (PB). PB is among the fastest growing forms of public engagement in local governance, having expanded to 46 communities in the U.S. and Canada in just 6 years.PB is a young practice in the U.S. and Canada. Until now, there's been no way for people to get a general understanding of how communities across the U.S. implement PB, who participates, and what sorts of projects get funded. Our report, "Public Spending, By the People" offers the first-ever comprehensive analysis of PB in the U.S. and Canada.Here's a summary of what we found:Overall, communities using PB have invested substantially in the process and have seen diverse participation. But cities and districts vary widely in how they implemented their processes, who participated and what projects voters decided to fund. Officials vary in how much money they allocate to PB and some communities lag far behind in their representation of lower-income and less educated residents.The data in this report came from 46 different PB processes across the U.S. and Canada. The report is a collaboration with local PB evaluators and practitioners. The work was funded by the Democracy Fund and the Rita Allen Foundation, and completed through a research partnership with the Kettering Foundation

Curbing Health-Care Costs: Are Citizens Ready to Wrestle with Tough Choices?

Health-care experts may assume that insurance shields most Americans from the actual costs of their health care, leaving them unconcerned about cost effectiveness. And, in the past, the public seemed relatively disinterested in talking about efforts to contain cost. However, this research raises the question: if we help citizens learn about and deliberate over approaches to contain costs, could they contribute to policy solutions?For this study on curbing health-care costs, average Americans, aged 40 to 65, gathered, in a series of four extended focus groups, to address cost containment in health care. When given the opportunity to learn about and deliberate over various policy proposals, focus group participants became not only willing but eager to consider complicated approaches for containing costs. And they did so thoughtfully and civilly.The research, while modest in scope, provides substantial clues for health-care leaders and policymakers regarding the approaches that the public may be more willing to accept and those that they may resist. It also provides guidance to enable leaders to better communicate with and engage the public on cost-containment approaches.Participants in the study also believed that other members of the public, as well as medical professionals and insurers, could benefit from similar opportunities to deliberate. While participants didn't reach consensus, they all reported a better understanding of viewpoints different from their own. Many remarked that the civility and quality of their deliberations was evidence that health-care leaders and policymakers could compromise

Universism and extensions of V

A central area of current philosophical debate in the foundations of mathematics concerns whether or not there is a single, maximal, universe of set theory. Universists maintain that there is such a universe, while Multiversists argue that there are many universes, no one of which is ontologically privileged. Often model-theoretic constructions that add sets to models are cited as evidence in favour of the latter. This paper informs this debate by developing a way for a Universist to interpret talk that seems to necessitate the addition of sets to V. We argue that, despite the prima facie incoherence of such talk for the Universist, she nonetheless has reason to try and provide interpretation of this discourse. We present a method of interpreting extension-talk (V-logic), and show how it captures satisfaction in `ideal' outer models and relates to impredicative class theories. We provide some reasons to regard the technique as philosophically virtuous, and argue that it opens new doors to philosophical and mathematical discussions for the Universist

Simulating the interaction of electrostatically charged particles in the inflow area of cabin air filters using a fully coupled system

Precise simulations of particulate flow through fibrous filters are essential in order to predict and enhance filtration performances. To run the computation in reasonable time, a continuum approach is commonly used to emulate the air flow. The software GeoDict [1] allows for the simulation of the complete process, ranging from calculating a flow field, tracking particles inside that field to finding collisions with porous filter media. However, this approach completely neglects particle-particle interactions although particles often carry electrostatic charges [2]. Comparing the results of GeoDict to a fully coupled system shows the influence of this simplification. The software ESPResSo [3, 4] uses such a four-way coupling combining a molecular-dynamics-like approach for partricle simulation with an integrated Lattice-Boltzmann fluid dynamics solver. Already for a simple scenario, which represents the filter media as a mesh consisting of cylindrical fibers, significant influences of the full coupling on the particle trajectories and even the collection efficiency can be observed. We decribe the modeling and setup for both approaches and present numerical results for simplified yet meaningful test cases

Adjuvant radiotherapy improves progression-free survival in intracranial atypical meningioma

BACKGROUND: Meningiomas are the most common primary tumors of the central nervous system. In patients with WHO grade I meningiomas no adjuvant therapy is recommended after resection. In case of anaplastic meningiomas (WHO grade III), adjuvant fractionated radiotherapy is generally recommended, regardless of the extent of surgical resection. For atypical meningiomas (WHO grade II) optimal postoperative management has not been clearly defined yet. METHODS: We conducted a retrospective analysis of patients treated for intracranial atypical meningioma at Charité Universitätsmedizin Berlin from March 1999 to October 2018. Considering the individual circumstances (risk of recurrence, anatomical location, etc.), patients were either advised to follow a wait-and-see approach or to undergo adjuvant radiotherapy. Primary endpoint was progression-free survival (PFS). RESULTS: This analysis included 99 patients with atypical meningioma (WHO grade II). Nineteen patients received adjuvant RT after primary tumor resection (intervention group). The remaining 80 patients did not receive any further adjuvant therapy after surgical resection (control group). Median follow-up was 37 months. Median PFS after primary resection was significantly longer in the intervention group than in the control group (64 m vs. 37 m, p = 0.009, HR = 0.204, 95% CI = 0.062-0.668). The influence of adjuvant RT was confirmed in multivariable analysis (p = 0.041, HR = 0.192, 95% CI = 0.039-0.932). CONCLUSIONS: Our study adds to the evidence that RT can improve PFS in patients with atypical meningioma