Democratic Backsliding and the Balance Wheel Hypothesis: Partisanship and State Funding for Higher Education in the United States.

The balance wheel hypothesis-a classic tenet of USA state-level policy analysis that suggests state funding for higher education varies in response to macroeconomic cycles-has held up to scrutiny over time. However, new social conditions within the Republican Party, namely growing hostility toward independent institutions, call for a more nuanced understanding of the relationship between state budgets and higher education. Drawing on recent research in political science and political economy, we conceptualize declining state appropriations to higher education in Republican-dominated U.S. states as an instance of democratic backsliding. Using a panel of state-level data we found that political partisanship conditioned state appropriations to higher education during and after the Great Recession. Our finding that the balance wheel operated differently in states with and without unified Republican control not only suggests partisan hostility toward higher education is a potentially worrisome indicator of democratic backsliding, but also the importance of updating models to consider the extent to which they still hold as contexts change over time.

Charged particle radiation induced changes to optical properties of acousto-optic materials.

We report on the measurement of the transmittance and reflectance of unpolarized light (425-700 nm) in three birefringent, acousto-optic materials, including quartz, lithium niobate, and tellurium dioxide, after exposure to varying fluences of proton radiation ($ {10^{14}} {-} {10^{18}}\;{\rm protons}/{{\rm cm}^2} $1014-1018protons/cm2) delivered by a 10 keV hydrogen ion beamline. We observe a general monotonic decrease in transmittance with increasing fluence for all three materials, but with varying rates of change and critical points of change. Reflectance measurements also exhibit a general monotonic trend with fluence, but increases in quartz are observed versus decreases in both lithium niobate and tellurium dioxide. These observations are used to assess the suitability of the materials for acousto-optic applications in the space environment where charged particles from the solar wind are dominant and pose a threat to device operation. Our measurements agree with previously reported work concluding that tellurium dioxide is suitable for space applications at low fluences (below $ {{10}^{16}}\;{\rm ions}/{{\rm cm}^2} $1016ions/cm2), but our findings also raise previously unreported concerns for higher accumulated fluences observed for longer mission lifetimes of greater than five to 10 years in space in an unshielded configuration.

Factors That Predict Institutional Adoption of Professional Physical Therapist Education Programs.

BACKGROUND: Between 1995 and 2015, the number of accredited physical therapist education programs in the United States rose from 127 to 224. Colleges and universities have been known to develop new programs in an effort to generate revenues through student tuition. OBJECTIVE: In the present study, sources of institutional revenue and expenditures were used as predictors for the adoption of physical therapist education programs. DESIGN: Yearly data from the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System for 1731 higher education institutions were combined with dates from the Commission on Accreditation in Physical Therapy Education for physical therapist education program accreditation from 1995 to 2015. METHODS: A retrospective event history analysis of yearly institutional data was used to calculate the hazard of an institution adopting a physical therapist education program on the basis of institutional revenues and expenditures. RESULTS: Private institutions were 62% less likely to adopt a physical therapist education program when they experienced a 1% increase in total revenue per full-time-equivalent student. Conversely, a given private institution was 2.71 times more likely to adopt a physical therapist education program for every 1% increase in total expenditures per full-time-equivalent student. Both public and private institutions experienced an increased chance of adopting an entry-level (professional) physical therapist education program when instructional expenditures rose. They were also more than twice as likely to adopt physical therapist education programs when they experienced a 1% increase in the number of students. LIMITATIONS: Causation between professional physical therapist education program adoption and the variables studied cannot be determined through observational analysis alone. CONCLUSIONS: The more revenue a private institution generated, the less likely it was to add a program in the search for further revenues. As expenses rose, the chance of adoption trended upward beyond increases in institutional revenues for both public and private not-for-profit institutions.