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

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

Non-perturbative effects in the energy-energy correlation

The fully resummed next-to-leading-order perturbative calculation of the energy-energy correlation in $e^+e^-$ annihilation is extended to include the leading non-perturbative power-behaved contributions computed using the ``dispersive method'' applied earlier to event shape variables. The correlation between a leading (anti)quark and a gluon produces a non-perturbative 1/Q contribution, while non-perturbative effects in the quark-antiquark correlation give rise to a smaller contribution $\ln Q^2/Q^2$. In the back-to-back region, the power-suppressed contributions actually decrease much more slowly, as small non-integer powers of 1/Q, as a result of the interplay with perturbative effects. The hypothesis of a universal low-energy form for the strong coupling relates the coefficients of these contributions to those measured for other observables.Comment: 41 pages, LaTeX, 4 figures, uses JHEP.cl

Herwig++ 2.2 Release Note

A new release of the Monte Carlo program Herwig++ (version 2.2) is now available. This version includes a number of improvements including: matrix elements for the production of an electroweak gauge boson, W and Z, in association with a jet; several new processes for Higgs production in association with an electroweak gauge boson; and the matrix element correction for QCD radiation in Higgs production via gluon fusion

Power Corrections to Fragmentation Functions in Non-Singlet Deep Inelastic Scattering

We investigate the power-suppressed corrections to the fragmentation functions of the current jet in non-singlet deep inelastic lepton-hadron scattering. The current jet is defined by selecting final-state particles in the current hemisphere in the Breit frame of reference. Our method is based on an analysis of one-loop Feynman graphs containing a massive gluon, which is equivalent to the evaluation of leading infrared renormalon contributions. We find that the leading corrections are proportional to $1/Q^2$, as in $e^+e^-$ annihilation, but their functional forms are different. We give quantitative estimates based on the hypothesis of universal low-energy behaviour of the strong coupling.Comment: 14 pages, 4 figures, LaTeX2e, uses JHEP.cls (included) and epsfi

Deciphering the Effects of Decentralization on Water Rights: State to Urban Inconsistencies in Bolivia

In a country that is internationally praised for its recent economic success, how has the decentralized government of Bolivia left the responsibility to the local department in securing their own basic human needs? Is the disconnection beneficial in that it provides communities with a propitious autonomy? Or does a decentralized government provide benefits for both national and local sectors? This project demonstrates the benefits and drawbacks of a decentralized Bolivian government that has intended to rely on the role of small-scale grassroots organizations and NGO’s to fill the sobering gap between state and local governments. Using an urban political-ecology approach, this study investigates the socio-hydroscape in Cochabamba, Bolivia. By tracing the metabolic patterns of water in and out of the city, revealing the tensions in power-relations regarding an uneven distribution of resources, a very concentrated conflict in the city becomes increasingly apparent. I argue that this conflict is posited by larger, overarching state policies that have allowed them to persist. Major political reform implemented during the height of Bolivia’s neoliberal era has given historically oppressed communities their long-sought autonomy from the state, while simultaneously producing a market-based system converting water into a commodity. These state policies have jointly manifested a seemingly perfect scenario for improving the lives of marginalized groups, but in reality continues to hinder communities dependent on private networks and grassroots organizations known as water-committees to acquire potable water. The state-to-urban inconsistencies create a paradox forcing all Bolivianos to become subjects in the central government\u27s political discourse

Cherenkov-dE/dx-range measurements on cosmic ray iron group nuclei

A balloon experiment which combined a large area plastic detector unit with electronic dE/dx-C data is presented. The correlation of the electronic data with the range data of the plastic detector stack was achieved by rotating plastic detector disks which provided in this way the passive plastic detector with an incorporated time determination. The constant flux of cosmic ray particles with charge Z greater than two was used to gauge the time resolving system. Stopping cosmic ray iron group nuclei in the energy range 400 to 700 MeV/nuc are identified using their electronic scintillator and Cherenkov signals and their etch conelengths and range data. The precise knowledge of the particle's trajectory proposes refined pathlength corrections to the electronic data

Reconstructing particle masses from pairs of decay chains

A method is proposed for determining the masses of the new particles N,X,Y,Z in collider events containing a pair of effectively identical decay chains Z to Y+jet, Y to X+l_1, X to N+l_2, where l_1, l_2 are opposite-sign same-flavour charged leptons and N is invisible. By first determining the upper edge of the dilepton invariant mass spectrum, we reduce the problem to a curve for each event in the 3-dimensional space of mass-squared differences. The region through which most curves pass then determines the unknown masses. A statistical approach is applied to take account of mismeasurement of jet and missing momenta. The method is easily visualized and rather robust against combinatorial ambiguities and finite detector resolution. It can be successful even for small event samples, since it makes full use of the kinematical information from every event.Comment: 12 pages, 5 figure