Showing papers in "The Journal of Higher Education in 1996"

Implementing Service Learning in Higher Education

Abstract: (1996). Implementing Service Learning in Higher Education. The Journal of Higher Education: Vol. 67, No. 2, pp. 221-239.

The Role of Perceptions of Prejudice and Discrimination on the Adjustment of Minority Students to College

Abstract: College participation by minority students declined in the middle 1980s following a period of sustained growth [21]. This trend was particularly evident among African Americans and Hispanics [46] who exhibited both the lowest participation rates as well as the highest propensity to drop out from college. Porter's [45] analyses of the high-school senior class of 1980, for instance, revealed that Hispanic college students were 13 percent more prone to withdraw from college than were white students, whereas African American college students were 22 percent more likely to drop out than their white counterparts over a six-year period. These low persistence rates (even over extended periods of enrollment in college) are particularly troublesome from a policy perspective given the relationship that the attainment of a bachelor's degree has on subsequent occupational and economic attainment [44]. Several reasons have been advanced to account for these trends. Hauser and Anderson [21] explored the extent to which declines in college participation rates could be attributed to changes in college aspirations as well as to changes in high-school completion rates among African Americans. After analyzing college aspiration trends for both minorities and nonminorities over a period of thirty years and taking into account high-school completion rates and indicators of socioeconomic status, Hauser and Anderson could not find support for this hypothesis. Other researchers have speculated that the decline could be attributed to changes in the composition of federal assistance and to patterns of financing higher education exhibited by minority students. Porter [45] noted that declines in minorities' college participation rates correlated with the growth of student loans at the expense of grants. Olivas [41], Mortenson and Wu [31], and Mortenson [30] observed that African American and Hispanic students were less willing to go into debt to finance their college education than were white students. Moreover, Ekstrom [19] helped to establish and test the proposition that students willing to go into debt to finance their education were more likely to enroll and persist in college. An alternative explanation to the role of finances in the persistence process has stressed the influence of academic preparation for college. Tinto [56] argued that overall differences in persistence rates between minorities and nonminorities were primarily due to differences in their academic preparedness rather than differences in their socioeconomic backgrounds. Tinto further contended that these ability differences arise from prior educational experiences at the elementary and secondary educational levels which tend to favor the educational achievement of nonminorities relative to minorities. Some degree of support has been given to this hypothesis. St. John, Kirshstein, and Noell [50], for instance, reported that the effects of ethnicity disappeared once academic preparation for college was taken into account for the high-school class of 1980. The proposition that a lack of adjustment to predominantly white institutions and that perceptions of prejudice (racial climate) may lower the quality of college experiences of minority students has emerged as a competing explanation for the differences in persistence rates between minority and nonminority college students [for example, 1, 18, 23, 24, 28, 34, 35, 36, 53]. Fleming [18], in particular, has argued that adjustment problems with the curriculum, lack of support services, financial problems and the nature of interpersonal relationships with faculty, peers and academic staff are some of the experiences that negatively impact minority students attending predominantly white institutions. Likewise, Tracey and Sedlacek [57, 58, 59] have contended that noncognitive factors (that is, self-concept, an understanding of racism, and the ability to cope with it) play a more critical role in shaping academic performance in college and persistence decisions among minority students than do cognitive factors such as academic ability and study habits. …

Influences on students' openness to diversity and challenge in the first year of college

Abstract: It appears clear that diversity comprises a central aspect of America's future. According to a 1989 Census Bureau projection, during the next four decades (1990-2030), the white population of the United States will grow by about 25 percent. During that same 40-year period, the African-American population will increase by 68 percent, the Asian-American, Pacific Island-American, and American Indian populations will grow by 79 percent, and the Latino or Hispanic population of the United States will leap by 187 percent.... The Population Reference Bureau has projected that, by the year 2080, the United States of America may well be 24 percent Latino, 15 percent African-American, and 12 percent Asian American--more than half of the nation's population [15]. If the trends projected above represent the country's future demographic reality, then it is likely that future college graduates will be challenged by a society that is increasingly diverse in terms of race, culture, and values. It seems reasonable, therefore, to be concerned with identifying the ways in which American postsecondary institutions engender in students a greater openness to racial, cultural, and value diversity. A substantial amount of inquiry has addressed the issue of the impact of college on attitudes, values, and the ways in which individuals relate to their external world. While only indirectly related to openness to racial, cultural, and value diversity, the weight of evidence from this research suggests that during college, students tend to change in the direction of greater openness and tolerance. From freshman to senior year, students become less authoritarian, dogmatic, and ethnocentric [7, 8, 10, 11, 13, 16, 17, 18, 20, 23, 26, 27, 28, 31, 40].They also demonstrate statistically significant shifts in the direction of greater social, racial, ethnic, and political tolerance and greater support for individual rights [5, 6, 9, 21, 22, 24, 25, 29, 30, 38, 39, 41, 43]. Moreover, as Pascarella and Terenzini [35] point out in their synthesis of the literature on college impact, the evidence is reasonably clear that on most of the above dimensions a statistically significant part of the change observed can be attributed to college attendance itself, above and beyond that attributable to normal maturation or to societal changes. Another line of inquiry has attempted to identify the specific college experiences that influence changes in values, attitudes, and the ways in which individuals relate to their external world. Perhaps the clearest generalization that can be made from this evidence is that it is the student's interpersonal environment (for example, the frequency and nature of his or her interactions with peers and faculty) that has the greatest impact on value, attitudinal and psychosocial change during college [for example, 4, 12, 19, 35]. Of course, a major shortcoming of the existing body of evidence is that it fails to address directly the impact of specific dimensions of the college experience on students' appreciation and acceptance of cultural, racial, and value diversity. What research does exist has investigated the extent to which diversity and multiculturalism on campus influence other outcomes of college. This work was conducted by Astin [3, 4] in his analysis of 25,000 students attending 217 four-year colleges and universities between 1985 and 1989. Controlling for important precollege characteristics and other potential confounding influences, he found that three different measures of diversity (institutional diversity emphasis, faculty diversity emphasis, and direct student experience with diversity) had significant positive impacts on a number of salient college outcomes. For example, the extent to which an institution emphasized and supported racial and multicultural diversity among faculty and students had a positive impact on an individual student's commitment to promoting racial understanding. …

The Contradictory College: The Conflicting Origins, Impacts, and Futures of the Community College

Abstract: (1996). The Contradictory College: The Conflicting Origins, Impacts, and Futures of the Community College. The Journal of Higher Education: Vol. 67, No. 3, pp. 359-364.

Research, Teaching, and Service: Why Shouldn't Women's Work Count?.

Abstract: (1996) Research, Teaching, and Service: Why Shouldn't Women's Work Count? The Journal of Higher Education: Vol 67, No 1, pp 46-84

Faculty Rank System, Research Motivation, and Faculty Research Productivity: Measure Refinement and Theory Testing

Abstract: (1996). Faculty Rank System, Research Motivation, and Faculty Research Productivity: Measure Refinement and Theory Testing. The Journal of Higher Education: Vol. 67, No. 1, pp. 2-22.

Discussion in the College Classroom: Triangulating Observational and Survey Results.

