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Climbing the ladder of institutional prestige is often promoted by leaders and policymakers in higher education, but there may be trade-offs associated with striving for status. This study examines the impact of Texas's National Research University Fund (NRUF), which uses financial incentives to support institutions' pursuit of prestige, on the salaries and employment of faculty. For full professors, the NRUF had a positive effect on the salaries of both men and women, but the policy also contributed to widening the gender gap in salary. In regard to employment, the NRUF had a negative impact on the share of women among full professors. The findings suggest that organizational pursuit of prestige may have unintended consequences for faculty gender equity.

This study draws on a comprehensive performance-based funding (PBF) dataset and up-to-date difference-in-differences econometrics to examine the impacts of specific policy features (e.g., share of institutional revenue at stake and equity metrics) on college access and selectivity. We find suggestive evidence that increases in the share of revenue at stake are associated with decreases in racially minoritized student enrollment. Meanwhile, equity metrics may not be enough to boost enrollment among underserved students. Ultimately, however, our conclusions are limited due to various potential sources of bias, unconvincing pre-trends, and wide confidence intervals. While findings offer limited insight into the impacts of specific design features, they point to limitations of PBF--regardless of design--in expanding access and reducing inequities at 4-year colleges.

Policy researchers have difficulty understanding stratification in enrollment in US higher education when race and ethnicity data are plagued by missing values. Students who decline to ethnoracially self-identify become part of a "race unknown" reporting category. In undergraduate enrollment, "race unknown" students are not randomly distributed and are highest among the most selective universities. In this "Policy Research Note," we investigate these patterns at US law schools to understand if they are driven by selectivity. We find that the most competitive law schools, on average, report 8% of their students are race unknown, double the rate of other law schools. We argue that race unknown enrollment cannot be ignored when studying ethnoracial enrollments in higher education because it varies systematically by institutional type and may mask actual rates of ethnoracial diversity. We posit that the race unknown category is likely produced by a combination of individual and institutional processes. Individual applicants may resist disclosing their ethnoracial identities, perhaps because of a perceived threat to their chances of admission. Additionally, institutional actors may willfully ignore race unknown students (not following up upon enrollment) because this category may enhance the appearance of campus diversity by diminishing the percentages of students in over-represented ethnoracial groups. In this way, high rates of race unknown students may be a product of prestigious and highly competitive educational processes.

To improve college access for low-income students, an increasing number of public colleges and universities have implemented no-loan policies, where student loans are replaced with institutional grant aid that does not require repayment. Using detailed income measures provided by Mobility Report Card data, this study examines the effect of no-loan policies on student economic diversity at public 4-year institutions. Using a difference-in-differences design and the synthetic control method, we found that the adoption of no-loan policies at public institutions increased enrollment shares of low-income students (bottom two family income quintiles). However, the increase was minimal for students from the lowest income quintile, particularly at the most selective institutions. Our findings suggest that although no-loan policies may help improve affordability at public colleges and universities, further efforts are needed to address underrepresentation of students from the lowest part of the income distribution.

Many postsecondary datasets collect gender data in ways that are not inclusive of all students. Many trans* students, those who identify as trans women, trans men, genderqueer, among other gender identities, are excluded when surveys collect gender data using only two categories. The American Bar Association recently became the first sector of higher education to collect and report enrollment data using three gender categories for all U.S. law schools. Between 2014 and 2019, there was a steady rise in the number of law schools that reported enrolling students in the "other" gender category. We interpret this growth to signify that law schools are beginning to collect data on students who were already there, not a reflection of exponential growth in trans* enrollment in law school. A more inclusive approach to gender data collection is necessary to better understand the educational trajectories of trans* students. However, data collection alone is not sufficient and may in fact be problematic. Importantly, we encourage quantitative researchers to consider their role in processes of administrative violence--that is, the ways in which the use of discrete identity categories (such as male, female and/or other) can create barriers for trans* students as they access healthcare, student housing and campus services.

Selective colleges have increasingly considered a variety of factors, such as academic rigor, extracurriculars, essays, interviews, recommendations, and background characteristics, alongside traditional academic factors in determining who is admitted. These efforts have been hailed as a strategy to expand access to selective higher education for talented students from racially and economically marginalized backgrounds. But such efforts introduce ambiguous admissions criteria--excellence in extracurriculars, subjective assessments of character and talent gleaned from essays, interviews, and recommendations--that may favor students from socially privileged families. We draw on nearly a decade of data on selective college admissions processes to examine how the importance of various admissions criteria relate to enrollment among racially and economically marginalized students. Using panel data from 2008 to 2016 and random effects analyses, our findings indicate ambiguous criteria that often comprise a more comprehensive approach to admissions may do little to ameliorate--and in some cases, may exacerbate--existing enrollment inequities. We also find that moving away from test scores and focusing on academic rigor represent potentially promising strategies for expanding access at some institutions.

Policy discussions in the United States on the link between college majors and earnings have under-appreciated the role of cognitive skills. This study uses the Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies, a unique data set that contains information on individual cognitive skills, college majors and earnings to investigate the relationships between them. The authors find that variation in numeracy and literacy skills is significantly associated with earnings for graduates of the same major. Also, there is an interactional effect between majors and cognitive skills to explain earnings. The findings shed light on the importance of considering cognitive skills when assessing the relationship between college majors and labour market outcomes.

In the midst of financial challenges, colleges and universities in the United States have significantly cut funding for their academic libraries in the name of enhancing efficiency. Using longitudinal data from the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) on 1,325 four-year colleges and universities, this study finds that total academic library expenditure is positively associated with student graduation rates, net of a wide range of institutional and student-related characteristics. Such findings are evident for total graduation rates as well as graduation rates for students of different racial/ethnic backgrounds. In particular, the positive association between academic library expenditures and graduation rate is most consistently evident for Black students who attend predominantly White institutions (PWIs). The findings reinforce the important role that academic libraries can play for students and shed light on the need for institutions to consider the educational consequences of reducing funding for academic libraries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although Access PCT had higher mean bias values (22.73-32.10%) than the two BRAHMS-based assays, comparisons with culture test results indicate that Access PCT assay can be used for sepsis diagnosis. Keywords: immunoassay; performance evaluation; procalcitonin; sepsis EN immunoassay performance evaluation procalcitonin sepsis e50 e53 4 01/07/22 20220115 NES 220115 To the Editor, Numerous studies have shown that procalcitonin (PCT) levels correlate with sepsis severity and help to rationalise antibiotics use and discontinuation [[1]]. Mean bias values between the Access PCT assay and each of the BRAHMS-based assays, Kryptor and Elecsys, were 22.73 and 32.10%, respectively, and were higher than the mean bias value between the two BRAHMS-based methods, Kryptor and Elecsys (4.25%). [Extracted from the article]

A study was conducted to evaluate decision-making problems involved in the integration of production management and flexible production facilities. The problems of production planning, production process, cellular layout and production scheduling are analyzed and optimized in a simultaneous process. Results show that an algorithm based on marginal cost analysis between machining and overtime costs can be developed as an optimal solution.