Retired professors and professional activity: A comparative study of three types of institutions

This study compares the professional activities of retired professors from liberal arts colleges, a comprehensive university, and a major research university. Results show that a large majority of faculty continue to perform professional roles and that strength of ties to colleagues and professional organizations outside the institution are correlated with professional activity at all types of institutions. Major differences among institutions are: (1) liberal arts college and research university faculty show consistency between pre- and postretirement professional activity levels, whereas comprehensive university faculty do not; (2) university faculty show higher levels of participation in a number of professional activities than do liberal arts college faculty; (3) rated importance of research or other creative work is related to professional activity for comprehensive university faculty and rated importance of consulting and university service are related to professional activity for research university faculty.     

Emigration,internationalization, and “brain drain”: Propensities among British Academics

This research links two important higher education phenomena: potential brain drain among academics abroad and the U.S. academic labor market. The inquiry draws on the brain drain literature and is grounded primarily on a secondary analysis of a major survey (1989) of British university and polytechnic faculty members. The anlaysis shows that fully 40.0 percent of university faculty are seriously considering a move abroad with the substantial majority favoring the United States as a destination. Faculty characteristics—including academic field, research versus teaching orientation, rank, age, gender, and political identification—are correlated with faculty members' professed interest in emigration. The analysis also compares (former) polytechnic to university faculty as well as to a subset of Oxford and Cambridge faculty.     

University administrators and faculty bargaining

This study presents empirical data suggesting that middle-level university administrators tend to oppose faculty bargaining, especially by an aggressive union. Findings cover administrators' perceptions of and attitudes toward faculty bargaining, prebargaining conditions in their work milieu, and expectations as to potential outcomes of bargaining under alternative agents. Factor analysis is used to identify underlying perceptual structures for which specific expectations may serve as indicators. Multivariate analysis suggests that perceptual-attitudinal variables related to prebargaining conditions explain little of the variance in support for bargaining. Most of the variance explained by the model derives from expectations concerning outcomes, perceptions of how well bargaining is working in higher education, and personal political orientation. Policy and research implications are suggested.     

Career alternatives: Providing a cafeteria of choices through career alternative dollars

Part of the crisis in higher education is due to the age and tenure distribution of the faculty and their escalating future salary costs. Universities must find ways to gain financial and academic flexibility. This will require a program ofcareer alternatives which provides inducements to leave the university for faculty who are not due to retire until the years 2000 to 2010. The money saved can be used to the mutual benefit of the individual and the university. The university's share of the savings may be used to hire new junior faculty and to reduce the total cost of the salary budget. The faculty member's share may be redeemed at a career alternatives cafeteria. This paper outlines the offering that such a cafeteria may provide and the mechanisms that may be used to establish one.     

College presidents' role performance and faculty satisfaction

This research analyzed faculty evaluations of college presidents' role performance with the intent of identifying underlying dimensions and to ask further which dimensions predicted faculty satisfaction with presidents. Data were gathered from 896 faculty members from two technical colleges, three community colleges, two private universities and three public universities in a Western state. The factor analysis revealed three relatively independent dimensions of the presidential role: personal-public image, faculty and student interaction with presidents, and absence of autocratic leadership style. The personal-public image was the most important dimension and predicted faculty satisfaction across the four types of institutions of higher learning. Faculty-student interaction with the president, while not as important a dimension of the presidential role, predicted faculty satisfaction in three institutional types, but not in public universities. The absence of autocratic leadership style predicted satisfaction in community and technical colleges.     

The role of professionalization in a collective bargaining election

This study examined a university's faculty voting in a collective bargaining election. Not only were the votes for and against bargaining collected, but also relevant demographic data were includedon each ballot. These data permit analysis of which specific faculty members at a comprehensive university tend to favor or oppose faculty bargaining. The variable of professionalization is identified as being important to the faculty members' decision. The findings have ramifications for faculties, governing boards, and governmental labor-relations agencies in considering how bargaining units should be composed and imposed.     

Austrian graduates in education and their jobs: An empirical analysis of the occupational distribution of university graduates

The author reports on an empirical research project which investigated the occupational distribution of Austrian PhD's who graduated in education. Nearly 50% of the graduates interviewed are employed in the occupational fields universities and teachers' training. On the contrary new occupational fields which may be estimated as potential job-areas in consequence of international experience (like social work, further education, special education for the handicapped, vocational traning, etc.) employ a very small number of graduates. No manifest unemployment could be found. However about 20% of the graduates are over-qualified for their jobs ——most of them working in the occupational field schools. The article concludes with some suggestions for the development of the educational graduates' curriculum by emphasizing elements of orientation for the students (concerning their motives for studying and their professional expectations) and application of educational knowledge.     