Abstract: Introduction At the college level, "one would expect to find inquiring . . . minds being challenged by the intellectual and perceptive questions of learned professors - extensive Socratic dialogue and an active interchange of ideas" (Barnes, 1983, p. 79). Prior studies have demonstrated a positive relationship between student participation in classroom discussion and learning, motivation, and problem-solving ability (McKeachie, 1970; Smith, 1980). Nonetheless, learning appears to be a "spectator sport" at the college level with little time spent in discussion (Smith, 1983) and only a few students involved (Karp & Yoels, 1976). Master teachers have offered much practical advice on "how to" stimulate participation (for example, call on students by name, ask for elaboration, praise students for their contributions) (Eble, 1976; Gullette, 1984; McKeachie, 1986; McKeachie, 1994; Neff & Weimer, 1989). "However, we have surprisingly little systematically collected empirical data on the impact of faculty members' behavior on students' participation; many of the strategies suggested for increasing student participation are based only on anecdotal evidence" (Auster & MacRone, 1994, p. 289). Hence, educational leaders have called for the systematic verification of the effectiveness of these techniques at the college level (Bonwell & Eison, 1991; Mentkowski & Chickering, 1987). Ellner (1983) emphasizes the need for such verification in "Piercing the College Veil." Furthermore, observational studies of classroom interaction at the college level are infrequent, the few existing studies are dated (for example, Fischer & Grant, 1983; Karp & Yoels, 1976; Smith, 1983), and most studies were conducted in small private liberal arts colleges. The current study, which was conducted in a large public university and triangulates data from observations of actual classroom behavior with self-report surveys of faculty and students, provides important information regarding interaction in the college classroom. Research Questions Questions addressed include: How much student verbal participation occurs? Which techniques do teachers use in eliciting student participation or in responding to it? Is there a relationship between these teaching techniques and the amount of participation that occurs? Do students and teachers hold similar views about classroom interaction, and how do their views compare with observational findings? Interaction Patterns in the College Classroom In an observational study of 40 classrooms representing a variety of subject areas at two large public and two small private colleges, Fischer and Grant (1983) found that professors' talk occupied nearly 80% of the time. Smith's (1983) observations of 12 classes (in humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences) at a small liberal arts college also revealed that 80% of class time was spent in lecture, 14% in student participation, and the remaining 6% in teacher questions, praise, and criticism. Interestingly, this participation pattern was found to persist in introductory and advanced classes, in the natural and social sciences, and in classes observed at the beginning and end of the semester (Ellner, 1983). In contrast, high-school classes appear to be more interactive than college classes, with student participation accounting for 17% to 26% of class time (Flanders, cited in Amidon & Hough, 1967). Each of these studies used a "time-sampling" approach (Suen & Ary, 1989) for data collection based on Flanders' Interaction Analysis System (Flanders, 1970). At the college level typically only 10 students in a class of 40 participate in discussion, and interaction is dominated by 5 of these students (Karp & Yoels, 1976). The vast majority (80%) of the questions asked by professors are at the lowest cognitive level - that is, recall of facts (Barnes, 1983). Because these observational studies revealed that little participation occurs, few students are involved, and teacher questions focus on recall rather than critical thinking, one must conclude that learning at the college level is indeed a "spectator sport. …

Performance Funding Comes of Age in Tennessee.

Abstract: The Performance Funding Program is designed to stimulate instructional improvement and student learning as institutions carry out their respective missions. Performance Funding is an incentive for meritorious institutional performance and provides the citizens of Tennessee, the Executive Branch of state government, the legislature, education officials, and faculty with a means of assessing the progress of publicly funded higher education. By encouraging instructional excellence, the Performance Funding Program contributes to continuing public support of higher education and complements academic planning, program improvement, and student learning. Tennessee Higher Education Commission 9 February 1990

Power Bases of Faculty Supervisors and Educational Outcomes for Graduate Students.

Abstract: (1996). Power Bases of Faculty Supervisors and Educational Outcomes for Graduate Students. The Journal of Higher Education: Vol. 67, No. 3, pp. 267-297.

Study Strategies Have Meager Support: A Review with Recommendations for Implementation

Abstract: Introduction Study skills instruction in higher education has become increasingly popular in the past decade. Many universities and colleges have developed short courses to teach study skills, established learning resource centers, instituted counseling programs, and offered workshops focusing on study skills. An increasingly common venue embeds study skills instruction within a full-semester formal course, "University 101," that aims to ease high-school students' transition to university life. It is not coincidental that study skills are receiving increased attention in postsecondary education. Whereas universities and colleges once rigorously screened and selectively admitted candidates, they now face a need to balance the costs of sustaining quality teaching in the face of major budget cuts and potentially reduced enrollments (McKeachie, 1988). Students now pay a larger proportion of direct costs for their postsecondary education, and in turn they are justified in holding universities and colleges accountable for services they purchase. Furthermore, as institutions orient toward serving mature students who have been away from school for a number of years and students who are challenged in their pursuits of higher learning, there are increased needs to support students as they strive to cope with the academic demands of higher education. In this climate, we suggest that higher education should not merely teach students knowledge in curricular subjects such as history, chemistry, and sociology. Institutions also should provide means for students to develop adaptable strategies with which to pursue knowledge and solve problems during and after postsecondary experiences. Having such skills contributes abilities and the motivation necessary for lifelong learning. Early Investigations of Studying In the late 1970s and early 1980s researchers began to probe how postsecondary students studied and to explore factors that correlated with more effective approaches to studying. In innovative articles, Biggs (1978), Dahlgren and Marton (1978), Ramsden and Entwistle (1981) surveyed students and correlated their reports about how they studied with measures of achievement; personality factors, such as locus of control; and various situational variables, such as college major, attributes of how course grades were assigned, and workload. A theme these studies shared was that a particular form of cognitive engagement, called deep processing, correlated with more vigorous and apparently effective studying. Deep processing is a collection of separable studying tactics that articulate basic cognitive operations to build meaningful and coherent structures of knowledge. Specific tactics that lead to deep processing include retrieving related concepts and ideas relevant to material currently being studied, monitoring relationships between new information and prior knowledge, assembling propositions into elaborated structures, rehearsing and transforming information into meaningful schemata, and metacognitively monitoring and adapting learning tactics according to the requirements of a task (Winne, 1985). Paralleling such surveys of students' studying were a growing number of proposals that students be taught studying methods that could support deeper processing of course materials. Perhaps the most well known of these is Robinson's (1946) SQ3R - survey an assignment, generate questions, read, recite answers to questions, and review answers in relation to the text. Such apparently useful approaches to studying were widely proposed, but these suggestions were unfounded. Summarizing research prior to 1980, Johns and McNamara (1980, p. 1) concluded that "support for SQ3R is based more on opinion than on empirical fact." Our search of the literature since this review was published found just four empirical investigations (Chastain & Thurber, 1989; Graham, 1982; McCormick & Cooper, 1991; Schumaker, 1982). …

Staying in College: Moderators of the Relation Between Intention and Institutional Departure.

