Showing papers in "The Journal of Higher Education in 1993"

College Persistence: Structural Equations Modeling Test of an Integrated Model of Student Retention.

Abstract: Although several theories have been advanced to explain the college persistence process |6, 44, 45, 50, 52~, only two theories have provided a comprehensive framework on college departure decisions. These two theoretical frameworks are Tinto's |50, 52~ Student Integration Model and Bean's |7~ Student Attrition Model. A review of the literature indicates that the Student Integration Model, for instance, has prompted a steady line of research expanding over a decade |see, for example, 37, 42, 30, 35, 24, 46, 18~. This research has validated Tinto's model across different types of institutions with differing student populations. In turn, the Student Attrition Model |4, 5, 6, 7, 10~ has also been proven to be valid in explaining student persistence behavior at traditional institutions |3, 4, 6, 7, 10, 18~, while modifications to the model have been incorporated to explain the persistence process among nontraditional students |9, 26~. Insofar as the two theories have attempted to explain the same phenomenon, no efforts have been made to examine the extent to which the two models can be merged to enhance our understanding of the process that affects students' decisions to remain in college. However, Cabrera, Castaneda, Nora, and Hengstler |18~ have provided evidence that there is considerable overlap between the two theoretical frameworks. Taking these findings one step further, this study attempts to document the extent to which these two theories can be merged in explaining students' persistence decisions by simultaneously testing all non-overlapping propositions underlying both conceptual frameworks. Theoretical Framework Student Integration Theory Building on Spady's |44, 45~ work, Tinto |50, 51, 52~ advanced a model of student departure that explains the process that motivates individuals to leave colleges and universities before graduating. Tinto's theory attributes attrition to the lack of congruency between students and institutions. Tinto's theory basically asserts that the matching between the student's motivation and academic ability and the institution's academic and social characteristics help shape two underlying commitments: commitment to an educational goal and commitment to remain with the institution. Accordingly, the higher the goal of college completion and/or the level of institutional commitment, the greater is the probability of persisting in college. The Student Integration Model has been subjected to considerable testing, and research findings have largely supported the predictive validity of the model as far as the role of precollege variables is concerned |37, 38~. Results are mixed, however, when the structural relations that the theory presumes to exist among academic integration, social integration, and institutional and goal commitments are subjected to empirical testing |14, 28, 30, 33, 39, 40, 36, 41, 46, 47~. Although contradictory findings have been attributed to type of institution, gender, ethnicity, and inconsistencies on the measurement of the constructs |19, 35, 31~, these mixed results can also be attributed to the lack of control for variables external to the institution. A major gap in Tinto's theory and allied research has been the role of external factors in shaping perceptions, commitments, and preferences |7~. This topic is particularly relevant from both a policy analysis and an institutional perspective, given the different social and institutional programs aimed at stimulating enrollment and preventing attrition by addressing variables other than institutional ones (that is, ability to pay, parental support). In spite of this limitation, researchers have found that the Student Integration Model is useful in exploring the role of such external factors as significant other's influence |30, 35, 19~ and finances |15, 19, 24, 30~. Student Attrition Model Over the years, Bean |3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8~ has advanced an alternative model to explain the college persistence process. …

Academic Dishonesty: Honor Codes and Other Contextual Influences

Abstract: Research and media reports have established the continued pervasiveness of academic dishonesty among students on America's college campuses [12, 13, 22, 25, 26, 33, 46]. While some colleges have responded with academic integrity classes and increased efforts to convince reluctant faculty members to report student cheaters [13], there is a renewed interest in the concept of "community" as an effective foundation for campus governance. For example, the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching's special report, Campus Life: In Search of Community, concludes, "What is needed, we believe, is a larger, more integrative vision of community in higher education. . . . a place where individuals accept their obligations to the group and where well-defined governance procedures guide behavior for the common good" [10, p. 7]. Derek Bok, in Universities and the Future of American, echoes this theme: [U]niversities need to consider the larger campus environment beyond the classroom. An obvious step in this direction is to have rules tha t prohibit lying, cheating, stealing, violent behavior, interference with free expression, or other acts that break fundamental norms. Such rules not only protect the rights of everyone in the community; they also signal the importance of basic moral obligations and strengthen habits of ethical behavior [5, pp. 84-85]. Bok offers the honor code as perhaps the most effective approach in matters of academic integrity, but acknowledges that, "the pervasive competition for grades; the size, diversity, and impersonal nature of many large universities; their lack of any honor code traditon; and the wide-spread distaste for accusing one's classmates" combine to work against such an approach [5, p. 87]. Although the honor code traditon dates back over a century, the viability of such codes on today's campuses is open to some question [12]. Small, relatively homogeneous campuses have generally given way to large, culturally diverse institutions which lack any apparent sense of community or common purpose among students other than getting a credential and a job. Despite the fundamental nature of this question, there is a surprising paucity of empirical research which addresses the effectiveness of honor codes. the study discussed here attempts to help fill this gap by comparing academic dishonesty in colleges that have honor codes and those that do not. The few studies that have addressed the effectiveness of honor codes [7, 9] have generally considered code effectiveness independent of context. We believe that it is important to acknowledge and understand the complexity of the social systems within which honor codes are embedded and the fact that other contextual factors may be as important or more important than the existence of an honor code by itself. Thus this study extends beyond previous work by studying the effectiveness of honor codes within a more complex social context. Honor Codes in Context Academic Dishonesty Depending on one's definition of academic dishonesty, the data collection methods employed, and other variables, prior studies report that anywhere from 13 to 95 percent of college students engage in some form of academic dishonesty [12, 17, 20, 21, 26, 30, 31, 42]. A major dichotomy that separates these prior studies is the level of analysis. One stream of research has focused on individual differences though to be predictive of cheating behavior, such as gender [45], grade point average [1, 22,], work ethic [15], Type A behavior, competitive achievement-striving [35], and self-esteem [44]. In contrast, other studies have concentrated on the institutional level of analysis and examined such contextual factors as honor codes [7, 8, 9], faculty responses to cheating [26], sanction threats [33, 42], and social learning [33]. Although the "individual differences" approach helps to understand individuals' predispositions to cheat, the findings are not particularly useful to the university administrator searching for effective institutional responses to issues of academic dishonesty. …

Minority-Status Stresses and the College Adjustment of Ethnic Minority Freshmen

Abstract: In the ten-year period between 1969 and 1979, minority students enrolled in predominantly White colleges in increasing numbers, due in part to the greater access afforded by affirmative action programs |14~. Since the early 1980s, however, there has been a disturbing regressive trend in the enrollment, academic performance, and retention of these students. For example, African-American and other non-Asian minority students attending predominantly White colleges are less likely to graduate within five years, have lower grade point averages, experience higher attrition rates, and matriculate into graduate programs at lower rates than White students and their counterparts at predominantly Black or minority institutions |3, 6~.(*) Efforts to account for these regressive trends suggest that intellective and academic background factors (that is, aptitude test scores, high-school preparation, and so on) and non-cognitive, contextual, and socio-cultural factors may be differentially associated with the college adjustment and performance of minority and non-minority students |6, 23, 26, 29, 35, 36~. For example, African-American students are more likely than Whites to view predominantly White campuses as hostile, alienating, and socially isolating |1, 2, 4, 10, 16, 28, 30, 34, 35, 36~, and as less responsive to their needs and interests |4~. African-American students have also been found to experience greater estrangement from the campus community |16, 34~ and heightened discomfort in interactions with faculty and peers |20, 30~. In addition, Tracey and Sedlacek |35~ and Nettles, Theony, and Gosman |27~ have found that the academic adjustment and achievement of African-American and other minority students are influenced by different sociocultural and contextual factors (for example, student satisfaction with college, peer group relations) than those that have an impact on White students. In order to define conceptually how these factors might contribute to minority student college adjustment, we have proposed a multidimensional stress-coping model |33~ which identifies three sets of factors as important in minority college student adjustment and achievement: (1) individual attributes that enhance or moderate students' vulnerability to academic failure (for example, academic preparation, intelligence, self-confidence, social maturity); (2) the psychological and sociocultural stresses students face during their academic careers (for example, stresses that are experienced on campus, in the community, and so on); and (3) the strategies students use to cope with these stresses (for example, individual and group appraisals of stresses and the strategies used to cope with them). Consistent with a transactional model of stress and coping |22~, we view the types of stresses experienced, the coping styles used, and the outcomes obtained as mutually interacting. Consequently, the pattern of relationships among these variables are likely to vary as a function of individual, group, and college campus characteristics. We also note that many of the experiences reported by minority students at predominantly White colleges are experienced by and affect all college students and are integral to the role of college student (for example, academic demands, relationship problems, financial worries, and so on). These student role strains constitute a generic pathway of influences and contribute to college maladjustment for all students. However, these generic role strains should be distinguished from the more unique stresses experienced by minority students that heighten feelings of not belonging and interfere with minority students' effective integration into the university community (for example, experiences with racism, questions about their right to be on campus). These experiences are conceptualized as minority status stresses and constitute a separate and additional pathway of risk for maladjustment (that is, an additional stress load). …

The Practice of Giving Feedback to Improve Teaching: What Is Effective?.

