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States have adopted a variety of policies to encourage universities to expand research production, with the hope of supporting economic growth and competitiveness. This paper considers whether a state-level initiative succeeded in influencing university-based research outputs among regional public universities. We test whether the Texas Research Incentive Program increased research production at a set of state universities as measured by total research spending, federally-funded research spending, the number of scholarly publications, and the share of publications published in high impact factor journals. Using a novel dataset and difference-in-differences analytic strategy, we found that TRIP adoption was associated with a 19%-25% increase in research expenditures at emerging research universities in Texas relative to a matched set of comparable universities. However, TRIP did not influence federally-funded research expenditures or journal publication outputs. We also show that federally-funded research expenditures influence publication outputs — both in amount and quality — and that number of full-time faculty influences both federal research expenditures and publication outputs. We discuss contributions to the literature on regional public universities, loose coupling, and research production, as well as implications for policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Conceptualizing and measuring trends in segregation in higher education is difficult as both vertical and horizontal sorting is prevalent and patterns vary across racial groups. In this paper, we measure various trends in racial segregation in California for 20 years. We find significant sorting by race both between and within sectors of higher education, though the overall levels of segregation are lower in California's colleges than they are in California's high schools. These trends have and remained relatively stable over time. We also find important differences between groups. We see that most Latinx-White and Black-White segregation is due to students attending different schools within the same sector, while Asian-White segregation is increasingly due to students attending schools in different sectors. We also find evidence that policy and structural changes, such as opening a new campus, can affect patterns of segregation across and within sectors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the growing number of affiliations between research universities and the “affiliated nonprofit organizations” (ANPOs) that exist to support them. We posit that universities’ increasing ties to ANPOs represent strategic responses to unfavorable environmental conditions. In other words, it is likely that the practice of affiliating with many ANPOs reflects an institution’s position within the field of research universities. Panel regression results indicate that the practice of affiliating with large numbers of ANPOs is associated with particular indicators of field position (e.g., tuition revenues for public universities and research spending for private universities). These results indicate that universities that were relative incumbents were more likely to affiliate with ANPOs than were either low-status or the highest-status institutions. The paper concludes with implications for research on institutional stratification, university management, and the nature and role of ANPOs in US universities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using detailed administrative data from Virginia, this paper examines whether community college “vertical transfer” students who resemble “native four-year” students in their accumulated college-level credits and performance at their point of entry into the four-year sector perform equally well in terms of both academic and labor market outcomes. We compare matching strategies typically used in existing literature to one where we match vertical transfer and native four-year students based on prior credits earned, accumulative GPA, and the destination four-year institution, and find substantial differences in estimates based on different matching strategies. We also examine potential mechanisms underlying vertical transfer students’ relative performance at the four-year institution and in the labor market. The results show that vertical transfer students’ probability of baccalaureate attainment is comparable to that of similar native students attending the same four-year institution. However, when considering their earnings eight years after initial college enrollment, vertical transfer students experience a significant and nontrivial earnings penalty. Subsequent analyses examining possible mechanisms suggest the earning decrement is partly due to a delayed entry into the labor market as a result of credit loss at the point of transfer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]