Abstract: Introduction The present study tests hypotheses pertaining to moderators of the relation between intention and institutional departure. The hypotheses are derived from a review of the literature on college student departure, the theory of reasoned action [4], and Azjen's [3] conceptual analysis of the factors that cause intentions to degenerate. Intention represents a determination to act in a certain way in the future [24]. Intention plays a key role in Bean's [9, 10] model of attrition because it is conceptualized as the most proximal determinant of institutional departure. This model of attrition has been applied successfully to diverse populations of college students [11, 12, 13, 22, 23]. Several studies have found that intention to leave is a significant predictor of subsequent attrition [8, 14, 15, 17, 22]. Nonetheless, for example, Metzner and Bean [23] found that intention to leave, grades, and 24 other predictor variables, in concert, accounted for only 29% of the variance in attrition. A bivariate analysis of data reported in Okun, Ruehlman, and Karoly [29] reveals that intention by itself explained only 13% of the variance in institutional departure. What accounts for the moderate relation between intention (to stay or transfer) and institutional persistence? The present study investigates the possibility that the magnitude of the relation between intention and subsequent enrollment behavior varies with (a) grades, (b) commitment, and (c) encouragement from others to stay. Review of the Literature Grades. According to Bean [9], grades are an academic outcome, which can be conceptualized as quasi-economic rewards. Even when students dismissed for inadequate grades are eliminated, grades have been shown to predict persistence [2, 13, 31]. There is also some evidence that the relation between GPA and institutional departure may be nonlinear. Andrieu and St. John [5] reported that graduate students with intermediate GPAs had the highest rate of institutional departure. In studies with undergraduate samples, St. John and colleagues [37, 38] found that students with below "C" grades were more likely to persist than students with "B" grades, and students with "B" grades were more likely to persist than students with either mostly "C" grades or "A" grades. Therefore, in the present study, we examined whether semester GPA has a nonlinear effect on institutional departure. Commitment. Tinto [40,41] theorized that commitment to the goal of attaining a degree (goal commitment) and commitment to one's college (institutional commitment) were proximal determinants of institutional departure. Empirical tests of the presumed linkages among the constructs of academic and social integration and goal and institutional commitment and between these constructs and persistence behavior have been equivocal [25, 26, 27, 32, 33]. More recently, Spanard [39] suggested that commitment to the college role needs to be assessed in the context of nonacademic roles. Consequently, in the present study, we defined commitment as the priority students place on doing well in college relative to goals associated with other roles. Encouragement to stay. Lack of encouragement from others to stay is posited by Bean and Metzner [14] to be an important environmental variable which exerts both direct and indirect effects on institutional departure. Tinto [41] noted that memberships in external communities may be crucial to departure decisions, particularly for commuter students. External communities may affect institutional departure by exerting normative influence [8]. Normative influence occurs when individuals tell another person how they should or should not behave. Bank, Slavings, and Biddle [8] found that the social influence of parents and peers (but not faculty) had strong direct effects on institutional departure. Other studies confirm that encouragement from others affects the decision to depart [19, 26, 27, 28]. …

Reorganizing the Faculty Workforce for Flexibility: Part-Time Professional Labor.

Abstract: Part-time Professional Labor In the United States the rise of the academic profession in the last quarter of the nineteenth century was marked by the establishment of faculty as full-time employees of colleges and universities with career tracks in their fields [18, 32] Subsequently the profession struggled to establish autonomy vis-a-vis managers and boards, as the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) successfully inscribed tenure and academic freedom in institutional policy and in case law [36](1) In the post-World War II era, many faculty gained such autonomy from the organization that analysts contrasted "local" and "cosmopolitan" faculty [7] and spoke of an "academic revolution" [12] in which faculty's power within and beyond the university increased by virtue of their research and grants activity However, the last quarter of the twentieth century has seen challenges to faculty autonomy and job security The AAUP censure list [33, 35] and case law reveal ongoing violations of academic freedom and tenure Amidst criticism of faculty as self-interested careerists, demands for more accountability and the reform or elimination of tenure emerged in the 1970s and 1990s Many faculty have been retrenched [29] Moreover, there is a twenty-five-year trend of increased numbers and percentage of part-time relative to full-time faculty [1, 21] Managers in higher education have hired more part-time workers to minimize costs and maximize managerial control in providing educational services The professional position of faculty is being renegotiated, with an increased emphasis on managerial flexibility in relation to the academic workforce In this article I address several professional workforce issues as they relate to part-time faculty, concentrating on unionized institutions I look at unionized institutions because most part-time faculty are found in the type of institution most likely to be unionized - community colleges, comprehensive state colleges, and universities Also, the professional status of such part-timers and the political battle surrounding their use are clear in the formalized context of collective bargaining I focus on part-timers because their growing numbers represent a challenge to the academic profession's definition of faculty lines as full-time, with a secure future The use of part-time faculty also represents an explicit challenge to tenure as the professional structure that defines faculty's terms of employment Most of the higher education literature on part-timers is taxonomic and/or functionalist [6, 39] It offers insights into the previously unmapped terrain of part-time faculty by classifying types of part-timers In addition to providing an overview of employment conditions and use of part-timers, this literature focuses on issues such as motivation (of employers and part-timers) and quality [6, 16] It recommends planned, rational use of part-time faculty, incorporating them into the organization, improving their practice, and enhancing educational/institutional performance [5] In short, the literature promotes "effective policies and practices" [20] Generally sympathetic to part-time faculty [3, 6] the literature accepts managers' stated need for increasing numbers of such faculty Many problems experienced by part-timers are attributed to full-time faculty more interested in protecting their professional privileges than in educational quality or employment equity [15] That critique has been extended to the tenure system, portrayed as inhibiting necessary managerial flexibility and causing the exploitation of part-timers: Are [full-time faculty] willing to preserve tenure and the associated privileges at the expense of exploited nontenure-track academic workers? We question the viability of the existing tenure system because it requires that tenured faculty be subsidized with a work force that carries heavy loads at low pay [6, pp …

The Higher Education Act of 1992: Skills, Constraints, and the Politics of Higher Education.

Abstract: The 1992 reauthorization of the Higher Education Act (HEA '92) is a case study in the consequences of an incremental and fragmented federal policy-making process. HEA '92 is important because it authorized what by now is more than three-quarters of all financial aid available to students enrolled in postsecondary education in the United States (College Board, 1993). And the politics of HEA '92 are important because they resulted in a significant shift in federal policy from an historic commitment to promote access to postsecondary education through grants based on need to a broader strategy of insured loans regardless of family income. The policy reorientation culminating in HEA '92 reflects the fragmented institutional structure and pluralistic civic culture of the American political system. Incremental decision making means that only unusual coalitions can produce policies that deviate significantly from the status quo. Similarly, the uneven distribution of resources means that only exceptional conditions can produce and maintain policies like need-based grants, which reallocate wealth to the disadvantaged. Such unusual coalitions and conditions simply were not present in the reauthorization of HEA '92. Shifts in the relative power of influential actors and constraints in the political, economic, social and intellectual environment surrounding HEA '92 prevented the mobilization of forces strong enough to stem the moderating tide. Figure 1 tells the story at a glance: the already widening gap between grants and loans increased exponentially with the adoption of HEA '92. In their study of the important 1972 amendments to HEA, Wolanin and Gladieux (1976) characterized the higher education policy process as "incremental in three senses: It occurs within the limits of a slowly evolving political culture; it is built on and related to existing policy; and it draws from existing policy models." Within this evolutionary process, specific policy outcomes are shaped by the "skills and intentions" of key participants and the "constraints and crosscurrents" of the political environment in which they work" (pp. 257, 265). The reauthorization of HEA in 1992 reaffirms this incremental and environmentally and politically constrained decision-making pattern. The first section of the article reviews the conditions necessary for producing and sustaining significant policy change in the federal policy process. The second section uses the history of HEA to illustrate the rise and fall of such conditions in the evolution of higher education financial aid policy. The third section outlines how the "constraints and crosscurrents" of the political environment and the "skills and intentions" of principal actors led to HEA '92's specific policy outcomes. A final section speculates on the future. Based in Washington D.C. in the Fall of 1992, I was fortunate to have the cooperation of a number of key HEA participants, interviewing more than fifty Congressional staff, higher education association lobbyists, Department of Education and White House officials, and policy consultants who were directly involved in the reauthorization process. I asked them to talk about the critical steps, issues, and players whose positions were included in the final bill and why. Approached when events were still fresh, they provided documents and eye witness accounts that greatly enriched my understanding and gave me a new appreciation of the power of ideas and environment as well as individual action on shaping policy options. I filled out the story from an online legislative history (Legi-Slate, 1992), House, Senate, and conference committee reports; tracked HEA'92 through releases of Education Daily ("The education community's independent daily news service"), and association newsletters (e.g., American Council on Education's Higher Education & National Affairs); and worked from special studies and reports prepared by the Department of Education, Congressional committee staff, and higher education associations. …