Abstract: Although the vast majority of colleges and universities claim teaching as their as their primary mission, recent studies have expressed diasppointment with American higher education. Over the past decade, a number of individuals and organizations have found pressed for substantive change in higher education [1, 11, 52[. Consistently these reports have critized the quality of postsecondary instruction and have clamored for the improvement of teaching. Among all instructional development efforts, the most promising way of fundamentally changing postsecondary teaching is to provide faculty with individualized formative feedback. In this process, information about an instructor's teaching is collected, summarized, and fed back to the faculty member. Although this method has been found to be extremely powerful, it has not been consistently successful [19, 50], possibly because many who feed back the information to the teacher are not trained in feedback-giving practice [13]. Although there exists an abundance of literature about feedback to improve teaching, most studies focus on the kind of information that is fed back to the instructor rather than the process by which the instructor receives the information. Rarely do researchers observe the way in which information is conveyed to instructors, and fewer still analyze this process [12]. Thus a review of the literature on feedback was undertaken to extrapolate feedback-giving practices that may be effective in helping postsecondary teachers to improve their teaching. Method of Analysis Literature pertaining to feedback in the fields of education, psychology, and organizational behavior was reviewed. From this literature, pertinent theoretical pieces, empirical studies, and prior reviews of the literature were analyzed in order to determine the state of the art in the practice of giving feedback. Readers are cautioned on the degree of confidence that can be placed on some findings of this review. First, because all of the literature was not derived from the fields of education and faculty development, the findings may not be as generalizable to the teaching improvement process as expected. Psychology students as research subjects differ considerably from postsecondary faculty; likewise, business and industrial settings are quite different from college and university settings. However, related studies from education, psychology, and organizational behavior were included when the underlying issues of the study seemed to be applicable to faculty in a teaching improvement setting. Second, because all of the literature was not derived from empirical studies but also included theoretical and consensual pieces, some findings may command greater confidence than others. However, when the theory seemed logical or the consensus was broad-based, they were included; to ignore them seemed short-sighted. Organizing the Literature. Ilgen, Fisher, and Taylor [41] conceptualize feedback as "a special case of the general communication process in which some sender (hereafter referred to as a source) conveys a message to recipient" (p. 350, italics in original). Therefore, giving feedback can be considered an event. One effective method for understanding events is to ask the essential W questions: who, what when, where, why, and how. In article, who denotes the players in the event, the feedback source and the feedback recipient. What denotes the information that is fed back to the feedback recipient. When denotes the occasion upon which the information is fed back. Where denotes the location in which the information is fed back. Why denotes the reason that the information is fed back. How denotes the manner in which the information is given and received. Why feedback is being given and received is not answered within the scope of this article. The majority of the studies reviewed do not explicitly or implicitly discuss why the feedback was given. …

Work Satisfaction and Stress in the First and Third Year of Academic Appointment.

Abstract: Introduction Organizations within and outside of academe have become increasingly interested in the training and socialization of successful professionals. Interest has been fueled by growing evidence that the socialization process exercises important effects on a host of work-related variables, for example, work commitment, motivation, performance, productivity, stress, satisfaction, and turnover |for example, 11, 15, 16, 23, 24, 26~. Schein and others have identified a "success spiral syndrome," according to which early career successes generate both the opportunities and the desire for later success |34~. Work on organizational demography has suggested that early socialization experiences are important because of the heightened receptivity of the individual to the norms and values of the organization and profession and the lasting effects of socialization over the course of a career (cohort effects) |31~. Various arguments for the importance of early adaptation and achievement can be found in the literature on higher education as well |for example, 3, 4, 10~. Moreover, scholarly arguments appear to be buttressed by the first-hand impressions of both faculty and administrators who perceive faculty's ability to "hit the ground running" as critical to later success and satisfaction within academe |36, 39~. The faculty development literature shows that the early years of a faculty appointment, in particular, the first three years, are a period of intense socialization |4, 18~. Retrospectively, faculty report the early years to be the most difficult period of an academic career, a time of high stress and low satisfaction |3~. Yet, it remains unclear precisely what lessons faculty learn during their first years, what professional hurdles remain, and what issues pose the most significant threat to future satisfaction and success |4, 18~. We know a fair amount about the kinds of satisfactions, dissatisfactions and stresses faculty experience overall, but have little understanding of the specific sources of stress and satisfaction that shape faculty development at different career stages or how these stresses and satisfactions interact. Given evidence in the literature of a "perceptibly weakened morale" among faculty and a declining pool of faculty applicants, the question of how junior faculty successfully adapt and even manage to excel in the first years of appointment would seem to be particularly critical at the present time |6~. Intrinsic and Extrinsic Rewards of a Faculty Career The intrinsic rewards of an academic career have traditionally been viewed as central to faculty satisfaction |1, 5, 6, 18, 30~. Intrinsic rewards have been variously defined but, in general, pertain to the nature of the work itself |1~. Hackman and Lawler cite as examples of intrinsic rewards, the opportunity for independent thought and action, feelings of worthwhile accomplishment, opportunities for personal growth and development, and job-related self-esteem |20~. Internal rewards are particularly salient for professionals, like academics, who experience higher order need satisfaction (e.g., needs for personal growth and development or for feelings of worthwhile accomplishment) on a continuing basis without the strength of desire for additional satisfaction of these needs diminishing. Indeed, it may be that additional satisfaction of higher order needs actually increases their strength (Alderfer, 1969). This is an important possibility since it suggests that the opportunity for the development of continuing (and even increasing) motivation is much more a reality when higher order needs are engaged than is the case for more easily satisfied lower order needs |20, p. 262~. Empirical work indicates that "new recruits" to a profession may actually experience substantial dissatisfaction and higher rates of turnover when their work fails to provide them with a sense of opportunity, challenge, and accomplishment |14~. …

Multidimensional Students' Evaluations of Teaching Effectiveness: A Profile Analysis.

Abstract: The literature on students' evaluations of teaching effectiveness (SETE) consists of thousands of studies and dates back to the 1920s and earlier |13~. In reviews of this research, Marsh |10, 12, 13, 16~ concluded that SETEs are: (a) multidimensional; (b) reliable and stable; (c) primarily a function of the instructor who teaches a course rather than of the course that is taught; (d) relatively valid against a variety of indicators of effective teaching; (e) relatively unaffected by a variety of variables hypothesized as potential biases to the ratings; and (f) seen to be useful by faculty as feedback about their teaching, by students for use in course selection, by administrators for use in personnel decisions, and by researchers. Based on his review, Marsh argued that SETEs are probably "the most thoroughly studied of all forms of personnel evaluation, and one of the best in terms of being supported by empirical research" |13, p. 369~. SETEs, like the teaching that they represent, are a multidimensional construct (for example, an instructor may be organized but lack enthusiasm). This contention is supported by common sense and a considerable body of empirical research |13~. The SETE literature contains several examples of well-constructed instruments with clearly defined factor structures that provide measures of distinct SETE scales. In his review, Marsh |13~ noted that the systematic approach used in the development of these instruments and the similarity in the factors identified by each supports their construct validity. The Students' Evaluation of Educational Quality instrument that is the focus of the present investigation appears to measure the most broadly representative set of scales and to have the strongest factor analytic support of these instruments |10, 11, 12, 13~. Marsh and Hocevar |17~ factor analyzed SEEQ responses for a total group of 24,158 sets of class average ratings and for each of 21 different subgroups selected to differ in terms of instructor rank, course level (undergraduate and graduate), and academic discipline. The set of 9 factors that SEEQ is designed to measure was identified in all 22 factor analyses, and factor scores based on the total group were highly correlated with factor scores based on separate analyses of each of the 21 subgroups (mean r |is greater than~ 0.99). The results demonstrated that SEEQ measures a broadly representative set of evaluation factors and supported the generalizability of the SEEQ factor structure. A logical extension of the multidimensionality of SETEs is that a given instructor has a distinct profile of SETE ratings (for example, high in organization but low in enthusiasm) that generalizes over time and across different courses. There is apparently no research that has examined this hypothesis, and so the purpose of this investigation is to test it. Support for existence of a distinguishable profile that is specific to each instructor has important implications for understanding SETEs, for the use of SETEs as feedback, and for the relation of SETEs to other criteria, such as student learning. The necessary starting point of such research is to determine whether instructors have distinguishable SETE profiles, and this is the purpose of the present investigation. Generalizability of SETEs Studies of the generalizability of SETEs have typically considered global ratings, total scores, or separate analyses of specific SETE dimensions. Researchers |for example, 4, 6, 8, 9~ have examined correlations between ratings of the same instructor in different offerings of the same course, the same instructor in different courses, and different instructors teaching the same course in an attempt to disentangle the relative influence of the course and the instructor. This research examined the generality of SETEs and the relative importance of the instructor who teaches the course and the course that is being taught. For example, for overall instructor and course ratings, the correlations between ratings of different instructors teaching the same course (one estimate of the course effect) were -0. …