A comparative study of occupational stress among African American and white university faculty: A research note

This paper is a comparison of levels of occupational stress among African American and white college and university faculty members in U.S. institutions. Using survey data collected from a national sample of faculty, an analysis of reported occupational stress levels was undertaken to determine if issues raised in previous research regarding extra-academic assignments given to African American faculty limits their access to the more traditional faculty roles, creating pressure to perform in ways not expected of white faculty. To test these assertions, scales measuring stress from teaching, research, and service activities were constructed for African American and white faculty from a larger faculty stress index. Results of the analysis indicate that African American faculty report generally higher levels of occupational stress than their white counterparts, especially in the areas of research and service activities.     

The development and use of a faculty salary model for a higher education system

Most of the earlier attempts to develop faculty salary models have been based on data from a single institution or from an undifferentiated group of institutions, without a data base adequate to support the design. The overall objective of this paper is to report on the development, characteristics, statistical findings, and utility of a faculty salary model employed over the period 1978–79 to 1980–81 for a higher education system containing 16 institutions ranging from a comprehensive university to a small rural community college in complexity and mission. The need for the model grew out of requirements for the governing board to: (1) deal with litigation and the issues of equity for minorities and females; (2) make interinstitutional salary comparisons as these relate to size, complexity, and mission; and (3) better understand the factors which determine faculty salaries.     

Anticipatory socialization of graduate students

Most observers in higher education and most faculty agree that more student-oriented teachers are needed; but there is no consensus on how to get them. Options include finding new faculty and/or changing present faculty. The latter seems practically impossible, since most faculty are intransigent, and faculty development is addressed to too few. Graduate education, too, is unlikely to change, as present faculty guide its directions. The alternative is to find students with the proper dispositions on entrance to graduate schools. The question addressed herein is whether among current admittees to graduate schools there are sufficient numbers of persons with orientations significantly different from those of current faculty. The article reports on empirical assessments of preferences for 320 discrete tasks in the academic role by accepted graduate school applicants and younger and older faculty.This paper was presented at the 17th Annual Meeting of the Association for Institutional Research, Montreal, Canada, May 9, 1977. The research was supported by a grant from the Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education, Department of Health, Education and Welfare.     

“It's Easier to Be Yourself When You Are Invisible”: Female College Students Discuss Their Online Classroom Experiences

There has been considerable scholarly interest in issues related to gender in the classroom, especially in terms of finding ways in which classrooms might be configured to be more welcoming--and less chilly--to female students. There is some evidence to suggest that the online learning environment may provide educators with opportunities to achieve a more female-friendly classroom, and this study was designed to gather information about that question. 125 female college students who had completed at least one online, college-level class were invited to discuss their experiences learning online. These data show that female college students respond to the online environment in a variety of ways. A small group of students indicated that they did not enjoy learning online, while others expressed mixed feelings. The majority, however, had positive things to say about their online classroom experiences; and of these, a large number identified anonymity as the most important positive aspect of the online learning environment.     

The Changing Debate on Internationalisation of Higher Education

Internationalisation, the growing border-crossing activities between national systems of higher education is losing ground to globalisation, increasing border-crossing activities of blurred national systems which is often employed to depict world-wide trends and growing global competition. This article addresses recent issues of knowledge transfer. It points out tensions between increasing diversity in higher education and efforts to facilitate recognition of prior studies on student mobility. It shows the diversity of steering and management policies with respect to internationalisation and globalisation. Finally, it asks whether globalisation of higher education has to be viewed as a manifestation of turbo-capitalism or could be viewed instead as a move towards global understanding.     

Community attitudes and the urban university

This study looks at the relationships between a number of personal and social characteristics of a random sample of 254 urban citizens from the Twin Cities and their satisfaction with a University. Most of the urban citizens had considerable university related experiences, and they believed that faculty and students are sincere and hardworking. Most were satisfied with different facets of University life, endorsed the broad principle of campus freedom of expression, but were generally opposed to the goals of students when they used more active methods of dissent. Citizens' satisfaction with the University was heavily related to their perception of campus life as it related to the ideological criteria of Work Ethic and Americanism.     

Classroom control: Some cybernetic comments on the possible and the impossible

The application of basic cybernetic laws and information processing principles to the classroom situation suggests that traditional and modern teaching methods, regarded as control systems, are equivalent in terms of efficiency. As control structures, they embody different principles and are not decomposable. Examination of these principles reveals that the two methods are radically incompatible, in the sense that techniques developed in the one cannot be transferred to the other without dislocation of the system as a whole. Attempts to modernize the traditional method, or to formalize the modern method are ill-conceived. Such mixed methods violate basic laws of information and control, and cannot work. It is suggested that many of the problems underlying the Great Education Debate are a consequence of the impossible state of affairs created by the widespread introduction of mixed methods.     

