Towards the Idea of a World University

Could anyone reasonably oppose the idea that quality and excellence are essential to the university? However unlikely it seems, that is exactly what we would like to do in this article: we would like to reject the demand for quality and excellence in the university. We would like to arrive at a point at where the need for quality is no longer necessary. In this article, such a refusal will direct us to a proposal for using the spaces offered by the university and its teaching and research in a different way; in a way that transforms the university into a world university. This paper will argue that a world university is concentrated around attentive pools of worldly study. It is a university that has to invent new languages in order to answer the question “How can we live together?” In order to answer this question, and to be “present in the present,” we will clarify our argument that both acceptance and attention are needed in the world university. This position implies a kind of curiosity that is not driven by the “will to know” but by a caring attitude to what is happening now.     

The student experience of undergraduate students: towards a conceptual framework

While the term ‘student experience’ is used widely in universities, it is remarkably under-developed as a construct in the academic literature. This paper addresses this gap by proposing a conceptual framework for the student experience of undergraduate students. The approach taken is to identify the key influences that shape the student experience from the perspective of students. It does this by addressing two questions: firstly, what are the key influences that shape the student experience? Secondly, how do these influences shape the student experience? To do this the paper draws from a wide range of studies that provide substantial theoretical and empirical evidence as to how students experience university. Drawing from Bronfenbrenner’s bioecological model of human development, it identifies seven key sets of influences or microsystems that shape the undergraduate student experience. Then the paper considers how these influences shape students’ experiences drawing from the concepts of engagement and alienation. The paper concludes by proposing a broadly defined model for the student experience where learning and development take place as a result of meaningful interactions between the student and the key microsystems. The implications of this model for universities and for further study are also discussed.     

加强对学生"学会上大学"的教育

大学生入校后将面临一系列问题,如为什么学,学什么,怎么学,学了以后干什么.同样是上大学,会上与不会上大不一样.教师教书育人的重要职责就是指导和帮助学生学会学习,学会在大学中如何生活,也就是学会怎样上大学.     

The University Teacher in Bulgaria as a Factor in the Motivation of Student Learning

This article discusses the role of the university teacher in fostering an interest in studying for future professional realization and personal development. It answers such questions as “Who are the ‘new’ students? In what ways have social, technological, economic, and political changes affected the motivation of students to learn? What is the role of the university teacher in training high quality scholarly specialists?” As the various categories or groups of students have specific characteristics, university teachers must be aware of these group characteristics and must teach accordingly (including the use of computers and audio‐visual facilities).     

Academic attachment: Predicting students' affective reactions to the university

In attempting to develop a predictive model of student attachment to the university, this research concentrates on four variable sets: perceptions of university goals, perceptions of university academic climate, perceptions of university academic environment, and feelings of academic alienation. Using a sample of 460 university students, multiple discriminant analytic results indicate that of these four variable sets, perceptions of the academic climate and feelings of academic alienation exert more influence on students' attachment to the university than do perceptions of university goals and perceptions of the academic environment. These findings are discussed within the context of a model of the university student operating very much as a democratic citizen in the university political system.     

Hidden voices: L2 students’ compensatory writing strategies

This qualitative research study examines how 12 undergraduate second-language learners understood the concept of citations in academic writing. The following questions guided this study: What are the participants’ beliefs about citing research? How do students conceive the role and function of citations in their writing assignments? How do they make decisions about what and what not to cite? Results indicated that students believed that citations were a superficial accessory to the main text and only cited information to comply with teacher directives, thereby, sacrificing their own empowerment in the writing process. To overcome their unfamiliarity with academic prose, students created specific compensatory writing strategies. Although this study included only L2 students, the findings are consistent with the research involving monolingual students. This research can inform educators about the need to engage undergraduate students in participatory discussions about the role, function, and power of referencing within a privileged academic discourse.     

