Do Expenditures Other Than Instructional Expenditures Affect Graduation and Persistence Rates in American Higher Education

[Excerpt] Rates of tuition increases in both private and public higher education that continually exceed inflation, coupled with the fact that the United States no longer leads the world in terms of the fraction of our young adults who have college degrees, have focused attention on why costs keep increasing in higher education and what categories of higher education expenditures have been growing the most rapidly. In a series of publications, the Delta Cost Project has shown that during the last two decades median instructional spending per full-time equivalent (FTE) student in both public and private 4-year colleges and universities in the United States grew at a slower rate than median expenditures per FTE student in many other categories of expenditures (research, public service, academic support, student services, and scholarships and fellowships).1 Similarly, the Center for College Affordability and Productivity reports that during the same time period, managerial and support/service staff at colleges and universities grew relative to faculty. Do such changes reflect increased inefficiency and waste or do some non instructional categories of employees and expenditures contribute directly to the educational mission of American colleges and universities? In this paper, we use institutional level panel data and an educational production function approach to estimate whether various non instructional categories of expenditures directly influence graduation and persistence rates of undergraduate students in American colleges and universities. We find, not surprisingly, that the answer is several of these expenditure categories do influence students’ educational outcome, but that the extent that they matter varies with the socioeconomic backgrounds and the average test scores of the students attending the institutions

Precision Measurements of the W-Boson Mass

The Standard Model of electroweak interactions has had great success in describing the observed data over the last three decades. The precision of experimental measurements affords tests of the Standard Model at the quantum loop level beyond leading order. Despite this great success it is important to continue confronting experimental measurements with the Standard Model predictions as any deviation would signal new physics. As a fundamental parameter of the Standard Model, the mass of the W-boson, M_W, is of particular importance. Aside from being an important test of the SM itself, a precision measurement of M_W can be used to constrain the mass of the Higgs boson, M_H. In this article we review the principal experimental techniques for determining M_W and discuss their combination into a single precision M_W measurement, which is then used to yield constraints on M_H. We conclude by briefly discussing future prospects for precision measurements of the W-boson mass.Comment: 37 pages, 13 figures, LaTex, to be published in volume 50 of Annual Review of Nuclear and Particle Scienc

Advanced launch system trajectory optimization using suboptimal control

The maximum-final mass trajectory of a proposed configuration of the Advanced Launch System is presented. A model for the two-stage rocket is given; the optimal control problem is formulated as a parameter optimization problem; and the optimal trajectory is computed using a nonlinear programming code called VF02AD. Numerical results are presented for the controls (angle of attack and velocity roll angle) and the states. After the initial rotation, the angle of attack goes to a positive value to keep the trajectory as high as possible, returns to near zero to pass through the transonic regime and satisfy the dynamic pressure constraint, returns to a positive value to keep the trajectory high and to take advantage of minimum drag at positive angle of attack due to aerodynamic shading of the booster, and then rolls off to negative values to satisfy the constraints. Because the engines cannot be throttled, the maximum dynamic pressure occurs at a single point; there is no maximum dynamic pressure subarc. To test approximations for obtaining analytical solutions for guidance, two additional optimal trajectories are computed: one using untrimmed aerodynamics and one using no atmospheric effects except for the dynamic pressure constraint. It is concluded that untrimmed aerodynamics has a negligible effect on the optimal trajectory and that approximate optimal controls should be able to be obtained by treating atmospheric effects as perturbations

Do Expenditures Other Than Instructional Expenditures Affect Graduation and Persistence Rates in American Higher Education?

Median instructional spending per full-time equivalent (FTE) student at American colleges and universities has grown at a slower rate the median spending per FTE in a number of other expenditure categories during the last two decades. We use institutional level panel data and a variety of econometric approaches, including unconditional quantile regression models, to analyze whether noninstructional expenditure categories influence first year persistence and graduation rates of American undergraduate students. Our most important finding is that student service expenditures influence graduation and persistence rates and their marginal effects are larger for students at institutions with lower entrance test scores and more lower income students. Put another way, their effects are largest at institutions that have lower current persistence and graduation rates. Simulations suggest that reallocating some funding from instruction to student services may enhance persistence and graduation rates at those institutions whose rates are currently below the medians in the sample.higher education, productivity, graduation rates

Comparative study of radio pulses from simulated hadron-, electron-, and neutrino-initiated showers in ice in the GeV-PeV range

High energy particle showers produce coherent Cherenkov radio emission in dense, radio-transparent media such as cold ice. Using PYTHIA and GEANT simulation tools, we make a comparative study among electromagnetic (EM) and hadronic showers initiated by single particles and neutrino showers initiated by multiple particles produced at the neutrino-nucleon event vertex. We include all the physics processes and do a complete 3-D simulation up to 100 TeV for all showers and to 1 PeV for electron and neutrino induced showers. We calculate the radio pulses for energies between 100 GeV and 1 PeV and find hadron showers, and consequently neutrino showers, are not as efficient below 1 PeV at producing radio pulses as the electromagnetic showers. The agreement improves as energy increases, however, and by a PeV and above the difference disappears. By looking at the 3-D structure of the showers in time, we show that the hadronic showers are not as compact as the EM showers and hence the radiation is not as coherent as EM shower emission at the same frequency. We show that the ratio of emitted pulse strength to shower tracklength is a function only of a single, coherence parameter, independent of species and energy of initiating particle.Comment: a few comments added, to bo published in PRD Nov. issue, 10 pages, 3 figures in tex file, 3 jpg figures in separate files, and 1 tabl

Exploring taboo issues in professional sport through a fictional approach

While the need to consider life course issues in elite sport research and practice is increasingly recognised, some experiences still seem to be considered too dangerous to explore. Consequently, stories of these experiences are silenced and the ethical and moral questions they pose fail to be acknowledged, understood or debated. This paper presents an ethnographic fiction through which we explore a sensitive set of experiences that were uncovered during our research with professional sportspeople. Through a multi‐layered reconstruction, the story reveals the complex, but significant, relationships that exist between identity, cultural narratives and embodied experiences. After the telling we consider how the story has stimulated reflective practice among students, researchers and practitioners. While there are risks involved in writing and sharing taboo stories, the feedback we have received suggests that storytelling can be an effective pedagogical tool in education and professional development

Quantitative test of general theories of the intrinsic laser linewidth

We perform a first-principles calculation of the quantum-limited laser linewidth, testing the predictions of recently developed theories of the laser linewidth based on fluctuations about the known steady-state laser solutions against traditional forms of the Schawlow-Townes linewidth. The numerical study is based on finite-difference time-domain simulations of the semiclassical Maxwell-Bloch lasing equations, augmented with Langevin force terms, and thus includes the effects of dispersion, losses due to the open boundary of the laser cavity, and non-linear coupling between the amplitude and phase fluctuations ($\alpha$ factor). We find quantitative agreement between the numerical results and the predictions of the noisy steady-state ab initio laser theory (N-SALT), both in the variation of the linewidth with output power, as well as the emergence of side-peaks due to relaxation oscillations.Comment: 24 pages, 10 figure