For Richer, for Poorer: Faculty Morale in Periods of Austerity and Retrenchment

Abstract: 48. Hill, M. D. "Variations in Job Satisfaction among Higher Education Faculty in Unionized and Nonunionized Institutions in Pennsylvania." Journal of Collective Negotiations in the Public Sector, 11 (1982), 165-80. 49. -----. "A Theoretical Analysis of Faculty Job Satisfaction/Dissatisfaction." Educational Research Quarterly, 10 (1986/87), 36-44. 50. Hines, E. R. "Higher Education and State Governments: Renewed Partnership, Cooperation, or Competition?" ASHE-ERIC Higher Education Report, no. 4. Washington, D.C.: George The great public universities reflect the investment citizens have made in building the commonwealth's educational and scientific infrastructure |61~. In many states, facilities and courses have been cut, and students have been crowded out of classes.... Master teachers are being paid -- "bribed" is the word that comes to mind -- to retire early simply because the university needs their salaries. Programs that took 20 years to build are dissolving; some of the best, most respected administrators and teachers have gone elsewhere. Budget cuts have stripped the university bare, leaving it without money to keep up a decent research library, without money for building programs. Morale -- of students and faculty members -- is low |21~. This article presents a case study of faculty morale and employment issues at an American public research university that has experienced an extended period of fiscal austerity. It sheds new light on how faculty compensation, job satisfaction, morale, and institutional commitment are influenced by changing institutional funding patterns -- patterns which reflect the widening gap between rich and poor segments of American society characterizing the 1980s and 1990s |20, 80~. These gaps are intensifying what Barbara Scott |93~ has called "the new academic stratification system." Fiscal Strains in American Public Higher Education As the United States entered the last decade of the twentieth century, much of American public higher education was facing profound economic uncertainty and financial retrenchment, forcing many institutions to eliminate academic programs and reduce academic personnel |4, 5~. This phenomenon is an outgrowth of state governments that are undergoing severe fiscal strains due to the volatile nature of the national economy |39, 42, 50, 51~. Recent stories in the Chronicle of Higher Education observe that over half the states faced serious financial deficits in the 1990-91 and 1991-92 fiscal years and have been forced to cut overall appropriations for public higher education |11, 17, 54, 72~. While some states experienced moderate financial growth in their higher education budgets during the 1980s, others saw periods of sharp decline in allocation of public resources, particularly for their academic institutions. In these latter states, additional cuts in public resources during the 1990s will significantly affect "core" programs in academic institutions which have few financial reserves to absorb further budget reductions. One type of academic institution that has been particularly affected by changes in public higher education funding patterns is the public research university |93, 95, 98~. Because state governments historically have been the largest single source of revenue for public academic institutions, decreases in state funding have forced public research universities to raise increased shares of their resources through grants and contracts from corporations, other private funding agencies, and the federal government. This has resulted in a checkerboard funding pattern within institutions for various academic disciplines. While fields like business and the physical sciences have often been able to obtain alternative funding for research, many fields within the humanities, social sciences, education, and human services have been largely dependent upon the states' shrinking general funds. State economic development initiatives and private sector demands for increased research and development assistance are further widening the gulf between the "have" and "have not" disciplines in American public research universities |6, 96, 97~. …

The Contested Terrain of Academic Program Reduction.

Abstract: which decisions are based, when quality and centrality are not operationalized to the satisfaction of groups of organizational participants, when decisions appear to have been reached privately by the judgments of a few administrators, or when the decisions seem arbitrary and capricious because they contradict widely cherished meritocratic assumptions that rewards and sanctions are allocated on the basis of academic performances. 7 The United States was at war in the Gulf at the time, so these terms of battle were especially timely. 8 One consequence of production function thinking was that a Academic program reduction has become a common retrenchment strategy for coping with the economic recession of the early 1990s, especially for public research universities struggling with the tripartite mission of service, teaching, and research |17, 20, 45, 48, 63, 66, 68~. One recent report estimates that up to two-thirds of American public research universities have faced substantial budget cuts in the 1991-92 academic year alone |36~. Additive solutions are no longer a viable approach to resolving conflicting views over what knowledge to include in a campus curriculum, as was previously done with women's studies and ethnic studies during the 1970s. In these times of fiscal constraint, long-existing academic programs with tenured faculty can be targeted for reduction or dismantling, as occurred in the 1980s with occasional retrenchment of semiprofessional schools such as nursing and education as well as departments such as geography and sociology |14, 46, 49, 52, 51, 59, 62, 83, 84, 96~. That academic program reduction entails intraorganizational turmoil is an undisputed empirical finding.(1) However, the nature of that turmoil warrants further scholarly attention to account for ideological patterns among professional subgroups that may not be as apparent in times of abundance. Specifically, we need to identify and account for a confluence of interests and alignments that surface across campuses. This article seeks to make a conceptual and empirical contribution by examining academic program reduction as a site of contested terrain, where campuses are seen as arenas of organizational struggle among groups to define and control professional work |46, 79, 80, 85~. The exploratory investigation draws on interview data from case studies of two public research universities, each the flagship campus in its state, where administrators proposed retrenchment as a primary strategy for adapting to substantial cutbacks in state appropriations (in the 10-15 percent range over two years, in the 20-25 percent range over three years.)(2) Semistructured interviews with forty faculty and twenty administrators captured how they, as both informants and respondents, made sense of organizational actors' interests in the budget crisis. Analyzing metaphorical imagery |56, 67, 77, 90~, I focus on explicit and implicit alignments, that is, with whom the interviewees aligned themselves to justify their location and to whom they appealed for legitimacy.(3) Five major patterns of language, and thus groups, surfaced among organizational participants, each with distinctive appeals to external referents for legitimacy. First, executive administrators on campus spoke in a corporate language of alterations (for example, downsizing, consolidation) calling for swift, centralized decision making in order to adapt to mandates from the state and the market. Second, subordinate administrators (for example, deans) in the tier below the executive decision makers aligned themselves with the top tier's discourse of alterations and, in a language of rationalization, tried to make sense of the content and process of budget decisions. Third, faculty research stars aligned themselves with the administrative language of alterations and justified their own entrepreneurial orientations with the language of the meritocracy in the context of national science policy. …

Retrenchment in the 1980s: The Politics of Prestige and Gender.

Abstract: In terms of profile within institutions, the fields that were retrenched probably had the greatest presence of women faculty, although many of these were off track. Moreover, gender figured foremost among the social characteristics of students in retrenched fields. In education, humanities, fine arts, social sciences, and home economics, the majority of students were female, with the exception of the social sciences, at 43.8 percent women |60, table 224~. In sum, retrenched fields were those that were most likely to provide career possibilities for women in academe and in the professions. Market arguments often are used to explain the disparities of In this article I use data of American Association of University Professors (AAUP) cases dealing with retrenchment reported in Academe between 1980-90. I try to decipher the processes and patterns that characterize retrenchment by asking who controls the process, what does the process look like, what fields and faculty are cut, and why? The theory that guides my interpretation is diverse but related: it is neo-Marxian, postmodernist, and feminist. I interpret patterns of faculty retrenchment in higher education as strongly shaped by the same class-based political/economic conflicts that are restructuring the broader economy. However, I see neo-Marxian theory as not dealing seriously with the professional class and professional labor, a drawback in a period marked by fluidity and chaos for persons claiming middle- or professional-class statuses |4, 35, 82~. I think postmodernists who have roots in the neo-Marxian tradition are a better guide to the uncharted social and economic spaces in which we currently live. They have a keen eye for uncertainty, contradiction, and the social construction of everyday life, especially in the lives of intellectuals, and are not committed to particular endings for any social scripts, let alone to grand narratives |39, 44, 79~. Finally, I think all social and economic theory must be leavened with feminist theory to account for the pervasive, subtle, and surprising gender differences that continue to mark society, postmodern or not |36, 44~. My general line of argument is that the particular phenomenon of faculty retrenchment in postsecondary education can be understood fully only through reference to broad patterns of redistribution of wealth and power in the wider society. After 1972, higher education was increasingly defined as a state welfare rather than a production function. Access was conceived of as unlimited, making higher education no more than an entitlement program, another state regulated service, one that absorbed increasing amounts of the several states' budgets |50~. As a welfare function, higher education became vulnerable to heavy cutting in the 1980s as states experienced fiscal crisis. Generally, university managers -- presidents, chancellors, provosts, deans -- responded to fiscal constraint in the same ways that corporate CEOs responded to declines in productivity and foreign competition: they began reorganizing internally, concentrating resources on the divisions they expected to be most profitable. The reallocation of resources within the university is beginning to restructure the professional labor force. However, not all faculty and fields in the 1980s were treated similarly. University policy makers, confronted with choices about what to cut, made decisions similar to those made by politicians and policy makers participating in the conservative ethos of the Reagan and Bush administrations: they privileged faculty and fields able to position themselves close to the market. They tried to emphasize more strongly universities' production functions. Faculty and fields unable or unsuccessful in claiming a position close to the market were more likely to be cut. Although position of faculty and field in relation to market sounds like the result of rational choice, I argue that this position is socially constructed by faculty and administrators, sometimes with little relation to free markets. …

An Exploratory Study of the Factors Associated with Parental Saving for Postsecondary Education