The Home Schooling “Market”: Results and Implications of Current Research

ABSTRACT

One of the biggest forces in primary and secondary education today is the home schooling movement–parents opting to forego sending their children to public or private schools in order to teach them themselves in their own home. As this movement grows, more and more students entering higher education will have been home schooled. This is becoming a market segment that many colleges and universities cannot afford to ignore. The current paper reviews the research which has been conducted on home schooling to answer four questions of importance to college or university officials as they contemplate targeting this group: (1) why do parents home school? (2) what are the characteristics of home schoolers? (3) would home schoolers make good college students? and (4) how could a college or university effectively reach out to home schoolers? By answering these four questions, college and university officials can better decide whether or not they should target home schooled students and, if they do, how to best reach these students.     

Working an Academically Rigorous,Multicultural Program

In 1997 the California State University Monterey Bay Master of Arts in Education program began accepting students with the explicit intent of offering an academically challenging curriculum that grounds teacher-leaders in multicultural social justice education. By 2003, the program had successfully attracted and graduated a student population that is as racially and ethnically diverse as the state of California. As eight faculty members who designed and implemented this program, writing from a position of “insider knowledge” regarding how it functioned on a day-to-day basis, we show how culturally and linguistically diverse students, many of whom have been underprepared for rigorous academic work, can attain high levels of academic excellence in a challenging and supportive context. In addition, we explore the tensions and realities of doing this work, especially in a state university context that is experiencing decreased funding that jeopardizes programs such as this one. We write so that our work is not forgotten but rather narrates what is possible.     

Undergraduate orientations towards higher education in Germany and England: problematizing the notion of ‘student as customer’

There is a great deal of discussion in the academic literature around how the current conditions in higher education frame students as customers. Observers are of the view that rankings and marketing, an increased focus on student satisfaction, and particularly tuition fees, encourage an instrumental, passive attitude towards a university education. Given the volume of attention directed towards this topic, it is perhaps surprising that there is relatively little scholarship that examines it empirically. Some who have addressed it presumed a customer/consumer orientation in students and have been somewhat—but not entirely successful—in generating evidence to confirm those assumptions. It appears that the expectations of this instrumental, passive orientation are being realised in part, but that this is also mediated by other dispositions. What could be considered to be missing from the analysis thus far is an exploration of how students make university-related decisions (not simply what choices are based on) and how they understand the respective roles of the student and university. This study begins to fill that gap, exploring the orientations towards university of undergraduates in Germany and England, two countries where the diffusion of market conditions in higher education policies has been somewhat contrasting. Distinctions between the German and English students did emerge, but these were less based on those countries’ unequal engagement with tuition fees and rankings and more to do with other aspects of their university cultures and the world beyond their degrees. This suggests that how people approach their time as students is more complex than some of the literature assumes. Furthermore, at the very least, any consideration of this topic must include an analysis of how students themselves understand and experience their higher education and broader social contexts.     

Resources allocation in Chinese universities: hierarchy,academic excellence,or both?

Scholars are aware that the higher education sector in China is highly affected by its administrative system, but the questions of how and to what extent the Chinese administrative system impacts academic resources allocation have yet to be answered. By examining the empirical data from 2003 to 2010 of China’s National Excellent Doctoral Dissertations Award, this article finds that the hierarchical position of doctoral advisors who hold a university or college post will have an important influence on academic resources allocation, although these advisors are professors with high academic ability. This article also finds an interaction effect between advisors’ hierarchical position and students’ academic abilities in influencing the decisions on the award. Overall, the Chinese case digs rather deep into the increasing hierarchisation of academic life and science.     

Mini skirts and headscarves: undergraduate student perceptions of secularism in Turkish higher education

This article is based on a qualitative study that examines the perceptions of advanced undergraduate students in five Turkish state universities regarding their understanding of the concept of secularism and its manifestation within the higher education sector. The study further illuminates these students’ perspectives of how the university may change in relation to their understanding of secularism. This inquiry was guided by four central questions posed to the students: (1) what is your understanding of the concept of secularism?; (2) how does secularism manifest within universities in Turkey and your institution in particular?; (3) are there aspects of your university you would like to see change as a result of secularism?; and (4) in what ways has your identity influenced your academic decisions?     