Growth and development of college administrative structures

Current research suggests that organizations tend to move through distinct growth stages from a more person-centered to a more task-oriented bureaucracy. The study reported here examined the structural characteristics of community colleges at regular intervals. Five major growth stages were found, each similar to a theoretically derived growth period.The colleges progressed from having, in their early years, decentralized decision-making, few and flat reporting spans, and few structured and controlled activities, to having, in their later years, many tall reporting spans and many structured and controlled activities. They moved toward centralized decision-making in the middle years and then reverted to decentralized forms in later years.     

The relationship between attributes of a children's radio program and its appeal to listeners

An approach was developed to investigate the link between attributes of a children's radio program and children's judgments of appeal. Program tapes were divided into 28 segments and were rated for the presence of 30 attributes. Through multidimensional scaling analysis, attributes were organized into six clusters of Superattributes on the basis of their co-occurrence across the 28 segments. Superattributes were labeled and assigned scores that reflected the degree to which each was present in the 28 segments. A sample of 42 children 8–12 years old listened to the test tapes and provided a written judgment of their interest in the program at each segment. Results revealed that the Superattributes Instruction, Intro Talk, and Jokes were negatively associated with children's interest, while Popular Music was positively correlated with interest. In planning programs and understanding the effects of radio on children, designers and researchers should pay special attention to those formats in radio programming that are familiar to children, especially popular music and instructional material.     

Teaching format and student style: Their interactive effects on learning

This research compared the effectiveness of Peer-Centered (PC) and Instructor-Centered (IC) formats for Teaching-Assistant-led discussion sections in chemistry. In addition, an Aptitude-Treatment Interaction (ATI) was hypothesized, such that self-described collaborative students would report more learning from the PC format and competitive students would benefit more from the IC format. The PC format utilized small subgroups and student presentations, while in the IC format the Teaching Assistant lectured, solved problems, and answered questions. The two sections were approximately equal in overall learning, except that more learning from fellow students occurred in the PC sections. The expected ATI effect was found. In addition, students with interpersonally oriented learning styles benefited more from interactive learning opportunities (such as sections), while those with other learning styles gained more from impersonal media (such as textbooks).     

Orson Scott Card’s Ender and Bean: The Exceptional Child as Hero

Orson Scott Cards school stories in outer space, Enders Game and Enders Shadow, purportedly occur at the same time and tell the same story, but from the perspectives of two different child protagonists. Scenes in Enders Shadow even reproduce text from Enders Game. Nevertheless, 14 years elapsed between the publications of the two books. This essay brings child studies and exceptionality research to bear on the two novels, analyzing the development of Cards ideology regarding his view of the exceptional child and his view of the nature of heroism in a post-modern world.     

Research on the relationships between higher education and the world of work: Past achievements, problems and new challenges

The review of major research approaches and themes suggests that research on the relationships between higher education and the world of work has been closely linked during the recent three to four decades to changing themes of policy and practise. There were some indicators of research in this area being an agent of subordination of higher education to the employment system, being quantitative-structurally biased, tending to reproduce the actors' myths and being stuck in the over-education debate. A closer look, however, reveals that the range of research approaches is very broad and that a common core of themes and approaches emerged which provides the opportunity of examining controversial hypotheses. It is finally suggested that research in this area should be based on anticipation of likely changing conditions in the future, e.g. trends towards precarious or flexible employment, towards a mass or abundance paradigm, towards a 'life-long learning society' and towards an 'international' or 'global' labour market.     

Funding, resource allocation, and performance in higher education systems

This article analyzes forms of resourceallocation in university systems and theireffects on performance in institutions ofhigher education. Internationally, highereducation systems differ substantially withregard to research and education fundingsources and to ways that resources areallocated. European universities receive themajority of their funding from public sources,but private funding plays a more important rolein Anglo-American systems of higher education.Many governments use competitive elements inthe process of allocating public funds toinstitutions of higher education. Examplesinclude the implementation of performancemeasures through formula funding, or resourceallocation on the basis of evaluated projectproposals. Corresponding forms ofperformance-based resource allocation can befound within most higher educationinstitutions. This article analyzes how variousforms of funding and resource allocation affectuniversities at the macro-level and individualbehavior at the micro-level. A theoreticalapproach to this problem suggests thatperformance-based funding tends to bring aboutpositive changes but is also a factor inunintended side effects. Forms of resourceallocation influence the behavior of academicsand managers in higher education, particularlytheir levels of activity as well as the kindsof activities they engage in and their ways ofdealing with risks. Empirical analyses partlyconfirm these hypotheses. It can be shown thatchanges in resource allocation have an impacton the level and type of activity academicsconcentrate on but not on the long-term successof universities.