Action Research into the Quality of Student Learning: A Paradigm for Faculty Development.

Abstract: Quality Assurance for Teaching Higher education has been the subject of increasing criticism in recent years. Daly [12], for example, reviewed no less than thirty-seven major reports and articles from government agencies, employers, and academics, detailing faults with higher education in the United States. Critics have been just as vocal in the rest of the world. Partly in response to this chorus of concern, governments have moved to make universities and colleges more accountable for the finances they receive from state coffers. Concern about the quality of teaching has been particularly strong as many have begun to suspect that teaching has been relegated to a poor second place behind research because of ever increasing pressure on academics to publish. The general thrust has usually been toward mechanisms for quality assurance of teaching. Either external systems are imposed or universities are encouraged or required to establish their own procedures. Inspection teams may be used to ensure that internally established mechanisms are adequate. In discussing quality assurance and quality enhancement in this article, we draw upon a distinction made by Elton [14]. He grouped the quality "A's": quality assurance, accountability, audit, and assessment, and saw them as concerned with control of both quality and the people who control quality. Quality enhancement was seen as related to the "E's": empowerment, enthusiasm, expertise, and excellence. Program accreditation is a mechanism for quality assurance that has become almost universal. Internal or external panels may withhold approval for a program to be offered if they are not convinced the program can be taught according to an adequate standard. Use of external examiners is another well-established quality assurance mechanism designed to verify the appropriateness of degree awards. Recently it has also become more common to appraise teaching directly. The most widely used mechanism has been the use of student feedback questionnaires, though some institutions have sought more diverse forms of feedback through teaching profiles or portfolios [15, 33]. The limitation of these and other forms of quality assurance is that they concentrate on bringing the poorest teachers and courses up to some level of minimum acceptance. Program accreditation panels can withhold approval if a proposed program has not been adequately planned, but there is no mechanism for giving real rewards to teams preparing outstanding programs. Similarly, external examiners can refuse to approve results if quality appears unsatisfactory but can offer little beyond a pat on the back for good or even excellent teaching. Appraisal of individual teachers also tends to make use of sticks for the poorest performers rather than carrots for the best. Those who receive poor ratings from questionnaires or other evaluation face the threat of not having contracts renewed, tenure not granted, or other sanctions. In theory outstanding teachers could be rewarded with promotions, but institutions that actually do this still seem to be considered as sufficiently rare and innovatory that their procedures are deemed worthy of publications in the literature [e.g., 1]. Even where universities have introduced teaching as an explicit criteria for promotion, the popular perception is that promotions still go to those with the best research records [10, 28]. If teaching is taken into account at all, it is largely in terms of reaching some threshold level of performance. Even ideal quality assurance mechanisms, then, do little or nothing to encourage teachers or courses to go beyond minimum acceptable levels. In fact, excessively onerous or iniquitous assurance mechanisms can have a negative effect on the quality of teaching by those above the threshold. Firstly, the assurance procedures require faculty to produce evidence that their teaching is of an acceptable standard and courses have been adequately planned. …

Meeting the Demand for Higher Education Without Breaking the Bank: A Framework for the Design of State Higher Education Policies for an Era of Increasing Demand.

Abstract: Introduction This article seeks to present and illuminate empirically a model of policymaking in an area of emerging, if little appreciated, importance, namely, state policies affecting private (nonprofit) higher education Further, it shows the interesting implications of this model and the associated empirical results for policy in this area now as many states enter an era of sharply increased demand for higher education but limited resources to pay for new capacity [65, 67] The basic idea is that state policy postures toward private higher education can tend toward one of three nodes: * laissez-faire, in which state policies largely ignore the private sector; * central planning, in which state policies involve the private sector substantially, use private institutions to play carefully planned and enforced roles in the state system and pay for this involvement financially via such means as direct subventions to private institutions and aid to their students; * market-competitive, in which state policies also seek to take account of and utilize the private collegiate sector, but in which the state plays much less of a planning, allocative, and regulatory role than under central planning and instead employs market forces and signals (eg, "portable" student aid grants, lower subsidies built into public institution tuitions, information policies) to guide allocation of programs, students, and resources The analysis matches individual states' policies empirically to these constructs (or in some cases to hybrids of them) and then considers how well each policy set fits the circumstances of the states that employ it The key broad conclusion of the empirical analysis is that the market-competitive constellation of policies is associated with the most attractive combination of policy outcomes: high participation rates in higher education, reasonable quality in public higher education, and a healthy private sector providing choice to students, all at only average levels of taxpayer spending (per capita) on higher education and well below-average levels of taxation overall Assuming these associations are some guide to the future, then the market-competitive states seem to be well positioned to face the emerging era of rapid growth in demand for higher education that many states will encounter without depending solely on costly expansion of public colleges and universities This conclusion squares with the common-sense idea that it should be cheaper to meet some part of large new enrollment capacity requirements by directing some students toward private higher education (even at some financial cost to the state) than to meet all the demand by expanding space in the public sector The laissez-faire states, in contrast, though they also include a number of states that face rapid growth in demand for higher education, appear to be poorly positioned by virtue of their policy histories and current policies to cope with such a period of growth cost-effectively These states have generally experienced rapid population growth in recent years but only slow growth in their private higher education enrollments (which tend to be relatively small, though in most cases not insignificant) Their spending on public higher education per student (a crude indicator of quality) and their overall participation rates in higher education tend to be near the national average, but it seems unlikely that these performances can be sustained in the face of strong demand growth, for this is both the poorest group of states and the one already making on average the highest overall "tax effort" Yet these states also spend well above average per capita on higher education Thus, the analysis suggests that these states need to rethink their higher education policies, particularly those affecting the private sector, if they are to cope effectively in the new era of increased demands and tightly constrained state tax revenues …

An Alternative Definition of Quality of Undergraduate College Education: Toward Usable Knowledge for Improvement