Abstract: Spurious Elements in Measured Real Income Saving." American Economic Review, 70 (1980), 990-1004. 33. Manski, C. F., and D. A. Wise. College Choice in America. Cambridge, Mass.: Howard University Press, 1983. 34. Merisotis, J. P. "An Inventory of Innovative Financing Plans to Help Pay for Higher Education." In New Ways of Paying for College, edited by Arthur M. Hauptman and Robert M. Koff. New York: American Council on Education/Macmillan Publishing Company, 1991. Introduction The growing federal deficit and increased competition for public dollars have resulted in increased interest in alternative methods for financing society's and personal costs of postsecondary education. Questions have been raised about the effects of federal financial aid upon student access |19~. Alternative methods of providing loans have also been proposed |10, pp. 21, 24~. The State of Massachusetts has enacted legislation to encourage parental saving |14~. Guaranteed tuition plans, such as the plan adopted in Michigan, are also examples of attempts to stimulate parental saving |34~. Recent interest in stimulating parental saving for postsecondary education suggests that policy makers view saving as a substitute for federal and state loans and other forms of financial aid for middle-income families. Baum |3~ discusses the rationale for returning more responsibility to parents for financing the postsecondary education of their children. In 1986 the Survey Research Center at the University of Michigan conducted a survey of consumer finances. Survey results indicated that only 34 percent of families with children under eighteen years of age who planned to send their children to college had savings specifically designated for college expenses |43~. Although interest in stimulating Parental saving for postsecondary education is increasing, there is a dearth of research on the extent of parental saving for postsecondary education and the factors associated with parental saving. This exploratory study examines factors associated with parental saving for postsecondary education. Purpose In an effort to shed light on parental saving, this article examines parental saving behaviors. Using student and parent data from a longitudinal study employing multiple surveys over a three-year period, logistic regression was used to identify the factors most strongly associated with parental saving for postsecondary education. In addition, insights gained from the interviews of a small subsample of students and parents who were interviewed five times during the three-year period are used to further examine parental saving. This exploratory study examines the following questions: 1. To what extent are parents saving for postsecondary education? 2. What factors are associated with parental saving? 3. Do certain kinds of information appear to influence parental saving? Insights into these questions can assist public policy makers in determining the most effective interventions to stimulate parental saving. A Perspective on Parental Saving for Postsecondary Education There is little previous empirical work on the factors associated with parental saving for postsecondary education. However, economists have been concerned about parental household savings since the emergence of capitalist economies and especially since the industrial revolution |1, 2, 8, 20, 38~. Drawing upon previous econometric studies and research on college choice, we posit that parental saving for postsecondary education is a function of the financial ability to save, parental motivation to save, parental postsecondary aspirations for their children, and the ability of their children to benefit from postsecondary education. Based upon research on household savings and student college choice we have identified factors that might be expected to influence parental saving. These factors include an array of variables which we have grouped under the categories of background characteristics, student and parental aspirations and activities, and information and incentives. …

Segmentation in the Academic Labor Market; Hiring Cohorts in Comprehensive Universities

Abstract: The constituent determinants of faculty careers have been the subject of much scholarship since Logan Wilson [44] introduced the concept of self-study to the profession fifty years ago. Structural analyses have traced career pathways from entry into the profession through retirement, so much so that novices who aspire to replicate the successful careers of their research-oriented mentors have an almost complete map to guide them. For graduate students who aspire to toptiered positions, securing entry into the professorial system means relying on sources of prestige external to themselves; the prestige of their institutions, graduate departments, and mentors plays a combined ascriptive role in securing the first academic position [12, 22, 25, 37, 38]. Following entry, responsibility for success reverts to the individual within the context of his or her academic environment [33]. Productivity, in the form of publications and especially citations, takes over as the primary mechanism to insure the appropriate rewards and, when feasible, mobility [1, 22, 36, 39]. Faculty have been alerted also to the modifying effects of fluctuations in the academic labor market on institutional recruitment and retention [12, 13, 32, 38, 43] and on institutional incentive and reward systems [33]. As the supply of faculty increased in the seventies, institutions demanded a higher price in their exchange with faculty of resources for prestige [39, 45] and boosted recruitment and retention standards. Clearly, the paths by which faculty realize success in research careers have been demonstrated to be normative. To obtain career counseling from these various lines of research, however, research-oriented faculty of faculty "wannabes" must synthesize for themselves the varied empirical results of "the individual determinants of career outcomes" [5, p. 37]. But careers are dynamic; they result from compounded individual choices and accomplishments. They also do not evolve in a vacuum. More than a compilation of singular incidents, actions, or interactions with institutions, faculty careers result from the ongoing simultaneous impact of external societal factors, such as the academic labor market, and internal organizational factors. Moreover, the number of positions available in research-oriented universities are limited. Does the limited number of positions automatically mean that most faculty settle for positions other than their preference? What of the careers of faculty who play out their professional lives in other types of institutions? If factulty careers are a composite of continuous interactions with the labor market and with the institutions that employ them, then the essence of the missions must be taken into account. The quid pro quo faculty/university prestige compact that Sorensen [39] suggests drives academic careers in research universities is virtually inoperative in organizations that proclaim themselves as teaching institutions. Rather than relying on the mutually beneficial exchange of resources (to faculty) for prestige (to the university), teaching institutions orient their missions to and acquire prestige from student-related factors, such as enrollment, student retention and postgraduation success. Do the career aspirations of faculty who spend their lives in colleges and universities that are primarily teaching institutions match the mission and objectives of these organizations or have they been frustrated as a result of placing lower on a meritocratic line of candidates? Existing knowledge about the professional life of faculty in non-research university contexts is scanty [16, 24, 35, 46] and provides few answers to these questions. The purpose of this article is to broaden the study of faculty careers by exploring the career patterns of faculty who are currently employed in two comprehensive universities. I will argue three points. First, the labor market is segmented by institutional type as suggested by Brown [11] and Clark [15], in that the majority of faculty in the study have chosen deliberately to work in this sector. …

The Politics of Liberal Education

Abstract: Controversy over what role “the great books” should play in college curricula and questions about who defines “the literary canon” are at the forefront of debates in higher education. The Politics of Liberal Education enters this discussion with a sophisticated defense of educational reform in response to attacks by academic traditionalists. The authors here—themselves distinguished scholars and educators—share the belief that American schools, colleges, and universities can do a far better job of educating the nation’s increasingly diverse population and that the liberal arts must play a central role in providing students with the resources they need to meet the challenges of a rapidly changing world. Within this area of consensus, however, the contributors display a wide range of approaches, illuminating the issues from the perspectives of their particular disciplines—classics, education, English, history, and philosophy, among others—and their individual experiences as teachers. Among the topics they discuss are canon-formation in the ancient world, the idea of a “common culture,” and the educational implications of such social movements as feminism, technological changes including computers and television, and intellectual developments such as “theory.” Readers interested in the controversies over American education will find this volume an informed alternative to sensationalized treatments of these issues. Contributors. Stanley Fish, Phyllis Franklin, Henry Louis Gates Jr., Henry A. Giroux, Darryl J. Gless, Gerald Graff, Barbara Herrnstein Smith, George A. Kennedy, Bruce Kuklick, Richard A. Lanham, Elizabeth Kamarck Minnich, Alexander Nehamas, Mary Louise Pratt, Richard Rorty, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick

Female Graduate Students' Perceptions of Their Interactions with Male and Female Major Professors

Abstract: Women graduate students, in many fields, are more likely than their male cohorts to drop out before completing their Ph.D's [19, 25], to terminate their graduate educations after obtaining only their master's degrees [4], or to consider withdrawing from graduate school before completing their degrees [21]. This is in spite of the fact that women enter graduate school with higher mean undergraduate grade-point averages than men [19,25]. Various hypotheses have been formulated to explain these phenomena, but implicit in all of them is the assumption that women's graduate experiences differ from those of men. For example, some authors [for example, 11, 15] have argued that, unlike their male counterparts, women graduate students feel overlooked, neglected, unsupported, and even dismissed by faculty, especially outside of the classroom. Empirical support for this assertion has been offered by Hite [20], who found that male doctoral students perceived more faculty support than did their female colleagues. Similarly, Holmstrom and Holmstrom [21] found that, when asked whether professors in their departments took gradudate women seriously, 21 percent of the male and 31 percent of the female doctoral students in their sample said that professors did not. Other authors have suggested that women graduate students are at a material disadvantage compared to men graduate students. O'Connell and her colleagues [23] found that proportionally fewer women than men were offered authorships for their research participation, were asked to accompany a professor on a professional trip, and were asked to meet with scholars from other departments. Faculty-Graduate Students Interactions One obvious area in which the experiences of men and women graduate students may differ is in their interactions with faculty members [7, 20, 21, 22]. Such interactions are central to graduate students' reasearch training, feelings of identity and commitement to the profession, and socialization into the profession [2, 3, 5, 6, 8, 10, 22]. Indeed, graduate students consider their relations with faculty to be one of the most important factors in determining the quality of their graduate experience [16]. Some researchers [for example, 11, 20, 21] have argued that it is beneficial to students' professional development to have same-gender faculty with whom to interact. However, compared to their male counterparts, female graduate students appear to have less opportunity to interact with same-gender faculty. Recent statistics indicate that only 27 percent of all college professors are women, whereas 53 percent of all graduate students are women [9]. Women graduate students may therefore be disadvantage in their interactions with faculty simply because there are relatively few women professors. Gilbert, Gallessich, and Evans [13] found that 35 percent of the women doctoral students in their sample who identified a role model chose a female faculty member (10 percent of the graduate faculty in this sample were women) and 65 percent chose a male faculty member. Only 15 percent of the men identifying a role model chose a female faculty member, whereas 85 percent identified a male faculty member. Thus, even though women students disproportionally choose women faculty, most nevertheless have male role models. Faculty-Graduate Student Interactions: Effects of Faculty and Student Gender Evidence suggests that the relative unavailability of female faculty members may be more than a mere inconvenience to female graduate students. Gilbert et al. [13] found that female graduate students in psychology who identified female professors as role models viewed themselves as more confident, career-oriented, and instrumental than did female students who identified male professors as role models. Similarly, Gilbert [12] found that female graduate students in psychology with female faculty role models rated the importance of such role models to their professional development higher than did male students with male faculty role models. …

Prep School and Public School Graduates of Harvard: A Longitudinal Study of the Accumulation of Social and Cultural Capital.

