Susanne von Below: Bildungssysteme und soziale Ungleichheit. Das Beispiel der neuen Bundesländer

Ohne Zusammenfassung     

Institutional financial assessment: Methodology and meaning

This paper responds to the fourth annual report by W. John Minter and Howard R. Bowen on Independent Higher EducationFinancial and Educational Trends in Independent Higher Education, 1978. Primary thesis: established financial reporting does not tend to do justice to a sound assessment of the financial condition of colleges and universities. Because the latter belong to the service economy, we must know more than we do about changes in quality. Such studies also must say how well institutional objectives are being achieved. College presidents and deans have tended to provide researchers with overly optimistic information. When they later see that Bowen and Minter report this very fact, they complain that their conclusions are not gloomy enough. Such double standards damage realistic program assessment efforts. The blame falls on the respondents and not on the authors. Neither can the authors be blamed for shortcomings in financial accounting ignoring the total cost of institutional activity. If accounting practice were based on a total cost concept the news about higher education finance would more nearly reflect what we all know is true: colleges and universities are worse off than the statistics say.Presented at the Annual Forum of the Association for Institutional Research, Houston, Texas, May 1978.     

Using a journal availability study to improve access

PURPOSE: Identify journal collection access and use factors. SETTING AND SUBJECTS: University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill's Health Sciences Library patrons. METHODOLOGY: Survey forms and user interactions were monitored once a week for twelve weeks during the fall 1997 semester. The project was based on a 1989 New Mexico State University study and used Kantor's Branching Analysis to measure responses. RESULT: 80% of reported sought journal articles were found successfully. Along with journal usage data, the library obtained demographic and behavioral information. DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS: Journals are the library's most used resource and, even as more electronic journals are offered, print journals continue to make up the majority of the collection. Several factors highlighted the need to study journal availability. User groups indicated that finding journals was problematic, and internal statistics showed people requesting interlibrary loans for owned items. The study looked at success rates, time, and ease of finding journals. A variety of reasons contributed to not finding journals. While overall user reports indicated relatively high success rate and satisfaction, there were problems to be addressed. As the library proceeds in redesigning both the physical space and electronic presence, the collected data have provided valuable direction.     

The Development in Germany of Archival Processing – The Vertical and Horizontal Appraisal

Based on a discussion about appraisal which has been going on for over a 100 years, the so-called vertical and horizontal appraisal have been developed and tested since the middle of the 1990s. During this process the tasks, functions and competences of the agencies, which are to be appraised were analysed. The appraisal of the content itself is undertaken only when multiple archival processing has been eliminated by this method and the most significant records identified. Actual tasks and functions of single administrative branches of different institutions (federal government, states, counties, and municipalities) are appraised, apart from already closed records. In this way, agencies creating archives and records today receive written decisions on the appraisal of records, which will be offered to the archives in future. Archivists of different institutions are involved in this appraisal procedure. The experience gained here has continually developed the techniques of vertical and horizontal appraisal. This appraisal procedure is being further developed in a constant balance between theory and practice.     

Trends in the Creation and Appraisal of Government Records in Germany

While archivists in western and eastern Germany may have different traditions, they face the same challenges presented by the use of information technology in government offices in recent years. Documentation strategies and goals in advising agencies must be developed in consideration of current professional debate and limited resources. The following article presents tendencies in governmental records management, advising strategies of archives, and schemes for broad-scale appraisal based on observations at the level of the governments of the German Länder and includes case studies from Saxony.     

Looking back on school – the views of adult graduates of a residential special school for children with emotional and behavioural difficulties

The authors of this article, Garry Hornby and Chrystal Witte, conducted a follow-up study with adult graduates of a residential special school for children with emotional and behavioural difficulties in New Zealand. Twenty-one graduates were located and interviewed ten to 14 years after they had left the residential school. The interviews focused on various factors related to the graduates' quality of life (reported elsewhere) and on their views of their education, both at the residential school and at mainstream schools, which are reported in this paper. It was found that these adult graduates were overwhelmingly positive about the support they received while at the residential school. They talked, for example, about the help they received in addressing their learning and behavioural difficulties. However, they were consistently negative with regard to their experiences of mainstreaming. For example, respondents noted the lack of understanding that they experienced from mainstream teachers. In drawing out the implications of the findings from this study, Garry Hornby and Chrystal Witte suggest that one factor which could result in improving outcomes for these students is better special needs training for teachers in mainstream schools.