Are Cost Conscious Community Colleges Sacrificing Quality?

Compared to their four-year public counterparts, community colleges have been more successful in holding down the costs of educating students but current research, albeit limited, suggests that this may have come at the expense of quality or at least outcomes. This essay addresses the questions surrounding this issue, including the behavior of costs at public two-year colleges and what the research says about quality and outcomes issues. It is based on my study of community colleges over the past twenty-five years

Using the Community College to Control College Costs: How Much Cheaper Is It?

Data from NCES indicate that it is two to three times more expensive to educate a student at a public four-year college than at a community college. These figures exaggerate the difference between the two when you calculate the costs of the first two years of education for students working on a bachelor’s degree. Using modified IPEDS data from the recently released Delta Project, this study shows that the cost per FTE and the public subsidy per FTE are lower at public master’s level colleges than at the community college. Trend data from 1987-2005 are examined along with appropriate cautions for interpreting the results

If Community College Students Are So Poor Why Do Only 16.9% Of Them Receive Pell Grants?

In this paper the authors attempt to address the discrepancy between the perception of income levels for community college students, and the seemingly low percentage of those students who receive Pell grants. The authors try to solve this paradox using data, published and unpublished, from the U. S. Department of Labor

Measuring the Cost of a College Degree: A Case Study of a SUNY Community College

Inspired by a Delta Cost Project White Paper, this study uses different measures of calculating the cost of a college degree at an up‐state community college in New York. Departmental cost per credit hour, direct instructional costs, and full costs are calculated and compared. A transcript analysis of the 2008‐09 graduates highlights excess credit hours taken and cross‐subsidies necessary within degree programs to produce these graduates

Looking Behind Community College Budgets for Future Policy Considerations

This study reviews the historical trend of college revenues and expenditures from a national perspective. The years 1999-2009 are examined with the most detail using primarily Delta Project/IPEDS data. Looking at trends related to state and local appropriations, college costs and prices, output, and productivity, it argues that various policy issues flow from these trends. The recommendations that follow are not precise prescriptions for legislative action, but rather suggestions for the direction of public and institutional policy that invite further reflection and research

Optimal testing of multiple hypotheses with common effect direction

We present a theoretical basis for testing related endpoints. Typically, it is known how to construct tests of the individual hypotheses, but not how to combine them into a multiple test procedure that controls the familywise error rate. Using the closure method, we emphasize the role of consonant procedures, from an interpretive as well as a theoretical viewpoint. Surprisingly, even if each intersection test has an optimality property, the overall procedure obtained by applying closure to these tests may be inadmissible. We introduce a new procedure, which is consonant and has a maximin property under the normal model. The results are then applied to PROactive, a clinical trial designed to investigate the effectiveness of a glucose-lowering drug on macrovascular outcomes among patients with type 2 diabete

Embedding initial data for black hole collisions

We discuss isometric embedding diagrams for the visualization of initial data for the problem of the head-on collision of two black holes. The problem of constructing the embedding diagrams is explicitly presented for the best studied initial data, the Misner geometry. We present a partial solution of the embedding diagrams and discuss issues related to completing the solution.Comment: (27pp text, 11 figures

On the motion control of electric AGVS

The vehicle dynamic model -- Motion controller design -- A sliding mode motion controller -- An application example -- Simulation and test bench results