Abstract: The 1980s saw a spate of reports focused on the improvement of the quality of undergraduate college education. Major reports included those issued by the study group on the Conditions of Excellence in American Higher Education [31], the American Association of Colleges' Integrity in the College Curriculum [3], and the National Endowment for the Humanities' To Reclaim a Legacy [5]. Although the flow of reports has abated in the 1990s, the issue of improving the quality of undergraduate college education remains. What also remains is a growing interest among the public in discerning the comparative quality of undergraduate institutions. The rankings of colleges in various categories each year in US News and World Report is a response to this growing public interest. Another response is the growth of unconventional college guides that provide "inside" perspectives on institutions that go beyond the more descriptive summaries in the traditional college guides such as Barron's Profiles of American Colleges and Lovejoy's College Guide. The growing interest in comparative college quality among the public is premised upon two desires. The first is the desire to obtain a good bargain for the money spent on higher education, which has become more important as the costs of higher education have accelerated. The second is the desire of many students to obtain a degree from the most prestigious institution of higher education possible, because the prestige of one's undergraduate institution is seen as facilitating success later in life. High prestige institutions are seen as worth the high costs of attendance. Whereas the public may often frame the issue of "quality" in terms of which school is "best," the various reports on the quality of undergraduate college education have as their goal an improved system of higher education to serve society's needs. If the quality of undergraduate education is to be improved, then quality must be defined in some way that provides useful information for the development of institutional policy to institute such improvement [13]. Traditional Approaches to Defining Academic Quality Three customary approaches to addressing the question of quality in undergraduate higher education are the reputational approach, the resources approach, and the value-added approach. The reputational approach defines quality in terms of a college's or university's rank in the pecking order of institutions [2]. The US News and World Report annual rating of undergraduate institutions is a good example of the reputational method of appraising quality or excellence: the higher an institution's perceived place in the institutional pecking order, the higher the quality of the institution. A major problem with the reputational approach is that it is not clear whether the various persons who rank institutions are using the same criteria of evaluation, and even if the criteria are specified, the question arises whether the persons doing the ranking have access to reliable evidence on how well individual institutions meet these criteria. The resources approach, in fact, is an attempt to specify and assess the criteria that are the bases for institutional reputations. Thus, the resource approach delineates quality by applying criteria such as SAT or ACT scores of entering first-year students, the number of books in the institution's library, or the scholarly productivity of its faculty [2]. Under this approach, the higher the average test scores of entering first-year students or the larger the library collection, the higher the quality of the institution. Jacobi, Astin, and Ayala [17] point out that both the reputational and the resources approach are highly interdependent. An increase in reputation can bring additional resources to an institution, and an increase in resources can also yield a greater reputation. At first glance it seems that information useful to institutional policy can be obtained from these two approaches. …

Invisible Scholars: Students with Learning Disabilities.

Abstract: Increasing numbers of students with learning disabilities enroll in college (Hartman & Krulwich, 1984; Milne, 1989; Satcher, 1992; Shea, 1994; Wilczenski & Gillespie-Silver, 1992). Students with learning disabilities have been found to have essentially the same motives for obtaining a college degree as their nondisabled peers: to obtain further education or training, to learn a particular skill, to go to college because everybody else goes, to go because a family member wants them to go, to earn a degree, or to fulfill a desire for future meaningful employment (Faland & Haulbich, 1981; Harrison, 1982; Milne, 1989). The term "learning disabled" describes a heterogeneous group of individuals who are unable to learn specific academic skills often despite having normal or above normal intelligence. Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 defined learning disabilities to be a handicapping condition that must be accommodated by federally funded institutions of higher education (Vogel, 1982). Additionally, colleges that recruit and admit students, including students with learning disabilities, have a moral obligation to provide academic support resources necessary for those students to succeed (Mangrum & Strichart, 1984; Satcher, 1992; Stage & Manning, 1992). Some guidance exists for college officials who seek to inform themselves of the needs of students with learning disabilities (Aune & Johnson, 1992; Brinckerhoff, Shaw, & McGuire, 1992; Mellard & Hazel, 1992; Satcher, 1992; Scott, 1994). However, more information is needed. In the academic arena, adults with learning disabilities reported having significant problems with reading, spelling, arithmetic, written composition, and handwriting (Hoffman, Sheldon, Minskoff, Sautter, Steidle, Baker, Bailey & Echols, 1987; Milne, 1989). Research on college students with learning disabilities is limited. Some case studies focus on the idiosyncratic experiences and needs of one individual (Ganschow, 1984; Meyers, 1985; Rawson, 1982). Nevertheless, a growing literature suggests that these students share some common traits (Hughes & Suritsky, 1994; Shafrir & Siegel, 1994; Zawaiza & Gerber, 1993). For example, negative attitudes and perceptions are apparent in college students with learning disabilities as well as their faculty and fellow students (Houck, Asselin, Troutman, & Arrington, 1992; Milne, 1989; Silverman & Zigmond, 1983). Such negative attitudes and perceptions could possibly interfere with the college experience of these students. The purpose of this study was to explore the experiences of college students with learning disabilities. The results of this investigation add to the slowly accumulating literature regarding the affective and behavioral characteristics of adults with learning disabilities. Learning Disability The definition of learning disabilities has been discussed extensively in the literature (see Kavale, Forness & Lorsbach, 1991; or Swanson, 1991 for overviews). In general, these discussions seek operational definitions that might be used for diagnosis. However, for general informational discussion, many authors (Hammill, 1986; 1990; Milne, 1989; Silver, 1988; Swanson, 1991) continue to employ the definition first adopted by the National Joint Committee for Learning Disabilities in 1981: Learning disabilities is a generic term that refers to a heterogeneous group of disorders manifested by significant difficulties in the acquisition and use of listening, speaking, reading, writing, reasoning, or mathematical abilities. These disorders are intrinsic to the individual and presumed to be due to central nervous system disfunction. Even though a learning disability may occur concomitantly with other handicapping conditions (e.g., sensory impairment, mental retardation, social and emotional disturbances) or environmental influences (e.g., cultural differences, insufficient/inappropriate instruction, psychogenic factors), it is not the direct result of those conditions or influences (National Joint Committee on Learning Disabilities, 1987, p. …

The Research University in a Time of Discontent

Abstract: Contributors: Harvey Brooks, Jonathan R. Cole, Stephen R. Graubard, Adrienne Jamieson, Donald Kennedy, Nannerl O. Keohane, Seymour Martin Lipset, Walter E. Massey, Steven Muller, Rodney W. Nichols, Nelson W. Polsby, Kenneth Prewitt, Frank H.T. Rhodes, William C. Richardson, Robert M. Rosenzweig, John R. Searle, Eugene B. Skolnikoff, Neil J. Smelser, Stephen M. Stigler, Francis X. Sutton