Abstract: French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu |4, 5~ has developed what he calls a theory of "social reproduction" In his view, those in power do not merely pass on their material wealth, or economic capital, to their offspring (though they do this), they also try to assure that their children acquire what he calls "cultural capital" and "social capital" Cultural capital consists of various forms of knowledge, dispositions, and skills For instance, in a society that has very few literate members, knowing how to read and write gives one an enormous advantage over those who are illiterate |5~ Similarly, in a culture that depends increasingly on computers, those with early training in sophisticated computer skills may have valuable advantages over those who do not |26~ Social capital refers to the benefits of knowing people who can be of help to one -- what in earlier times was referred to as making "connections" and, more recently, is often referred to as "networking'' Bourdieu writes that social capital "is often indispensable if one desires to attract clients in socially important positions'' It is our contention that Bourdieu's concepts are useful theoretical constructs for explaining the differences that have been observed between public and prep school graduates and for predicting other differences For example, studies from the 1920s through the early 1950s demonstrate that graduates of public schools outperformed graduates of private schools in their college academic work |12, 21, 22, 23, 29~ This, we believe, reflects that more effort was invested by the public school graduates than by the private school graduates in order to accumulate cultural capital through academic achievement Because public school students were more likely than the graduates of elite boarding schools to be upwardly mobile, doing well in college provided them with valuable cultural capital The graduates of private schools, who were more likely to come from upper-class families, put more energy into the accumulation of social capital than the public school student For those already at the top of the class structure, relationships with others who will hold power are likely to be much more important than doing exceptionally well academically In previous studies, we have applied Bourdieu's concepts to the undergraduate and postgraduate careers of public school and prep school graduates who attended Wesleyan, Yale, Mount Holyoke, and Smith in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s |33, 34~ We found that at those four colleges the graduates of public schools continued to be more likely than the graduates of private schools to be elected to Phi Beta Kappa At the two men's schools, Yale and Wesleyan, the graduates of prep schools, and especially the graduates of elite prep schools, were more likely than the public school graduates to have been members of socially prestigious societies (at Yale, Skull and Bones, and at Wesleyan, The Mystical Seven) |33~ When we looked at the experiences of Yale graduates twenty-five years after they had graduated, we found that the public school graduates were more likely than the prep school graduates to have earned higher degrees that provided them with credentials necessary to work in certain professions (for example, medical, legal and doctoral degrees) In contrast, we found that the graduates of prep schools and, especially, elite prep schools, were more likely to have joined prestigious social clubs and that they were more likely to have entered occupations in which social capital would be especially useful (for example, business) |34~ Though Wesleyan, Yale, Mount Holyoke, and Smith are all highly selective schools, Harvard sits at the pinnacle of the undergraduate prestige hierarchy in America In this study, then, we plan to apply Bourdieu's concepts to the undergraduate and postgraduate experiences of Harvard students To use Klitgaard's term, by looking within "the right tail" of the bell shaped curve (in this case, those who have been selected to attend the most prestigious undergraduate college in America), we hope to learn some valuable things about the way the American elite functions to reproduce itself …

Proprietary Schools and Their Students

Abstract: schools are small: Seventy-five percent enroll fewer than 175 students. At the same time, a few schools are quite large -- reporting enrollments as high as 12,000 students. And it is these large schools that enroll most proprietary school students: 10 percent of all schools enroll over 50 percent of the students. Schools offering business and marketing programs and technology programs account for one-third of all proprietary schools and enroll nearly two-thirds of all enrollment. Cosmetology schools make up 40 percent of the schools and enroll about 14 percent of the students. The remaining schools offer programs ranging Introduction Proprietary schools -- sometimes termed "private career schools" -- are for-profit institutions that offer mostly occupational training for post-high-school students. There are approximately six thousand of these schools of which four thousand are main campuses and two thousand are branches of those campuses. Overall, proprietary schools account for more than one-half of all postsecondary institutions. In the fall of 1986, proprietary schools enrolled an estimated 5 percent of all undergraduates and, according to the National Assessment of Vocational Education, 14 percent of all students enrolled in postsecondary vocational programs |22, pp. 20-21~. Not only do proprietary schools provide a significant proportion of postsecondary occupational training, but their students receive a sizeable proportion of federal student financial aid under Title IV of the Higher Education Act (HEA). By U.S. Department of Education (ED) estimates, proprietary school students receive about 30 percent (approximately $5 billion dollars) of funds for these programs. They receive about one-quarter of all Pell grants and about one-third of all Stafford loans (formally the Guaranteed Student Loan or GSL program). Moreover, proprietary school students are more likely to default on their federal loans. Fraas |5, p. 5~ reports ED analysis of "a random sample of Stafford loan borrowers who entered repayment in FY 1985 |that~ found that 50.6 percent of proprietary school borrowers defaulted on their loans by the end of FY 1988. This compared to about a third of community college students; default rates for students at 4-year schools are considerably lower." Given the number of proprietary schools, the proportion of students served, and especially the amount of federal aid provided to proprietary-school students and their high default rates on federally guaranteed loans,(1) it is important to understand basic information about these schools and the students who attend them. Until now information about these schools came from older studies |for example, 2, 4, 6, 8, 28~, studies examining broader issues |for example, 9, 19, 22~ and studies conducted by or for the proprietary school industry |for example, 7~. This article provides current, nationally representative information about proprietary schools and their students. It addresses several questions about these schools and students: * What are the general attributes of proprietary schools? * What kinds of training do proprietary schools offer? * Who enrolls in proprietary schools? * How much and what types of student financial aid do proprietary school students receive? * How much does proprietary school training cost its students? Comparison Groups Several comparisons are useful to put the discussion of these questions into a broader context. One comparison is among proprietary schools offering training in different occupations. Because proprietary school owners often see other proprietary schools as their chief competitors |12, p. 36~, comparisons among proprietary schools are useful. Moreover, although proprietary schools are often discussed as a distinct form of educational institution, comparisons among proprietary schools reveal that they are not homogeneous institutions but differ in important respects, such as program length and cost. …

What We Know about Women in Community Colleges: An Examination of the Literature Using Feminist Phase Theory

Abstract: Occupational Status: Analyzing Occupational Differences for Community and Four-Year Entrants." The Sociological Quarterly, 24 (1983), 393-404. 40. -----. "Sex Differences in Type of First College Entered and Occupational Status: Changes Over Time." Social Science Journal, 22 (1985), 89-97. 41. Moore, K. M. "The Cooling Out of Two-Year College Women." Personnel and Guidance Journal, 53 (1975), 578-83. 42. Morgan, G. "Journals and the Control of Knowledge: A Introduction A majority of all community college students are women, and approximately 60 percent of its part-time students are women. In fact, much of the growth in community college enrollments can be attributed to increased participation by women |63~. There have been parallel gains in the share of administrative and faculty positions held by women |3, 28, 43~. In 1987 there were 101 female two-year college presidents, more than double the number of women presidents in 1975 |3~. These gains are significant, and compared to most other types of postsecondary institutions, community colleges appear to be hospitable to women at all levels. However, historian Barbara Solomon |55~ cautions that equity in numbers has not assured equality for women in higher education, and community colleges would appear to be no exception. Billie Dziech |18~ writes, "In reality, the story of women in 'the people's college' is an account of success and failure, of hope and despair". She goes on to say, "The statistics |on the percentage of administrative positions held by women~ remind women staff that although on the surface the community college has been a good place for them, it has not always been good enough. Not good enough to recruit them, pay them, promote them, or tenure them equitably. . . . Not good enough to challenge academic traditions and build an environment in which men and women can work as equals". The ambivalence of the community college attitude toward women is dramatically demonstrated by two pieces of writing, published more than ten years apart. In the mid-1970s the editors of the Junior College Journal created a fictitious author, C. M. Pegg, who wrote a supposedly satirical piece about the progress of women in community colleges |45~. Pegg, a "modern man," rails against the recently formed American Association of Women in Community and Junior Colleges and affirmative action legislation; community colleges have done quite well without Washington's help he insists. Further, he warns against the dangers of women advancing into places for which their temperament is not suited, namely administration. The reader is left to ponder just what the editors were intending to satirize: Pegg's attitudes or women's concerns. This "fictitious" article can be dismissed relatively easily as being time-bound or light-hearted, but the second is not so easily ignored. In his most recent book on the community college presidency, Vaughan |61~ includes a chapter entitled "Women Who Are Presidents" in an attempt to compensate for the fact that most treatises on the college presidency are written as if all presidents were men. And this chapter makes an important contribution. However, while discussing the search process, Vaughan makes a very revealing statement. He says, "Although women encounter certain difficulties that men do not when seeking the presidency, to assume that being female caused failure to be selected for a given presidency is to greatly oversimplify the presidential selection process. . . . Trustees are obligated to determine the right fit, or chemistry for a college at a particular time and location. There are some cases when the right fit requires a white male president and other cases when it requires a female president". He makes a similar statement about minority presidents. So while lamenting the difficulties faced by women (and minorities), he, perhaps unintentionally, reinforces stereotypes that certain characteristics and skills needed in the presidency are primarily associated with one's sex. …

The chief student affairs officer : leader, manager, mediator, educator

Abstract: Part 1 The chief student affairs officer as campus leader: the evolving complexity of student affairs leadership supporting and assisting the president working with students responding to campus, community, and alumni interests. Part 2 Administrative roles and responsibilities: the manager the mediator the educator. Part 3 Professional concerns and commitments: assessing and developing professional effectiveness student affairs leaders for tomorrow.

