The Scope for Stimulation of Demand for Higher Education

Calls for the large-scale expansion of British higher education raise fundamental questions about supply and demand. An increase of 400,000 students by the turn of the century would require action both to stimulate demand and encourage institutions to meet it. This article considers the main types of market that higher education will need to develop in order to fulfil such an ambitious target and concludes that a very substantial marketing effort would be needed in addition to financial incentives if the opportunities available are to be grasped.     

Electronic publishing: what the Physiological Society is doing

The following article is primarily addressed to members of the Physiological Society, and is intended to explain the reasons for the changes in presentation of the Physiological Society journals. However, it is of much wider interest, and we are delighted to publish it in our series on the response of learned societies to electronic publishing possibilities.     

Education,Democracy and Poverty Reduction in Africa

This article explores the political relationship between education and poverty reduction. It argues that authoritarian rule in Africa has exacerbated levels of poverty and sets out six ways in which this has happened. However, the achievement of greater levels of democracy will not be possible unless political culture and civil society in Africa become more democratic but this will depend on the spread of more democratic values and behaviours. As democratic values and behaviours are socially learned and are not genetic, education must play a part in fostering greater democracy. The article then discusses three examples from Africa where education has not played a significant role in furthering democracy and provides some further examples of African countries where serious attempts are being made to try to change education systems in a more democratic direction.     

A cost-effective wireless network migration planning method supporting high-security enabled railway data communication systems

As a typical railway Cyber-physical System (CPS), radio-based train control systems have been playing an increasingly important role in rail transit. The engaged network, Global System for Mobile Communications for Railway (GSM-R), which is an out-dated wireless communication technology, will be decommissioned due to diminishing support from industry, and a new generation successor, e.g. Long-Term Evolution (LTE), is urgently required to replace the current network. The radio-based train control systems must be safety critical, which relies on a high-security Data Communication System (DCS). In this paper, a novel wireless network migration methodology in DCS is proposed. By using this methodology, the high-security required DCS performance in radio-based train control systems is maintained and the network migration cost, e.g. the used number of base station (BS), is reduced when updating the GSM-R to LTE.     

Over-education: What influence does the workplace have?

The wage and job satisfaction impacts for over-educated workers have been well-documented; yet little attention has been paid to the consequences for firms. In this paper we examine over-education from the perspective of the workplace. Using linked employer–employee data for the United Kingdom, we derive the standard worker-level penalties on wages and job satisfaction. We then show how over-education rates across workplaces adversely influence workplace pay and workplace labor relations. For individual workers who may be at-risk of over-education, we also distinguish between workforce composition effects and workplace labor practices, such as hiring. The effect of over-education on job satisfaction is particularly strong and its effects are evident at the workplace level. Our results suggest that investigations of over-education at the level of the firm are a promising area of inquiry.