Economics or Education: The Establishment of American Land-Grant Universities

Abstract: In the United States, institutions of public higher education exist in an environment characterized by constrained resources and shifting interests on the part of students and other clienteles. Parents and politicians are demanding that public universities move away from their emphasis on research and make teaching top priority. Taking the brunt of this outcry are the flagships of American public higher education: land-grant universities. Contemporary demands for change have led policymakers to reexamine the basic mission of these institutions. However, as with many areas of public policy, higher education policymakers tend to overlook historical factors in their deliberations. This is due, in part, to the time constraints of the policy-making process. There is often little time to examine historical origins of contemporary problems. In addition, policy decisions are usually based on input from analysts who are trained as economists or political scientists, or in areas such as operations research or system analysis. These approaches do not customarily incorporate historical analysis. When policymakers do request historical background or explanation, the time pressures force a rapid examination of secondary sources to produce the desired report. The authors of four widely acknowledged works on the history of the land-grant college movement--Edward D. Eddy's Colleges for Our Land and Time: The Land-Grant idea in American Education (1957); Joseph B. Edmond's The Magnificent Charter: The Origin and Role of the Morrill Land-Grant Colleges and Universities (1978); Allan Nevins' The State Universities and Democracy (1962); and Earle D. Ross's Democracy's College: The Land-Grant College in the Formative Stage (1942) -- seem to consider the land-grant college movement as part of the educational evolution of the United States. They view the emergence of these colleges as inevitable because of the educational demands of a growing democracy. For instance, they suggest that the common people, particularly farmers, wanted to have available higher education geared toward their practical interests. These historians identify educational reform as the principle motivation in the passage of the Morrill Act [7, 8, 16, 18].(1) An examination of well-known histories of American higher education such as John S. Brubacher and Willis Rudy's Higher Education in Transition: An American History, 1736-1956 (1958); Richard M. Hofstadler and Wilson Smith's American Higher Education: A Documentary History (1961); Frederick Rudolph's The American College and University: A History (1962); and Laurence R. Veysey's The Emergence of the American University (1965) confirms this focus on education. These historians identify two other critical elements in the development of land-grant universities: the debate over curricular changes away from a classical toward a more science-based curriculum and the emergence of the Morrill Act (1862) as a mechanism for distributing the public lands that initiated the federal practice of grants-in-aid to achieve specific objectives [4, 12, 19, 28]. While these historians agree that educational reform was paramount, they also argue that the Morrill Act was a watermark for federal involvement in higher education.(2) This view is shared by others who have reexamined the conventional interpretation. While Eldon L. Johnson cautions against ascribing too much too early to the institutions that came out of the Morrill Act, he underscores in "Misconceptions about the Early Land-Grant Colleges" (1981) the importance of these institutions as a forerunner of change in American higher education [13]. Lawrence A. Cremin, in American Education: The National Experience, 1783-1876 (1980), takes this interpretation further by arguing that the Morrill Act established a "national network of educational research and development institutions that the federal government would subsequently use for a variety of enterprises" [5, p. …

The Implications of Teaching Norms for the Improvement of Undergraduate Education.

Abstract: Undergraduate education in our colleges and universities continues to gain considerable attention from a number of groups - state legislatures, students, national associations, faculty, administrators, and parents. Consequently, studies by national associations and independent scholars have increasingly addressed the issue of improving undergraduate education. In fact, many of these publications come to a remarkable consensus concerning the initiatives that might be implemented to enhance the undergraduate student's academic experience. For example, it is not difficult to find recommendations that have encouraged more in- and out-of-class interaction between students and faculty, called for faculty members to provide students with more formative feedback on assignments, or urged faculty to employ multiple modes of evaluating student performance. Other reports have suggested that undergraduates deserve systematic advising, that students need to cultivate more out-of-classroom learning experiences, and that, in general, administrators and faculty should continually strive to improve undergraduate education within their institutions. It is, nevertheless, one thing to make recommendations and quite another to implement them successfully. In this study we maintain that the successful implementation of any improvement in undergraduate education depends, to a significant extent, on the existence of "norms" supportive of these initiatives. That is, a recommendation to improve undergraduate education is more likely to be implemented by faculty if norms, or group standards of appropriate and inappropriate behavior, support the recommendation. Because this study focuses primarily on the teaching dimension of undergraduate education, norms become particularly salient as faculty have considerable autonomy and can enact teaching recommendations according to their own preferences. Thus, if norms support a given recommendation, a faculty member is more likely to enact it; however, if little normative support for a given recommendation exists among the faculty, then it is less likely to be endorsed. Research Questions This study focuses on the norms espoused by faculty and the question whether these norms do or do not support efforts to improve undergraduate education. We believed that the most appropriate method to determine the answer to this question was first to identify specific recommendations that have been advocated to improve undergraduate education. If specific recommendations could be identified, we could then ascertain whether a normative structure supports teaching improvement efforts. We identified six such undergraduate teaching improvement recommendations that have been advanced in recent years by the higher education community. These recommendations, frequently cited by national studies and independent authors, are formally introduced later in this article. In relation to these recommendations, the questions for this research are twofold: 1. Are faculty norms present to support recommendations that have been suggested to improve undergraduate education? 2. If faculty norms do support these recommendations, then do these norms vary across different types of academic institutions and different academic disciplines? This study is important for several reasons. First, little or no research has been conducted in this area. Braxton, Bayer, and Finkelstein [9] identified a normative structure for undergraduate college teaching - four domains characterized in the negative as Interpersonal Disregard, Particularistic Grading, Moral Turpitude, and Inadequate Planning - but this research did not focus on the research questions addressed above. Likewise, it is well documented that improving undergraduate teaching at our colleges and universities has been a long-standing challenge; unfortunately, real progress has been questionable. Thus, investigating how norms may enhance or inhibit the process of improving undergraduate education is warranted. …

Betrayed by the Academy: The Sexual Harassment of Women College Faculty.

Abstract: Sexual harassment has long been a hidden problem in society and on college campuses, and one that betrays the idyllic image of faculty and students working together on intellectual endeavors. Writing a decade ago, Dziech and Weiner argued that "higher education faces a problem of epidemic proportions" (1984, p. 15) with regard to sexual harassment. The magnitude of the problem continues to be startling. In reviewing the literature on sexual harassment, Sundt (1994) concluded that nearly one-third of all women college students face sexual harassment each year. Although this statistic does not reveal the nature or the severity of the harassment these women experienced, others have noted that each year about 2 percent of women college students face "direct threats or bribes for sexual favors" (Hughes & Sandler, 1992, p. 1). It also needs to be recognized that it is not just women college students who are being harassed: between 9 and 12 percent of male students report having been sexually harassed (Sundt, 1994). Taken together, these numbers suggest that as many as 4.8 million college students may be experiencing sexual harassment annually (Paludi & Barickman, 1991). Due in part to concerns about the magnitude of the problem facing higher education, colleges and universities have been creating, adopting, and implementing sexual harassment policies, while researchers have continued efforts to document the scope of sexual harassment (Sandier, 1990; Paludi & Barickman, 1991). Unfortunately, relatively little attention, either in terms of policy work or research, has focused on women faculty members who experience sexual harassment. Although the work devoted to the task of unmasking the problem of sexual harassment among college students is important, we need to recognize that an important population within higher education--women faculty--is sometimes ignored and forgotten. The central goal of this study is to focus on both the incidence and the apparent effects of sexual harassment among faculty women. Using a nationally representative sample of faculty at several hundred different colleges and universities, this study has four specific objectives: to document the prevalence of sexual harassment among faculty women, to profile the characteristics of women faculty who have been sexually harassed, to examine the factors that may lead to sexual harassment, and finally, to explore the outcomes of sexual harassment. The results from this study should add much to what is known about the harassment of women faculty and help bring additional focus to the challenges facing women faculty within the campus community. Research on Sexual Harassment In setting the context for the present study, we will review four related bodies of literature that are directly applicable to our effort. These are research on patterns of reporting sexual harassment experiences, definitions of sexual harassment, models of sexual harassment, and research specifically focused on the harassment of women college faculty. Reporting Sexual Harassment The study of sexual harassment, regardless of the focus, is limited by the underreporting of harassment incidents (Brooks & Perot, 1991). There are two primary causes for not reporting incidents of sexual harassment. First, some who have been harassed may simply not want to tell about the experience due to embarrassment, shame, or fear of repercussions (Brooks & Perot, 1991). Second, individuals may fail to report incidents of sexual harassment due to nonrecognition of certain situations as sexual harassment; some women may be harassed and fail to conceptualize themselves as being harassed. These individuals have been referred to as unacknowledged harassment victims by Brooks and Perot (1991, p. 32). Goodwin, Roscoe, Rose, and Repp (1989) found that the majority of their sample did not report sexual harassment, but had identified experiencing unwanted behavior that constituted sexual harassment. …

