Start-Up Costs in American Research Universities

Our report briefly summarizes findings from the 2002 Cornell Higher Education Research Institute survey of start-up costs at the over 220 universities classified as Research and Doctoral universities by the Carnegie Foundation in 1994. It reports the mean start-up cost packages across institutions for new assistant professors and senior faculty, broken down by institutional type (public/private), Carnegie classification and field (biology, chemistry, engineering, physics and astronomy) and also discuses the sources of funding for start-up costs

Program Design and Student Outcomes in Graduate Education

Doctoral programs in the humanities and related social sciences are characterized by high attrition and long time-to-degree. In response to these long-standing problems, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation launched the Graduate Education Initiative (GEI) to improve the structure and organization of PhD programs, and in turn reduce attrition and shorten time-to-degree. Over a 10-year period starting in 1991, the Foundation provided a total of $80 million to 51 departments at 10 major research universities. This paper estimates the impact of the GEI on attrition rates and time-to-degree. Our analysis is based on a competing-risk duration model and student-level data spanning the start of the GEI, including data on students at a set of control departments. We estimate that, on average, the GEI had modest impacts on student outcomes in the expected directions: reducing attrition rates, reducing time-to-degree, and increasing completion rates. The overall impacts of the GEI appear to have been driven in part by reductions in cohort size, increases in financial aid, and increases in student quality

Addressing the Challenges of Dilapidated and Substandard Housing in Stevens County, MN

Center for Small Towns (CST) requested a team of students from the Humphrey School of Public Affairs to produce a list of relevant resources that could be leveraged within the City of Morris and Stevens County to help address challenges related to dilapidated and substandard housing.https://digitalcommons.morris.umn.edu/cst/1078/thumbnail.jp

Addressing the Challenges of Dilapidated and Substandard Housing in Stevens County, MN

Center for Small Towns (CST) requested a team of students from the Humphrey School of Public Affairs to produce a list of relevant resources that could be leveraged within the City of Morris and Stevens County to help address challenges related to dilapidated and substandard housing.https://digitalcommons.morris.umn.edu/cst/1078/thumbnail.jp

Probing magnetic order in EELS of chromite spinels using both multiple scattering (FEFF8.2) and DFT (WIEN2k)

The electron energy loss near edge structure on the O K-edge from chromite spinels contains fine structure from the hybridisation of the O p-orbitals and the Cr d-orbitals. Unlike the aluminates, a non-spin polarised calculation of this fine structure differs significantly from experimental observations. This is due to the large magnetic moment on the Cr. Calculations using simplified collinear ordering of the spins and the local spin density approximation give much improved agreement. A real space multiple scattering formalism and a reciprocal space density functional formalism give results in substantial agreement. In general, the actual spin arrangement of these chromites is not known since they are typically frustrated magnetic systems with ordering temperatures in the 10–20 K range. The calculations are based on the hypothesis that dynamic short range order persists to room temperature over the time scale of the interaction with the fast electron. However, it is possible that the observed effects are due to the strong paramagnetism present at room temperatures but which it is not possible to simulate accurately at present

Psychology students’ perception of and engagement with feedback as a function of year of study

Undergraduate students’ perception of feedback and level of engagement with the feedback they receive have gained increasing attention in the educational literature recently to identify areas which require educators’ attention. However, research in this area has generally been based on limited self-selecting samples, and has not considered how students’ relationship with feedback may alter depending on their year of study. To address this, a survey measuring students’ views and practices regarding feedback was completed at a higher education institution by 447 first-, second- and third-year psychology students, representing 77% of the cohort. Findings revealed that third years responded more negatively in both areas than their first- and second-year counterparts, whose ratings on these aspects themselves were far from optimal. These findings highlight the need for early interventions to improve students’ perception of and engagement with feedback in the earlier years, and to prevent the recorded deterioration later on in the degree course

The nature of iron-oxygen vacancy defect centers in PbTiO3

The iron(III) center in ferroelectric PbTiO3 together with an oxygen vacancy forms a charged defect associate, oriented along the crystallographic c-axis. Its microscopic structure has been analyzed in detail comparing results from a semi-empirical Newman superposition model analysis based on finestructure data and from calculations using density functional theory. Both methods give evidence for a substitution of Fe3+ for Ti4+ as an acceptor center. The position of the iron ion in the ferroelectric phase is found to be similar to the B-site in the paraelectric phase. Partial charge compensation is locally provided by a directly coordinated oxygen vacancy. Using high-resolution synchrotron powder diffraction, it was verified that lead titanate remains tetragonal down to 12 K, exhibiting a c/a-ratio of 1.0721.Comment: 11 pages, 5 figures, accepted in Phys. Rev.

Marginal Pricing and Student Investment in Higher Education

This paper examines the effect of marginal price on students' educational investments using rich administrative data on students at Michigan public universities. Marginal price refers to the amount colleges charge for each additional credit taken in a semester. Institutions differ in how they price credits above the full-time minimum (of 12 credits), with many institutions reducing the marginal price of such credits to zero. We find that a zero marginal price induces a modest share of students (i.e., 7 percent) to attempt up to one additional class (i.e., three credits) but also increases withdrawals and lowers course performance. The analysis generally suggests minimal impacts on credits earned and the likelihood of meeting "on-time" benchmarks toward college completion, though estimates for these outcomes are less precise and more variable across specifications. Consistent with theory, the effect on attempted credits is largest among students who would otherwise locate a

Hydroecology of Amazonian lacustrine Arcellinida (testate amoebae): A case study from Lake Quistococha, Peru

Organic rich sediments were obtained from seven core tops taken in Lake Quistococha, near the city of Iquitos in the Peruvian Amazon. Subsamples from 0 to 4 cm depth in each core were analyzed under dissecting light microscopy to carry out the first investigation of Arcellinida (testate lobose amoebae) from a lacustrine environment in this ecologically important region. The fauna was characterized by a low diversity, low abundance community dominated by centropyxids. This fauna is similar to ‘stressed’ assemblages reported from temperate latitudes, except that test concentrations were two orders of magnitude lower than typical in temperate lakes. Principle arcellinidan stressors in Lake Quistococha likely include the low pH 4 conditions in the lake, and a general lack of suitable minerogenic material to construct tests in the organic rich lake substrate. The low pH conditions are the result of runoff and seepage of water high in dissolved organic carbon from the adjacent similarly low pH 4 terrestrial peatland. The dearth of minerogenic material is the result of the lake being isolated from riverine input for the past ∼2000 years, even during flooding events. Other limiting factors contributing to depressed arcellinidan populations may include nutrient supply, predation pressure, competition, and post-mortem taphonomic factors

Civil Society, Everyday Life and the Possibilities for Development Studies

Civil society is one of the most contentious terms in political thought. There is considerable, and highly significant, difference between academic debate about the meaning of ‘civil society’ and the way the term is mobilized in international development discourse. In particular, narratives of civil society in international development are often dominated by reference to organizational descriptions and measurability. But I would like to suggest here that the term should be reclaimed as a way of giving meaning to the stories of the everyday lives of the people who create, shape and embody civil society. Used in this way, the idea of civil society can be understood as intersecting emotions, discourses and practices and can add to the body of scholarly work that nurtures and values everyday life as a lens through which to view wider social processes. Paying attention to the everyday life of civil society may have implications for that way the civil society is engaged with academically, and also has the potential to refresh how civil society is thought about in development practice