This thesis contains two areas of research. The first part contributes to the field of engineering mechanics. This research investigates the thermomechanical shape memory behavior of shape memory alloy (SMA) springs. As SMA springs undergo stress- and/or temperature-induced phase transformation, they experience varying combinations of axial,…

How might school funds be spent more effectively in today's uncertain environment? This up-to-date volume explores a range of ideas to help schools and districts better manage their resources, including: how to rethink staffing and management to get more value for employee compensation; how policymakers might revisit pension arrangements in ways…

Community colleges report opening spring term enrollment figures to the Illinois Community College Board using a brief web based survey. These figures reflect student enrollments as of the end of registration for the Spring 2020 semester--usually the 10th day of the term. Overall, compared to the same term one year ago, statewide Spring 2020…

The trend toward continuous expansion of U.S. post-secondary enrollments was reversed in the 2010s. Using pooled state-level data in between-within models, we examine public higher education enrollment trends during the 2009-2019 period. We emphasize variation in the net associations of covariates by tiers. State economic conditions showed…

Decades of research related to the experience of postsecondary students who are adults, work full-time, or have other life roles have not led to agreement in the field regarding who is a "nontraditional" college student. This study leverages nationally representative data to illuminate shifts in this student population in the 21st…

In this study, we used data from a cohort of 4,033 Tulsa kindergarten students to investigate the relationship between pre-K enrollment and later college enrollment. Specifically, we tested whether participation in the Tulsa Public Schools universal pre-K program and the Tulsa Community Action Project (CAP) Head Start program predicted enrollment…

This study leverages six years of public prekindergarten (PreK) and kindergarten data (N = 22,469) from the Boston Public Schools (BPS) to examine enrollment in BPS PreK from 2012-2017 for students from different racial/ethnic, socioeconomic, and linguistic groups. The largest differences in enrollment emerged with respect to race and…

Schools in Miami-Dade are facing significant demographic shifts that affect various aspects of community life. This creates multiple challenges like language barriers, cultural disparities, and unequal access to resources, which can significantly influence the educational achievements of immigrant students. Policies at both the state and federal…

This publication on out-of-school children (OOSC) in Commonwealth Africa is already informing priorities in COL's work in open schooling. The report provides an overview of key indicators for all nineteen Commonwealth Africa countries as well as contextual case studies of eight countries for which representatives were available to verify or update…

Over the last decade the Bay Area region has witnessed a lack of diversity in Silicon Valley technology professions, a subject of current political and popular discourse. The California State University (CSU) system provides accessible higher education; the CSU system approach to accessible higher education affirms the distinctness of regions,…

This study, "A Quantitative Examination of Criminality in Relationship to Enrollment at Selected Land-Grant Institutions of Higher Education," examined the relationship between reported criminality and annual enrollment quantities among selected land-grant higher education institutions for the period of 2001 through 2014. The conceptual…

This article analyzes cross-national trends in national student-faculty ratios (SFRs) over the past five decades. In descriptive analyses, we find that SFRs have increased globally, driven by particularly large increases in low-income countries. We analyze two cross-national datasets to examine factors associated with national SFRs. We find that…

Some Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) lack effective business strategies, creating barriers to student success and institutional financial stability. Grounded in the complexity and systems theory, the purpose of this qualitative multiple case study was to explore strategies HBCU leaders use to sustain the financial stability of…

The policy measure G8 was supposed to bring German school leavers into university earlier. The aim of this paper is to evaluate the effect of G8 on the transition from school into university using a difference-in-differences set-up within panel estimation with fixed effects. In comparison to a number of other studies in this paper, the complete…

The Office of English Language Acquisition (OELA) has synthesized key data on English learners (ELs) into two-page sheets on a variety of subjects. The topics for this report on dual language learners and state-funded preschool include: (1) Number of All Children Including Dual Language Learners (DLLs) Enrolled in State-Funded Preschool Programs…