In-Migration of College Students to the State of New York

Abstract: The interstate migration of college students influences college admissions policy, student body composition, and ultimately the labor force of a state, as noted by Abbott and Schmid [1]. The tuition differential between resident and nonresident reduces the college choices of student migrants [13]. Some college administrators oppose such policies against out-of-state students without considering the possible consequences. The Virginia State Council of Higher Education [22] reported that in-migration of students may contribute to maintenance of enrollment levels despite the projected decline of Virginia's college age population. Student migrants tend to work in the state where they obtained their higher education, thus they become an educated labor force for that state [13]. The purpose of this study is to provide a better understanding of the interstate migration of students. To this end I estimated a model for in-migration of college students to the state of New York to examine the effects of migration determinants associated with various characteristics of student migrants' home states. College Students and Migration Differences in student characteristics between states will affect student migration patterns. Studies of migrant and nonmigrant students reveal that migrants are academically more talented, have higher educational expectations, and have a better socioeconomic background [8, 9, 10]. Fenske et al. [8, 9] found that migrants obtained higher ACT (American College Test) composite scores relative to local attenders, and they emphasized institutional quality as a basis for their choice of college, while putting less importance on cost factors. A similar finding was also obtained by Ferriss [10]. Abbott and Schmid [1] found that the majority of first-time undergraduates in major private universities in the United States were out-of-state migrants, whereas in major public universities migrants represented a low percentage. Similarly, the majority of graduate migrants from Virginia attended private institutions [22]. The Virginia State Council of Higher Education [22] also reports that 87 percent of migrants from Virginia who were in professional programs attended private institutions in the District of Columbia. The importance of the quality of education seems to increase with the level of education, because it is considered a part of the career [1]. Thus graduate student migrants are more concerned about the quality of an institution. A concomitant finding is shown in Bayer's study [3] of science doctorate recipients, which showed that those who migrated attended better universities than those who did not. Abbott and Schmid [1], however, found that the quality factor alone was a modest determinant to account for interstate migration of first-time undergraduates in the major universities in the United States. When they controlled the effects of state size and distance, the quality factor represented a modest significant variable. Admission policies, such as restrictive admission requirements and quotas, have acted as a barrier to student mobility [5, 10]. A state's tuition policies also play a significant role. Charging higher fees to out-of-state students may have a significant influence on the type of students who enroll. College costs were statistically significant for low-income student groups, but they were insignificant for other income groups [12]: low income students are more likely to attend home state institutions. Carbone [5] suggests that migrants put greater importance on the prestige and reputation of an institution and are thus willing to pay higher tuition. According to Christal and his associates [6], costs and financial aid policies might be partly the reasons why 87 percent of all first-time students in Southern states remained in their home state in 1979; state-supported financial aid is usually not portable, whereas federal financial aid is. Scholarship availability acts as a pull factor for attracting graduate migrants [9, 10]. …

Social Process Skills and Career Achievement among Male and Female Academics

Abstract: Research examining women's career development in academia suggests that despite the introduction of equal opportunity policies women continue to be underrepresented in the profession, particularly in the higher ranks. In New Zealand universities women comprised 22 percent of full-time academic staff in 1991. Patterns by academic rank show women to be concentrated in the lower ranks. In 1991 women represented only 4 percent of professors and 7 percent of associate professors. However, 49 percent of all assistant lecturers were women [12]. Psychologically based explanations for this situation have focused on a range of individual and environmental factors. Finkelstein [6] identified two explanations for the lower status of women academics. The first explanation suggests that female academics are disadvantaged due to structural factors such as overt discrimination. The second explanation for the status of women in the academic profession focuses on gender differences in performance, for example, female academics' lower publication rates [9, 13] and lower teaching evaluations [11, 16]. Differences in performance have been attributed to various sources including women's differing values, orientations, and activity preferences; greater role conflict and overload among female academics; and differences in educational background and training, such as lack of mentoring [6, 17].

Occupational Outcomes for Students Earning Two-Year College Degrees: Income, Status, and Equity

Abstract: Introduction An interesting question in the sociology of knowledge and the politics of scholarship is why scholars studying two-year colleges(1) often conceptualize their research in adversarial terms. Innocent readers, encountering the subject for the first time by studying such works as those by Cohen & Brawer [5] and Brint & Karabel [3] might well wonder if the two books really dealt with the same institutions. Regardless of the reasons for the divisiveness that characterizes the field, advocates and critics make it more difficult to design an investigation of the effects of two-year colleges that not only is nonpartisan but also gives the appearance of being nonpartisan. Our work is no exception. The case for or against the two-year college is often predetermined by the aspect of the subject researchers choose to study. For example, do we examine access to higher education or persistence in higher education? If we study access, two-year colleges appear to have egalitarian effects; if we study persistence they seem to perpetuate inequality [16]. Many studies focus on persistence or educational attainment. The most often asked question is: are high-school graduates who begin their postsecondary studies in two-year schools as likely as those who enter four-year schools to get bachelors' degrees? Nearly all such studies have found that, even after controlling for several background variables, students aiming to earn bachelors' degrees are more likely to succeed if they begin their studies in a four-year college - between 11% and 19% more likely according to most estimates. This finding has been very extensively documented and explained by Dougherty [6, 7] and recently reconfirmed by Whitaker & Pascarella [25]. (See [15] for an important qualification.) But focusing only on educational attainment reduces the concept of equality of opportunity to equality of educational opportunity. Educational opportunity usually matters in stratification research because education opens the way to other opportunities, especially for income and status. Hence it is important to investigate, not only the two-year colleges' effects on educational attainment (and thus their indirect effects on occupational attainment). It is also important to investigate two-year colleges' more direct influences on occupational attainment. When studying occupational attainment as an outcome variable, the approach one takes to the subject again tends to prejudge matters in favor of either the advocates or the critics. The key issue is the proper comparison group. In research that compares individuals who began their postsecondary studies in two-year schools with those who began in four-year schools, the four-year attenders come out well ahead in job status, even after controlling for postsecondary educational attainment [18]. Critics point to this kind of evidence to maintain that two-year colleges perpetuate the existing occupational structure and students' places in it. Much research on the issue has, in fact, been done by critics and has compared the educational and occupational achievements of two-year and four-year college entrants. There has been little doubt that four-year college entrants tend to attain higher occupational status and earnings than two-year college entrants. But that is not the only appropriate comparison. In this study we load the dice the other way. We compare occupational outcomes for two-year college students with the occupational outcomes of high school graduates who entered the labor market with no postsecondary education. This comparison has not been made very frequently, and the results are much less conclusive than the two-year versus four-year comparison. (See Dougherty's review [7, p. 66] of the scant literature.) Furthermore, we compare these high school graduates with "committed" two-year college students, that is, those who began their studies within eighteen months of graduating from high school and who attended long enough and regularly enough to earn a vocational certificate, an associate's degree, or who transferred to a four-year college and earned a bachelor's degree. …

First Encounters of the Bureaucratic Kind: Early Freshman Experiences with a Campus Bureaucracy

Abstract: A study examined the early encounters of traditional-age freshmen with a campus bureaucracy. Data were collected through semistructured interviews with traditional-age freshmen at a state university and with staff in the offices that dealt with them. The results revealed that although students did sometimes experience their encounters with the campus bureaucracy as annoying, frustrating, and confusing, their actions were mediated by their relative powerlessness and their interpretations of their experiences and options; that students' comments about their problems with the bureaucracy related to lines and waiting, impersonality, rules, the fact that specialized offices were scattered across various buildings, and paperwork; that students generally chose to be nonconfrontational when dealing with the bureaucracy; and that staff members experienced difficulties in trying to make the system work and managing their sometimes conflictual relationships with students.