Poor and Rich: Student Economic Stratification and Academic Performance in a Public Research University System

One sees various efforts in developed as well as in developing economies to seek a greater participation of lower‐income students in their nation's leading universities. Once lower‐income students do enroll in a highly selective institution, what happens to them? How well do they do academically when compared to their more wealthy counterparts? How integrated are they into the academic community and in their satisfaction with their choice and sense of support by the institution and fellow students? These are crucial questions, if and when élite universities in various parts of the world become more representative of their general population; the stated desire of most of these institution, virtually all of which are nationally funded entities that must justify their public subsidies. This paper explores the divide between poor and rich students, first comparing a group of selective US institutions and their number and percentage of Pell Grant recipients and then, using institutional data and results from the University of California, Student Experience in the Research University Survey (SERU Survey), presenting an analysis of the high percentage of low‐income undergraduate students within the University of California system; who they are, their academic performance and quality of their undergraduate experience.     

Educational disenchantment and the university student

In contrast to much of the research on contemporary university students of the post-activist generation, the study reported here rests on a model of the student as a quasi-citizen within the university political system. As a major political socialization environment for students, the university engenders feelings of academic disaffection among students. This study, based on a survey of 2,122 students enrolled at three mid-western universities in 1974, attempts to investigate the antecedents and consequences of felt academic disaffection for students. Five major findings emerge from this research. First, feelings of academic disaffection are relatively high among the students interviewed. Second, when the dimensionality of academic disaffection is investigated, these students typically express disaffection concerning the university and university administrators, with the latter group fostering most of the disaffection. Third, the students at the three universities surveyed generally differ regarding their evaluations of university functioning, their feelings of academic disaffection, and their desires for university reform, in each case with Southern Illinois University-Carbondale (SIU-C) students being significantly distinct from students at Northern Illinois University (NIU) and University of Kentucky (UK). Fourth, students' perceptions of authoritarian governance and an unsatisfactory academic environment at their universities tend to generate both university and administrative disaffection. Last, university and administrative disaffection result in a predilection among students for reform in the university, preferably devoid of administrative intervention.     

Articulating learning activities for design between university and the workplace. A didactic analysis

This paper accounts for research looking at the following question: in what way can university-located training activities be articulated with those in companies for work-based engineering students? Here, we will present an overview of research about both training periods, i.e. in the companies and at university. We focus on the trainee's actual activities and written work from a didactic point of view, a perspective which has been rarely mentioned in previous studies about work-based training in engineering. We aim to describe the activities of trainee engineers during industrial and academic training. Training activities in design engineering will be analysed in terms of knowledge acquisition and how this knowledge is put into practice during the two parts of the training. In doing so, we will obtain a better picture of what trainees, trainers and tutors really do.     

Chinese Women's Culture: From Tradition to Modernization

At the National Conference on the Work of College and University Admissions convened in Zhengzhou in early March of this year, the State Education Commission proposed that, in order to deepen the reforms of college and university tuition requirements, college and university admissions, and job placement for college and university graduates, those colleges and universities that have a feasible plan of action may, with approval, carry out reform spot experimentations. It also proposed that those colleges and universities carrying out these spot experiments will, when admitting students this year, no longer lower the enrollment qualification scores for students who are paying their own tuition and students who are being entrusted for education by enterprises or government units; instead, all students admitted by these colleges and universities will be expected to remit a certain amount of tuition for their education. At the same time, the colleges and universities must, by setting up scholarships for superior students, special-item scholarships, and student loans, further deepen the reform of the system of job placement for graduates. This is what is meant by what is commonly referred to as the joining the tracks between "publicly funded students" and "self-funded students."     