Writing Blocks and Tacit Knowledge

Abstract: regimen has a similar application. It means putting writers on a schedule while easing them away from distractions and interruptions. It means teaching the ability to produce writing in substantial amounts, regardless of mood. And, it includes lessons about the value of working with balance and moderation |107~. After all, most productive writers in academe limit their writing to but a few hours a day, to little more than they invest in collegiality |38, 69~. Why does regimen need balance? Skinner, though an advocate of regimen, saw its limitation |123~. When we force writing, he warned, we can reinstate the very conditions that blocked In this article I deal with two kinds of writing blocks. One occurs when we cannot write in fluent, timely fashion. This first sort of block is a familiar pressure for many of us (and for our students). The second kind of writing block refers to the paradoxical reluctance evidenced by academicians who could but do not offer help to stymied colleagues or students as writers. The causes of writing blocks are multiple. In the following pages I will review a variety of hindrances to writing fluently, among them perfectionism and procrastination. Overall, though, I focus on the quandary of why we leave the tacit knowledge of writing fluency generally untaught. To accomplish this, I address three related considerations: first, I consider why writing blocks are costly yet neglected; second, I assemble the scattered literature on writing blocks, much of it more interesting than convincing; and third, I draw lessons from that literature and from related knowledge about agoraphobic and dieting failures that could help with all kinds of blocks. In the end, blocking and unblocking may tell us something about why education and its close kin, therapy, often fail. The First Consideration: Why We Overlook Blocking As we proceed, one thing will be most apparent: we have, for the most part, overlooked blocking. But we cannot blame our neglect of blocking on a complete lack of prior interest. Long before Freud |59~ warned about the watchers at the gates of our consciousness, therapists and educators speculated about writing blocks. Blocking has found the most currency among psychoanalysts, usually as a label for the inhibition of affect that stifles the discharge of emotions |76~. Writing about blocking also persists in self-help books where creative blocks are tied to nonplayful and rule-bound styles of working |1, 137~. We know more about a converse of blocking, productivity; information continues to accumulate about the general correlates of faculty outputs, such as the age at which doctorates were obtained |9, 38, 53~. Nor can we excuse our neglect of blocking on a lack of personal relevance. Nothing in academe and in related arenas comes close to the penalties for silence |38~; without writing, academicians rarely maximize career rewards |25~. Moreover, writing blocks may play another, generally unappreciated role in shaping our profession. Estimates of graduate students who qualify to write dissertations but never finish them run as high as 50 percent |127~. Rates of disappointment for academicians who survive dissertations and assume professorial careers may be even higher; individuals who want and need to do substantial scholarly writing but do not write comprise some 50-85 percent of faculty |122~. The costs of so many potential writers remaining more or less blocked go beyond anonymity and exclusion; people who are not heard may stop listening |141~. If the neglect of writing blocks lies neither in a lack of prior interest nor in personal relevance, where then? The explanation I favor is that writing fluency is a kind of practical intelligence whose basics remain traditionally untaught. The tacit knowledge of writing fluently is much like that of becoming proficient in other implicit skills essential to thriving in academe; they are often learned incidentally or poorly, if at all |129~. …

Assessing the Validity of Higher Education Indicators

Abstract: The U.S. Department of Education, the National Science Foundation (NSF), the Council of Chief State School Officer, and nearly all individual states have efforts under way to create educational indicators. Federal agencies view indicators as essential for monitoring the status of the nation's educational system and for tracking how it changes over time. At the state level, policy makers hope that indicators will provide information they can use to hold local districts and schools accountable for their performance. State policy makers also seek indicator data that can inform new improvement efforts. At the heart of each of these national and state efforts is a fundamental question: What indicators will be most valid and useful [22]? Introduction Indicators come in many forms, but all are descriptive data (for example, frequencies, percentages, ranks, means, rates, ratings) serving as proxies for conditions in education that policy makers wish to monitor. While imprecise and not without flaws, they were powerful numbers, capable of triggering important decisions relating to resource allocation, student admissions, staffing, curriculum, and other matters. What began in 1867 as simple record-keeping of enrollment statistics by the federal government [20] has since become "big business" [24], as evidenced by the multitude of studies and projects begin conducted. Today's activity results in part from twenty-five years of growing concern for student performance and the effectiveness of our schools. This study was prompted by the author's concern for the rigor with which indicators are developed or selected and for the validity of certain indicators that are being used today to evaluate institutions of higher education. This concern stems from the observation that indicators have the potential to be both technically inaccurate (for example, the numbers are calculated incorrectly or contain various sources of error) and conceptually invalid (that is, they are poor proxies for the concepts or conditions in education we wish to measure). The statistics we identify as indicators of quality of excellence require special justification because the inferences we draw from them extend beyond recorded facts (for example, student enrollment, cost-per-student) to constructs which are difficult to define or isolate. Additionally, many of us in the research and policy communities have, at best a fuzzy understanding about what it means to have a valid indicator. How does one go about testing the validity of an indicator or indicator system? Unlike the known standards for conducting validity studies on tests, there are no agreed-upon procedures for assuring that the indicators measure, or represent, that which we assume they measure. This lack of agreement is not limited to policy users, as de Nuefville [13] wrote in her treatise on a social indicators, but extends to developers of indicator systems, as a review of indicator literature revealed. This lack of a systematic method or conceptual framework lead to confusion as to which types of evidence might be gathered to support the interpretation and use of indicators. The same lack explains, perhaps, why virtually all indicator systems proposed or in place in education todat have no self-evaluate component. Although the practical requirements of "good" indicators (for example, cost effective, understood by lay audiences, feasible to collect) have been amply listed [for example, 21, 23, 26], most current developers fail to explain how their indicators should be tested or assessed other than by a largely subjective process of literature review, review by committee, and affirmation over time by the public [13, 26, 27]. The validity of current indicators might be less in question had they been developed systematically, beginning with careful definition of an underlying construct (for example, curriculum quality, ethic discrimination) and proceeding to the development and testing of standardized measures. …

The Influence of Gender on University Faculty Members' Perceptions of “Good” Teaching

Abstract: What is "good" teaching? The question has been asked numerous times and has been addressed from many different perspectives. Although there is no clearly definitive answer to the question, there are some generally accepted characteristics of "good" teachers and teaching situations: enthusiasm, knowledge of the subject area, stimulation of interest in the subject area, organization, clarity, concern and caring for students, use of higher cognitive levels in discussions and examinations, use of visual aids, encouragement of active learning and student discussion, provision of feedback, and avoidance of harsh criticism |12, 16, 22, 24, 32, 35, 40, 41, 47, 59~. This list has largely been generated from studies that explored college and university students' opinions about effective teaching, as well as from some that explored the opinions of elementary and secondary teachers. In addition to teacher characteristics, McKeachie |40~ noted almost thirty years ago how difficult it was to define and measure the appropriate outcomes of "good" teaching, and this is still a major concern and unsolved problem today. In this study we were interested in obtaining university faculty members' views on what they perceived to be the teacher or teaching characteristics that resulted in "good" teaching and on what they perceived to be the appropriate outcomes of "good" teaching. We were especially interested in investigating the nature and extent of any relationships between the gender of the faculty respondents and perceptions about good teaching and the appropriate outcomes of good teaching. What differences, if any, exist between male and female faculty members in their opinions about effective teaching is a timely question, and one that few researchers have investigated -- although there has been a fairly large number of publications in the last decade or so that have dealt with the status of women in academic settings and with gender differences as perceived by students. Many authors |for example, 1, 3, 26, 33, 45, 51, 58~ have noted the increase in the number of women faculty members. Lomperis |37~ provided statistics showing that women represented about one-fifth of all university faculty twenty-five years ago, and about one-third by 1990. As these and other authors have also pointed out, however, real differences continue to exist in terms of such factors as proportionate representation by discipline or field, salary, rank, part-time versus full-time employment, and type of appointment (tenure-track versus non-tenure track). Finkelstein |27~, in summarizing an extensive review of studies on female faculty, found that women tended to be segregated by discipline and by institutional type; to be disproportionately represented at lower ranks; to get promoted at a slower rate than their male colleagues; to participate less in governance and administration; and to be compensated at a rate that averaged only 85 percent of that of their male colleagues. Newell and Kuh |45~, who had conducted a fairly large national survey of professors of higher education, reported that women had generally lower academic-year salaries and heavier teaching loads than men and that they perceived more pressure to publish and were less happy with the structure of their departments. Differences such as these have led some authors to use the term "chilly" to describe the academic climate experienced by women faculty members |49, 60~. The research on gender differences as perceived by students has produced some conflicting results. One possible reason for some of the discrepancies in this body of literature was discussed by Bennett: "Evidence for gender stereotyping and performance evaluation bias |often~ comes from studies that use quasiprojective procedures and hypothetical descriptions designed intentionally to elicit stereotypic response patterns. The evidence of such studies is mixed and occasionally conflicts with that based on direct rating techniques". …