University-Industry Interaction in the Ontario Centres of Excellence

Abstract: Introduction The issue of corporate-university linkages and university research has been at the forefront in Canadian higher education since the late 1980s, when a consensus emerged among government, industry, and universities that knowledge and highly qualified people are two main components in achieving economic growth. According to this consensus, universities through their role as creators and disseminators of new knowledge as well as through the provision of highly qualified people have a pivotal role to play in the economic development process. There are a multitude of reasons for sharply focused attention on corporate-university linkages in Canada, the United States, and Europe. Primary among them is the changing nature of the economy (industrial to information), shifts in the nature and rate of technological change, the emergence of competitive global markets, and increased competitiveness. The development, or enhancement, of alliances among universities, industry, and government is widely seen as the prescription for the malaise. There exist many different institutional forms of corporate-university linkages [17, pp. 25-40]. The resurgence of interest in corporate-university linkages and university research, however, has led to the proliferation of one form of linkage - university-based or university-connected research centres [19, pp. 278-279; 38, p. 5]. In Canada, this resurgence has manifested itself in an alliance between university, industry, and government in the creation and funding of Centres of Excellence [39, p. 28]. The term "Centre of Excellence," however, is neither new nor unique. It has been used to describe government programs to promote the developnment of advanced technology in the states of Massachusetts [28] and Utah [44] as well as to describe a number of academic and research programs at various Canadian universities [22, p. 35]. Centres of Excellence may also be known as University-Industry Research Centres (UIRC), Science and Technology Centres (STC), or Organized Research Units (ORU). The "centre" in centre of excellence refers to a model for conducting research that has a long history in universities. Internal university research centres facilitate networking between groups of scholars in one or more departments and/or universities who are teaching or researching in similar areas [13, pp. 80-83; 20, pp. 49-50; 23, pp. 1-28]. However, as applied to the fostering and enhancement of corporate-university research linkages, the centre model was first used in the early 1970s, when the National Science Foundation (NSF) funded various program models to promote collaborative industry-university research [21, 33]. In 1987 the Government of Ontario embarked on an ambitious five-year, $204 million program, creating seven Centres of Excellence.(1) After a successful review, the program was extended for a further five years and allocated an additional $200 million in funding [31]. In 1989 the Government of Canada followed suit and launched a five-year, $240 million program, creating fifteen Networks of Centres of Excellence [24]. This program was extended for a further five years and allocated an additional sum of $197 million, although only ten of the fourteen Centres were re-funded. The underlying assumption in the creation and financing of the Ontario Centres and other UIRCs is that industry and university scientists will interact, that technology transfer will take place, and that as a result industry will become more competitive. Evidence regarding the effectiveness of university-industry research relationships, and in particular UIRCs and the Ontario Centres, in terms of technology transfer to industry is mixed [17, p. 13; 43, pp. 53-70]. The data that refute the claims raise questions with respect to the cost effectiveness of universities and the ability of universities to enhance the competitiveness of industry [5, 41, 42, pp. 5-24]. The data to substantiate the effectiveness of UIRCs is contradictory. …

The Development of Salary Goal Modeling: From Regression Analysis to a Value-Based Prescriptive Approach.

Abstract: Introduction The complex institutional issue of faculty salary equity has legal, financial, and personal ramifications [2, 10, 22, 29]. Of course, any effective faculty reward system should be part of an institution's strategic planning process [10] and should reflect the institution's culture [30]. Ideally, equity systems should be responsive to organizational, interpersonal, and market factors [9, 10, 28, 29] as well as the political circumstances operating within the institution [30, 31]. From a more general perspective, Cascio maintains, "The dominant concern among compensation managers for the 1990s and beyond is how the compensation system links with organization and human resource strategies" [6, p. 422]. In spite of this acknowledged need for a comprehensive, planned approach, many institutions have responded to faculty equity issues in an ad hoc, reactionary manner [10]. This approach results in a variety of serious negative consequences including litigation, inefficient use of human resources, morale and productivity problems, and a violation of the ethical treatment of employees [6, 7, 10, 21, 27]. The purpose of this article is to describe how our institution, Frostburg State University [FSU], transformed a multiple regression approach to equity into a value-based prescriptive process of developing faculty salary goals. The historical setting and the formation of the task force will be described, followed by an examination of the issues, values, and factors used to design the model. Finally, applications of the model are presented. Institutional Characteristics and Setting Frostburg State is a regional comprehensive university located in rural northwestern Maryland. The university enrolled more than forty-six hundred undergraduate students and more than eight hundred graduate students in 1994. Its undergraduates were predominantly full-time (89%), while its graduate students were largely part-time students (81%). The institution employed 244 full-time faculty in academic year 1994-95. Following the relatively common path of development from teacher's college to liberal arts college to comprehensive university, FSU has, for at least the past twenty-five years, continuously emphasized teaching as the primary role of faculty. Across three major revisions of its faculty evaluation system between 1971 and 1995 the university placed substantially greater weight upon teaching than upon other categories of evaluation, such as scholarship and service.(1) Further, demonstrated excellence in teaching is the institution's primary criterion for promotion to the upper faculty ranks. The institution's emphasis on the teaching role has been expressed as well in long-standing efforts to sustain small-to-moderate class sizes. For example, in 1994-95, 85% of all classes enrolled 30 or fewer students, and the modal class size was 18 students. Student-faculty ratios have been relatively stable, ranging between 16 to 1 and 18 to 1. Like other rural institutions, Frostburg has had to cope with a particular economic pressure unlike those facing urban and/or doctorate-granting institutions: the dearth of qualified part-time faculty and/or graduate teaching assistants. Getz and Siegfried [16] have described a national trend to substitute part-time for full-time faculty in the face of the rising costs of higher education. Rural universities cannot resort to this cost reduction strategy to the degree available to nonrural institutions. The outcome for FSU has been a heavy reliance on the most expensive form of staffing - full-time, fully benefited faculty. In the sciences, for example, in 1994-95 full-time faculty taught 90% of all science classes. The resulting high proportion and high numbers of full-time teaching faculty have placed great pressure on faculty salaries because the available funds are distributed among a larger-than-normal number of full- time faculty, especially when compared to other schools in the University of Maryland System. …

Higher Education and Corporate Realities: Class, Culture, and the Decline of Graduate Careers

Abstract: Organizational change and managerial careers education, recruitment and changing patterns of cultural reproduction higher education and the regulation of talent Social divisions of learning student orientations to work and careers the adaptive paradigm and employer recruitment strategies graduates in employment - coming to terms with changing corporate realities mass higher education and the collapse of bureaucratic work?