The impact of state appropriations and grants on access to higher education and outmigration

pre-printEducation policymakers at all levels of government have long been interested in finding ways to entice more students to go to college. This goal has been driven by the belief that, as people acquire more education, they not only reap personal benefits from their investment in education, but they also create spillover benefits for others in society (referred to by economists as "positive externalities") in ways such as raising their community's standard of living, reducing crime rates, and enhancing the region's quality of life

An examination of the reliability of prestigious scholarly journals: evidence and implications for decision-makers

In universities all over the world, hiring and promotion committees regularly hear the argument: “this is important work because it is about to appear in prestigious journal X”. Moreover, those who allocate levels of research funding, such as in the multi-billion pound Research Assessment Exercise in UK universities, often come under pressure to assess research quality in a mechanical way by using journal prestige ratings. This paper’s results suggest that such tendencies are dangerous. It uses total citations over a quarter of a century as the criterion. The paper finds that it is far better to publish the best article in an issue of a medium-quality journal like the Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics than to publish the worst article (or often the worst 4 articles) in an issue of a top journal like the American Economic Review. Implications are discussed

New directions for institutional research

Publ. comme no 139, fall 2008 de la revue New directions for institutional researchIndexBibliogr. à la fin des texte

Alcohol impairs speed of information processing and simple and choice reaction time and differentially impairs higher-order cognitive abilities

Previous research has demonstrated that alcohol impairs information processing. However, it is unknown whether this impairment is on all stages of information processing, or on the early, rather than on the later, stages of information processing. Thus, the aim of the present study was to examine the effects of orally administered alcohol on both the early and the later stages of information processing. The present study assessed inspection time (IT), simple reaction time, choice reaction time and cognitive ability (Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale - Revised) in 16 adult participants in both alcohol and placebo conditions. IT (a measure of the early stages of information processing) was used as a predictor variable in a linear regression to examine whether a disruption of the early stages of information processing accounted for changes in total information processing after alcohol administration. Results indicated that alcohol significantly slowed total information processing, independently of the early stages of information processing