Success in higher education: the challenge to achieve academic standing and social position

When students look at their classmates in the classroom, consciously or unconsciously, they see competitors both for academic recognition and social success. How do they fit in relation to others and how do they succeed in achieving both? Traditional views on the drive to succeed and the fear of failure are well known as motivators for achieving academic success but is it that simple a dichotomy? Do students also view success through a fear of success and a purposeful intent to fail – referred to in this text as the drive to fail? Students recognize the importance of social position in class but how is this perceived and will they sacrifice social position for academic standing or vice versa? This paper considers these issues by analyzing the results of a student survey and opinions offered by the students. The discussion considers the survey, academic standing, social position, cultural variables, perception of success and failure, and concluding comments.     

Real or Imagined Women? Staff representations of international women postgraduate students 1

In Australia's globalising universities many support staff and teaching staff now work with international women postgraduate students. But are they aware of the issues facing these women, and is their understanding of them adequate? Indeed, how do they represent them? In this paper we draw on a small-scale pilot study involving key university personnel. We argue that the ways in which such staff represent this group of students is problematic. Focusing primarily on academic issues and on the literature on learning styles, we analyse these staff members' representations of international women postgraduate students from a postcolonial perspective. We explore the extent to which such representations, and the learning styles literature that reflects and informs them, are what Edward Said calls 'Orientalist'. In so doing, we point to both the constitution of the international woman student as postcolonial female subject and show how this situates her in relation to the prevalent learning styles discourse. Further we argue that such representations of the students differ in crucial ways from the students' self-representations, suggesting that in certain subtle ways such staff members are engaging with 'imagined' rather than 'real' women.     

Elite und Exzellenz aus der Perspektive von Jugendlichen und ihren Peers an exklusiven Schulen

Against the backdrop of the recent political discourse on elite and excellence in the German education system, this paper examines how such constructions manifest themselves in programmatic concepts of schools and in the orientations of their pupils and their peers. They are reconstructed on the basis of a qualitative research project on educational careers of young people. This paper focuses on pupils and their peers at an elite school of sports and an international school. Firstly, the state of research on those types of school as well as on educational careers of their pupils will be presented. Secondly, the theoretical reference points and the methodological design of the study will be introduced. At the core of the paper is the analysis of the education related orientations of selected cases of young people and their peers: How do they position themselves towards elite and excellence in their individual and collective orientations and how is this relevant for processes of distinction and coherence building in the groups? In the resuming part of the paper, the results will be summarised and related to the state of research and the scientific discourse on elite and excellence.     

Social inequalities in access to higher education in Croatia: five decades of resilient findings

This article provides a panoramic view of research findings on social inequalities in access to higher education in Croatia since the 1960s, guided by the question of what has changed in the findings. Our review shows that there is stark continuity over the last five decades: students from better educated family backgrounds tend to be overrepresented in higher education; students from better educated and white-collar family backgrounds are more likely to enrol in academic as opposed to professional study courses; students at one Croatian university in particular stand out in terms of their more privileged social background; and medicine seems to be the prime academic field for observing social reproduction. We note that these persistent findings run parallel to a dramatically changing political, economic and social context in Croatia, including transformations in the 1990s resulting from social ownership of the means of production to widespread private ownership, as well as transformations from a one-party political system to the establishment of a multi-party political system. The article maps possible theoretical explanations for the resilience of social inequalities in access to higher education in the context of dynamic times. It also questions the role of educational policies in this process.     

Students' Choice for Computers

Nowadays,computers are widely used as useful tools for our daily life.So you can see students using computers everywhere.The purpose of our survey is to find out the answers to the following questions:1.What brand of computers do students often choose?2.What is the most important factor of choosing computers in students’idea?3.What do students want to do with computers most?After that,we hope the students will know what kind of computers they really need and how many factors must be thought about when buying computers.