Untangling the Web: Using Price-Response Measures in Enrollment Projections

Abstract: Fifteen years ago, experts predicted that as a result of the shrinking traditional college-age cohort higher education enrollments would decline in the 1980s and early 1990s. During the 1980s tuition charges consistently increased faster than inflation, state support of higher education wavered because of troubled state economies, and the federal government shifted its emphasis from grants to loans and decreased its support for student aid. In spite of these developments, all of which would have led to more dire enrollment predictions if they had been known a decade earlier, enrollments in higher education remained stable in the 1980s [16], instead of declining as had been predicted. In the 1980s college enrollment was higher than predicted. However, minority participation rates declined, which suggests the decline in federal student aid could have had an influence on enrollment. Throughout the decade there was speculation that the declines in minority participation rates were attributable to changes in federal student aid in combination with rising college prices [for example 36]. However, the linkage between changes in federal student aid policy and enrollment had been seriously questioned [18], and the Reagan administration's studies of the issue concluded that academic preparation, not student aid, was the major reason for the decline in minority participation rates [9, 39]. Recent research, however, supports the argument that there is a An earlier version of this article was presented at the Eighth Annual NASSGP/NCHELP Research Network Conference, San Francisco, Calif., 21 March 1991. The thought-provoking comments of unknown reviewers are gratefully acknowledged. linkage between federal student aid, tuition charges, and enrollment by minorities from low-income backgrounds [31, 45, 47, 48, 51]. Unfortunately, this linkage is not routinely considered in most state higher education agencies or the United States Department of Education when they make decisions about higher education budgets. In spite of the importance of this topic, there has not been any significant effort to collect the data researchers would need to address these concerns fully. Therefore, the adequacy of existing price-response measures for enrollment and financial planning should be assessed. To be useful in budget and enrollment projection models, price-response measures should meet at least two minimum standards. First, they should be at least as accurate in predicting enrollment as projection models that do not use these measures. Second, they should predict the types of changes that actually happen (for example, redistribution of aid and enrollment across sectors). In this article I attempt to untangle the web of controversy surrounding the use of price-response measures in enrollment projection models. After briefly considering the use of standardized student price-response coefficients (SPRCs) and other cashflow-response measures(1) in projection models, I compare the accuracy of three types of cashflow-response measures in predicting enrollment, use one of these to analyze the impact of pricing changes during the 1980s, and consider the implications of these analyses for future refinements in enrollment projections and data collections. The Use of Price Response in Projection Models In the 1960s the early student-demand studies concluded that students' enrollment decisions were influenced by tuition charges [for example, 6, 11]. In 1973 the National Commission on the Financing of Postsecondary Education (NCFPE) used the results of the student-demand studies in a higher education budget model. However, the NCFPE's budget model was severely criticized [12] largely because of inadequacies of the student-demand studies used in the model. Nevertheless, other research on students who enrolled before the Pell program was implemented (as Basic Educational Opportunity Grants), suggested that results of research on the impact of student aid could be useful in estimating the enrollment effects of student aid policy [29]. …

New Life for the College Curriculum: Assessing Achievements and Furthering Progress in the Reform of General Education

Abstract: Part One: Reforming General Education: The Public Debate and the Campus Response Part Two: Assessing the Impacts of the Reforms Part Three: Sustaining Improvements in General Education

Selectivity and Rigor in Research Universities

Abstract: Undergraduate admissions selectivity is a common defining characteristic of the academic quality or excellence of a given college or university. This assertion is borne out by the relationship that institutional reputation and resources -- both common approaches to assessing institutional quality -- have with admissions selectivity [2]. The reputational approach defines institutional quality in terms of an institution's place in the hierarchy of colleges and universities [2], whereas the resource approach delineates quality by applying such criteria as SAT or ACT scores of entering freshmen, the number of books in an institution's library, or the scholarly productivity of an institution's faculty [2]. Selectivity is the best single predictor of the reputation or prestige of a college or university [3, 32] and is highly associated with such resource criteria as faculty salaries, endowment per student, and educational and general expenditures per student [3]. Thus, undergraduate admissions selectivity appears to be an adequate indicator of the perceived academic quality of a college or university [3, 4, 20]. Moreover, the role of institutional selectivity as an important index of academic quality or academic standards is well rooted in the academic folklore beliefs held by academics and the lay public alike. This folklore reads as follows: "an 'excellent institution' is one that 'maintains high standards,' and high standards in turn means highly selective admissions policies" [2, p. 41]. Furthermore, a common belief of this academic folklore is that students attending a highly selective institution learn more and develop their intellectual skills more fully than do their counterparts at less selective institutions [1, 28]. If selectivity is an index of academic standards or quality, then institutional selectivity should exert the influence on student achievement and intellectual development suggested by academic folklore. This contention has been pursued by empirical research [1, 5, 6, 27, 30, 31, 33]. From their review of the findings of this research, Pascarella and Terenzini [28] conclude that the effects of institutional quality (selectivity) on student learning are small and inconsistent when various student entry characteristics are statistically controlled. They offer several interpretations for the failure of this body of research to validate the folklore touting a positive relationship between institutional selectivity and student academic achievement and intellectual development [28]. The first of these interpretations is that institutions of putatively varying degrees of quality have the same general influence on students. A second explication is that the samples used in these studies are restricted to a narrow range of academically able students. The data-analytic approaches used prevent the identification of the unique effects of institutional attributes and precollege (entry) student characteristics, because student learning is likely to be influenced by the joint effect of these two categories of variables. Such is a third interpretation advanced by Pascarella and Terenzini [28]. A fourth explanation is that institutional level variables such as institutional selectivity may be too broad to discern the anticipated effects, for such effects may be occurring at the level of the academic department. The lack of a common educational experience among students is a fifth accounting offered by Pascarella and Terenzini [28]. However, another perspective can be advanc]ed. This perspective is that academic quality is manifested in such course-level academic processes as the type of questions faculty ask students during class, the nature of term paper assignments or other written exercises, and the type of examination questions written by faculty [10]. Put differently, academic quality is embedded in process at the course level rather than in the achievement of various cognitive outcomes. Academic standards are manifested in such processes through the level of academic demands or rigor expected of students. …

Transfer and Articulation within Colleges and Universities.

Abstract: For more than a quarter of a century, students of the community college have deplored the decline in quality and quantity of community college transfers to senior institutions [see, for example, 4, 5, 9, 10, 12, 14, 15, 18, 30]. In recent years, some cite "consistent evidence that initial attendance at a two-year rather than a four-year college lowers the likelihood of one's attaining a bachelor's degree" [21, p. 372; see further 372-73, for a convenient synthesis of related literature]. The attention of community college transfer education in favor of other emphases such as vocational and adult education has motivated a body of reform theory advocating either abandonment of the transfer mission or its revitalization with or without the structural realignment of community colleges in higher education. The reformers fall roughly into thre categories differentiated here by advocacy of particular functional or structural approaches to change. One group of functionalists argues that the community college should reaffirm its link to higher education and reverse transfer decline by strengthening the academic and general education core [4, 6, 20]. A second, however, proposes that the sector relinquish the transfer function altogether in favor of other functions, such as vocational and adult education, which they consider better suited to the community college's academic capability [3, 5]. A third group believes that the community college is fundamentally flawed by neither being nor belonging to a four-year structure. Within this logic, the community college cannot promote transfer education adequately because of what it is not -- for example, it is commuter not residential, comprehensive not liberal arts, open not selective, two-year not four, and so on. Among its several faults, this perspective ignores the extent to which many senior institutions have embraced associate- and baccalaureate-level vocational curricula, flexible scheduling, and varied delivery modes in response to the perceived needs of their own (often eagerly recruited) populations of nontraditional/new majority students. As a corrective to the transfer malaise, the structural reformers propose either the transformation of community colleges into four-year institutions or, more radically still, their realignment as branch campuses under the aegis of state universities [see 8, esp. pp. 325-31; 9, esp. pp. 204-7; 11;21, p. 643; 31, pp. 251-52].(1) Because the data speaking to the quantitative and qualitative decline of community college transfer students over the past quarter of a century admittedly suggest that separate responsbility for the first and last two years of undergraduate education may be a contributing factor to transfer decline, the structuralists posit that the organic affiliation of junior- and senior-level program components under the four-year umbrealla would, in and of itself, cultivate greater continuity to the baccalaureate degree. As the most vocal proponent of reformation through conversion, Dougherty, for example, argues that "because of their strong connection to the universities, university two-year branches apparently make it easier for students to transfer than do community colleges" [9, p. 206]. The evidentiary grounds for this is slim, however, based as it is upon studies of branch campus transfer rates from the 1960s and early 1970s, when community college transfer rates were highe than in recent years, as documented and analyzed by Grubb [10] in his comprehensive transfer study based on national longitudinal data.(2) Higher education institutions have undergone significant organizational change in the last quarter of a century marked by increased aggregation of programs and campuses within multi-unit colleges, universities, and systems [7, 17]. Many consolidated baccalaureate degree-granting institutions now extend postsecondary access through subbaccalaureate offerings to populations found more typically at community colleges. …

