Degrees of Support: State Spending on Higher Education and Public Postsecondary Degrees across State Legislatures, 2005 and 2014

U.S. state spending on higher education represents a sizable, but highly variable, portion of budget expenditures. Preliminary research supports a positive relationship between the percentage of state legislators who hold public degrees and state funding for higher education. In this study, the authors test whether this finding is consistent over time by using panel modeling to analyze the educational compositions of state legislatures in 2005 and 2014. Generalized least squares regression models with robust standard errors clustered by state- and year-specific intercepts indicate a significantly positive relationship between the proportion of publicly educated state legislators and state spending on higher education. This relationship is consistent across models with numerous robustness checks and political, economic, and structural controls. Given the smaller number of publicly educated legislators in 2014, the findings suggest that spending on higher education would have increased to a larger extent had the educational composition of the legislatures remained constant

The CAMELS Project: Public Data Release

The Cosmology and Astrophysics with Machine Learning Simulations (CAMELS) project was developed to combine cosmology with astrophysics through thousands of cosmological hydrodynamic simulations and machine learning. CAMELS contains 4233 cosmological simulations, 2049 N-body simulations, and 2184 state-of-the-art hydrodynamic simulations that sample a vast volume in parameter space. In this paper, we present the CAMELS public data release, describing the characteristics of the CAMELS simulations and a variety of data products generated from them, including halo, subhalo, galaxy, and void catalogs, power spectra, bispectra, Lyα spectra, probability distribution functions, halo radial profiles, and X-rays photon lists. We also release over 1000 catalogs that contain billions of galaxies from CAMELS-SAM: a large collection of N-body simulations that have been combined with the Santa Cruz semianalytic model. We release all the data, comprising more than 350 terabytes and containing 143,922 snapshots, millions of halos, galaxies, and summary statistics. We provide further technical details on how to access, download, read, and process the data at https://camels.readthedocs.io

Registered replication report: a large multilab cross-cultural conceptual replication of Turri, Buckwalter, & Blouw (2015)

According to the Justified True Belief account of knowledge (JTB), a person can only truly know something if they have a belief that is both justified and true (i.e., knowledge is justified true belief). This account was challenged by Gettier (1963), who argued that JTB does not explain knowledge attributions in certain situations, later called Gettier-type cases, wherein a protagonist is justified in believing something to be true, but their belief was only correct due to luck. Lay people may not attribute knowledge to protagonists with justified but only luckily true beliefs. While some research has found evidence for these so-called Gettier intuitions (e.g., Machery et al., 2017a), Turri et al. (2015) found no evidence that participants attributed knowledge in a counterfeit-object Gettier-type case differently than in a matched case of justified true belief. In a large-scale, cross-cultural conceptual replication of Turri and colleagues’ (2015) Experiment 1 (N = 4,724) using a within-participants design and three vignettes across 19 geopolitical regions, we did find evidence for Gettier intuitions; participants were 1.86 times more likely to attribute knowledge to protagonists in standard cases of justified true belief than to protagonists in Gettier-type cases. These results suggest that Gettier intuitions may be detectable across different scenarios and cultural contexts. However, the size of the Gettier intuition effect did vary by vignette, and the Turri et al. (2015) vignette produced the smallest effect, which was similar in size to that observed in the original study. Differences across vignettes suggest epistemic intuitions may also depend on contextual factors unrelated to the criteria of knowledge, such as the characteristics of the protagonist being evaluated

Among Friends? Classed Navigations of an Elite Social Scene (PSA Paper)

Both class and racial status matter for establishing connections within a university setting and peer groups exert a heavy influence on the thoughts and actions of students (Flores-Gonzalez 2002). This research assesses socialization patterns across these demographic cleavages, in part by showing how students encounter and react to the dominant culture of exclusivity at an elite, private university. Recent quantitative research has evidenced the undergraduate experience as the “great equalizer,” by showing that the effects of class background across five measures disappear for students who attain a Bachelor’s degree (Torche 2011). However, if disadvantaged students are unable to fit in socially, they may be less likely to benefit from the unique network opportunities offered by a highly selective university. This work examines how class and racial/ethnic status matter for forming important social bonds at a highly selective university. When it comes to social life, I show that upper-income students are by far the most advantaged at this university. However, lower-income students who have experienced university scaffolding programs display similar social ease. Middle and low-income students who have not experienced institutional preparation portray a less sanguine experience

Class, Race, Gender and the Elite University: A Noncognitive Assessment of Academic Adjustment

The most trusted mechanism of upward social mobility is education. One of the surest paths to success is an elite education. Studying class at an elite university is important because of our dependence on this site as a justification of social stratification. Are elite universities truly meritocratic? Based on non-participant observation and in-depth interviews with forty-three students at a highly selective, private university, this article addresses how class, race and gender matter for academic adjustment to an elite university. This research employs non-cognitive assessors to show how class, race and gender matter for academic adjustment at an elite university. Policy implications of this work suggest that normative policy makers should not only be paying attention to the experiences of lower-income and minority students, but should also beware of the disadvantages unique to middle-income and female students at the university level

Among Friends? Classed Navigations of an Elite Social Scene (ASA Paper)

Both class and racial status matter for establishing connections within a university setting and peer groups exert a heavy influence on the thoughts and actions of students (Flores-Gonzalez 2002). This research assesses socialization patterns across these demographic cleavages, in part by showing how students encounter and react to the dominant elite culture at an elite, private university. Recent research has portrayed the undergraduate experience as the great equalizer (Torche 2011). However, if disadvantaged students are unable to fit in socially, they will be less likely to benefit from the unique network opportunities offered by a highly selective university. This work examines how class and racial/ethnic status matter for forming important social bonds at a highly selective university

Classed Conceptions of Academic Self-Efficacy at an Elite University

Using the classic triadic model of class (lower, middle and upper), this paper explores how a students’ class-based cultural capital relates to their conceptualization and development of academic efficacy. Academic efficacy refers to the ability, not only of a student to think positively about their academic selves, but also to have and carry out plans that support their academic selves. Academic efficacy is positively associated with a myriad of student outcomes (Zajacova, Lynch and Espenshade 2005; Lent, Brown and Hackett 2000; Alfaro, Umaña-Taylor and Bámaca 2006). The findings, based on in-depth interviews with 44 students at a highly selective private university, reveal that, compared to upper-class students, who predominantly reported high academic efficacy, the orientations among non-elite students were not as great. Findings suggest that policy makers should be paying attention not only to the experiences of lower-class students, but also to the difficulties unique to middle-class students at an elite university

State Spending on Public Higher Education: Do the Educational Histories of Legislators Matter?

State commitments to public higher education vary widely and are determined in part by unique political environments. Based on research suggesting that policy-makers’ personal characteristics affect policy outcomes, this work addresses the following: Do states with a larger percentage of legislators with a public higher education degree spend more on public higher education than do other legislatures, all other things equal? To answer this question, this author will use a robust time-series dataset of the educational backgrounds of state legislators. Currently, there are 7,383 state legislators. In 2005, I compiled the first wave of this database, which included the educational backgrounds of 6,517 state legislators. This fall 2014, I am guiding the collection of the second wave of data. Findings from this research will evaluate the extent to which legislators advocate for spending based on their own demographic profiles