Toward Empirical Studies on University Ethics: A New Role for Institutional Research

Abstract: August 28, 1991 . . . the apologists for any means to achieve desired ends forget that the separation of "means" and "ends" is merely a verbal convenience. They forget that the means they employ are included in the ends. Anatole Rapoport, Science and the Goals of Man, 1950 Part 1: Introduction On the Ethical Study of the University The American university has a long history of concern for ethical matters.(1) Currently, the American Association of University Professors and the Association of Governing Boards of Universities and Colleges establish standards on the ethical governance of the university. Further, the regional and professional accrediting associations, together with the collective bargaining agreement, are other vehicles that affect the university's moral governance |39, 93, 94, 99, 101~. However, powerful and pervasive external influences affect university governance, especially economic and governmental power. In the last thirty years or so, the ethos and argot of the business world have taken over the university. "Markets" are sought. "Contributions to margin" become goals. "Cost/benefit analysis" is used in deciding to drop a small-enrollment classical language department or in retaining a costly laboratory science curriculum. Students become customers. The faculty become employees excluded from the economic decisions relative to the curriculum. An economic engine, the university produces new and retrained employees, new arts, new sciences, and new technologies and provides packaged services for business, church, community, education, and government. Without doubt, the regional and professional accrediting associations act in the public interest protecting students and their parents as consumers |99, chap. 12 and p. 447~. Importantly, the accrediting associations serve as an important countervalent that sets governing standards for university boards of trustees, including the sheltering of their academic communities from attacks upon institutional autonomy and academic freedom |cf. 93, pp. 15-24; 99 pp. 442-48.~. The university's missions and goals no longer seem tied as imperatives to educational practice. With the exception of the university president, no one appears accountable for the cultivation and maintenance of institutional direction |67~. Like the American corporation, the university's broad dispersion of responsibility contributes to the university-wide practice of no one being specifically held accountable. If an institution's mission and goals become inapplicable, new general statements are drawn up, again without agential assignment of responsibility |cf. 26, 89~. One reads in The Chronicle of Higher Education and the daily press about administrative fraud, the scientific investigator who "fudges" data, faculty and student plagiarism, student cheating on tests, the "commercial production" of undergraduate term papers and their purchase by students, sexual harassment of students and staff, student athletes' use of drugs to enhance strength and stamina in athletic competition, and the "booster club's" corruption of student athletes. Of course, student activism is a perennial source of ethical controversy. What about recent revelations of dubious university accounting practices |cf. 67~? Such a continuing stream of disturbing reports sent me to seek empirical studies on the moral behavior of those who comprise the American university community. No empirical studies on the university's moral deportment were found in reviewing bibliographies that concentrated on the professional higher education literature since the 1950s, though one bibliography on the university presidency began with literature since 1900 |28, 29, 30, 44, 63, 96~. Two encyclopedic works on higher education yielded no citations of empirical studies on ethical behavior in American higher education |49, 56~. At roughly ten-year intervals, Lunsford in 1963, Peterson in 1974, and Bess in 1984, provided status summaries of social science research on organizational behavior for American universities |10, 59, 76~. …

Economic Development Activity among Land-Grant Institutions

Abstract: Introduction The purpose of this study was to gather, interpret, and present empirical data to increase understanding about the nature and level of contemporary economic development activity among American colleges and universities. The secondary purpose was to contribute information to decision makers and researchers concerned with business-university initiatives. As a well-recognized subset of institutions uniquely oriented toward applying knowledge to address directly social and economic problems, land-grant institutions were selected for the study sample. Limited empirical data are available to inform institutions and government policy makers on this topic, yet significant commitments are being made by academic institutions and government at all levels to involve these institutions more directly in economic development |9, 19, 24, 28~. Previous work on business-university initiatives has tended to examine research impacts primarily, argue for increased (or decreased) involvement of such institutions in economic development, or focus on policy. Much of this literature has been conjectural or superficial in its discussion of factors influencing university-industry initiatives. The present study sought, specifically, to (a) describe the many factors influencing institutions' decisions associated with economic development initiatives, (b) assess the degree of their impact on involvement, and (c) determine the degree to which academic personnel policies were affected or related to increased institutional involvement. Related Literature, Context of this Study Land-grant institutions were created through the Morrill Acts of 1862 and 1890 to train students in the agricultural and mechanic arts to meet the needs of industry and agricultural technology during that period |14~. The obligations of their national grants emphasized service: "On the whole, the land-grant institutions were conscious of the great debt they owed to the public largess" |1, p. 33~. Land-grant institutions number 72 today, comprising about half of the 149 members of the National Association of State Universities and Land-Grant Colleges (NASULGC) |24~. The United States Office of Education ceased collecting separate statistics on the land-grant institutions in 1963 |1, p. 1~. The land-grant idea represents a political ideal. The diminishing of their uniqueness is due to the adoption by other institutions of the basic concepts of the land-grant idea: democratization of education; applied or mission-oriented research conducted to the benefit of the people of the states; and service rendered directly to these people |1, pp. 1, 2~. These institutions "have, since their inception, played central roles in state and national economic development" |17, p. 61~. Today American colleges and universities of varied heritage are expected to respond to local, state, and national economic development and industrial competitiveness needs |4, 7, 20, 25, 27, 28, 32~. Industry-academe partnerships are touted in many quarters |16, 22, 25, 29~. Such partnerships are not a new feature in American life but appear to be changing in character, extent of collaboration, and number |3, 26~. Universities are generally not seen as primary sources of new businesses; for example, they hold only about 2 percent of the active patents in the United States |35~. In some cases, such as Silicon Valley, California, and the University City section of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, they may be initial and essential, but not the primary, sources of new business formation |15~. Yet they are regarded as key to the mix |21~ that results in prosperity in an increasingly information-based economy |20, 32~, including manufacturing-oriented subeconomies |23~. Economic development has been understood to be the process by which underdeveloped nations or less advanced regional economies are accelerated toward parity with more advanced, generally more prosperous, societies. …

Retrenchment Clauses in Faculty Union Contracts: Faculty Rights and Administrative Discretion

Abstract: reshaping academic programs -- cutting some, reorienting some, and investing in others. The retrenchment clauses established managers' rights to academically restructure higher education institutions as they wish. Administrators have become quite sophisticated in developing and protecting such prerogatives, as suggested by the description provided by a former legal counsel to management in Montana: Under the former Board policy, tenured faculty could be terminated only for financial exigency ... or discontinuance of an entire program or department.... However, as the Montana University system began to experience enrollment and budget Tenured and tenure-track faculty are, depending upon one's rhetorical sensibilities, being retrenched, laid off, riffed, as institutions of higher education reorganize, concentrating resources on academic units that are "central" to their missions. Across the country, universities and colleges are engaged in budget reduction and "planning" exercises that raise the prospect of firing faculty, and that sometimes suggest it is unavoidable. About 45 percent of the 3,331 institutions of higher education are public, and they employ about 71 percent of the roughly 741,000 faculty and enroll about 78 percent of the over 13 million students in higher education. Most of these public institutions (about 61 percent) are unionized |14~. Higher education's workforce is heavily organized, although it is not treated as such in the literature: almost one-third of the faculty workforce is unionized, nearly twice the figure than that for the American workforce. Yet we do not know what faculty contracts have to say about retrenchment, and we know very little about the balance of influence between professionals and managers in shaping the reorganization of colleges and universities, for higher education research focuses on elite institutions, which generally are not unionized, and it adopts the perspective of managers guiding "their" enterprises. In this article I examine the retrenchment clauses of contracts in forty-two institutions in the 1980s negotiated by the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), American Association of University Professors (AAUP), and National Education Association (NEA). I consider the fate of tenure rights and the roles being scripted for faculty and administrators in determining the academy's fate. In analyzing the contracts, I pay special attention to concepts that inform the literature on retrenchment: financial exigency and shared governance. In the 1970s, retrenchment was publicly and legally justified in terms of financial exigency, a concept promoted by the AAUP. In the 1980s, I find that the AAUP's efforts to safeguard tenure by defining financial exigency have not been successful in that the AAUP definition has been rejected by the courts and is largely absent from the contracts. The conventional higher education ideology of shared governance holds that academics have substantial input into decision making regarding "academic" matters such as curriculum and that administrators carry full responsibility and discretion in "financial" matters. I find that contracts provide faculty with a limited and reactive role in retrenchment decisions, whereas administrative discretion is extensive. With the notable exception of articles in Academe |2, 3, 44~, the higher education literature on retrenchment tends to adopt a managerial perspective and deals very little with unions.(1) The literature falls into one of three camps. The largest cluster deals with financial stress, often giving managers recommendations for making the most of adversity |1, 11, 17, 33, 42, 49, 51~. A second cluster of work analyzes court cases regarding faculty termination, examining court interpretations of concepts such as "financial exigency," and often providing advice to administrators about how to write contracts and terminate faculty in ways that will minimize litigation and ensure success if fired faculty bring suit |19, 27, 50, 59, 68, 75~. …