Student response to tuition increase by academic majors: empirical grounds for a cost-related tuition policy

This study explored the responses of students in different academic majors to tuition increase, with a particular focus on the relationship between tuition increase, and future earnings and college expenditures. We analyzed effects of tuition increase on enrollment in six academic majors—Engineering, Physics, Biology, Mathematics, Business, and Education—where disciplinary enrollment data were available. The main findings are that students are elastic to tuition level in Physics, Biology, and Business, but not in Engineering, where the rate of return is the highest among the six majors and the college expenditure are the highest. The findings suggest that student enrollment in various academic majors is affected differentially by tuition. Further, the findings support a cost-related tuition policy, one designed to charge students higher tuition for higher-cost majors and lower tuition for lower-cost majors.

Click data as implicit relevance feedback in web search

Search sessions consist of a person presenting a query to a search engine, followed by that person examining the search results, selecting some of those search results for further review, possibly following some series of hyperlinks, and perhaps backtracking to previously viewed pages in the session. The series of pages selected for viewing in a search session, sometimes called the click data, is intuitively a source of relevance feedback information to the search engine. We are interested in how that relevance feedback can be used to improve the search results quality for all users, not just the current user. For example, the search engine could learn which documents are frequently visited when certain search queries are given.     

Some issues influencing the planning and implementation of vocational education in Nepal

This study attempted to analyze the perceptions of selected Nepali educators and administrators concerning certain basic issues which have been influencing the planning and implementation of vocational education in Nepal. The issues were determined after a review of the relevant research and literature. A questionnaire with 13 items was mailed to Nepali educators, administrators, experts and headmasters involved with vocational education. A total of 142 (53.18%) usable questionnaires were returned, and two groups of respondents were identified from the nature of their work, namely planners and implementors. The responses were interpreted using the analysis of variance statistical test (ANOVA). Findings indicated that planners and implementors, respectively, had significantly different attitudes concerning issues related to the characteristics of students, employment, and financial aspects of vocational programs. A higher proportion of planners than implementors dissented from the proposition that vocational education should be designed for less intelligent students. Implementors felt that the students could make vocational choices at the age of 14 or 15, whereas the planners were uncertain. The implementors were also more of the opinion that vocational education was too expensive for Nepal, while the planners tended to disagree with them about this. Regarding other matters, however, all the respondents indicated general agreement with the issues as stated.

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Zusammenfassung Diese Studie versuchte, die Vorstellungen ausgewählter nepalesischer Erziehungswissenschaftler und Verwaltungsbeamter in Bezug auf bestimmte Grundfragen zu analysieren, die Planung und Durchführung von Berufsausbildung in Nepal beeinflußten. Nach Durchsicht der Forschungsprojekte und der entsprechenden Literatur, wurden Fragepunkte ausgearbeitet. Ein Fragebogen mit dreizehn Punkten wurde an nepalesische Erziehungswissenschaftler, Verwaltungsbeamte, Experten und Schulleiter geschickt, die mit Berufsausbildung zu tun haben. Insgesamt 142 (53,18%) brauchbare Fragebogen wurden zurückgeschickt und zwei Gruppen von Befragten nach Art ihrer Tätigkeit, nämlich Planer und Durchführer, festgestellt. Die Antworten wurden ausgewertet indem die Analyse statistischer Varianztests (ANOVA) benutzt wurde. Ergebnisse zeigten, daß Planer und Durchführer signifikant unterschiedliche Einstellungen hatten zu Fragen in Bezug auf Merkmale der Schüler, Berufstätigkeit und finanzielle Aspekte des Berufsausbildungsprogramms. Ein höherer Anteil von Planern als Durchführern wich von der Behauptung ab, Berufsbildung sei für weniger intelligente Schüler bestimmt. Durchführer glaubten, daß Schüler im Alter von 14 oder 15 Jahren ihre Berufswahl treffen könnten, wohingegen sich die Planer nicht sicher waren. Durchführer waren auch der Meinung, daß Berufsausbildung für Nepal zu teuer sei, während Planer dazu neigten, mit ihnen darüber nicht übereinzustimmen. Hinsichtlich anderer Punkte jedoch, stimmten alle befragten Personen generell mit den Aussagen, wie angegeben, überein.

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Résumé Cette étude avait pour objectif l'analyse des perceptions de certains éducateurs et administrateurs népalais concernant quelques facteurs fondamentaux qui influencent la planification et la mise en oeuvre de l'éducation professionnelle au Népal. Ces facteurs ont été déterminés après examen des travaux importants de la recherche et de la littérature sur le sujet. Un questionnaire portant 13 points a été envoyé aux éducateurs, administrateurs, spécialistes et directeurs d'école népalais concernés par l'éducation professionnelle. Un total de 142 (53, 18%) questionnaires exploitables ont été retournés et deux groupes de personnes ont pu être identifiés d'après la nature de leur travail, à savoir les planificateurs et les exécutants. Les réponses ont été interprétées d'après l'analyse du test statistique de variance (ANOVA). Les résultats ont montré que les planificateurs et les exécutants avaient des opinions sensiblement différentes quant aux facteurs relatifs aux caractéristiques des étudiants, du chômage et des aspects financiers des programmes professionnels. Une plus grande partie de planificateurs que d'exécutants différait de l'opinion selon laquelle l'éducation professionnelle devrait s'adresser aux étudiants moins intelligents. Les exécutants pensaient que les étudiants pouvaient faire un choix professionnel à l'âge de 14 ou 15 ans, tandis que les planificateurs en étaient incertains. Les exécutants étaient également plutôt de l'avis que l'éducation professionnelle était trop coûteuse pour le Népal, alors que les planificateurs tendaient à penser le contraire. Pour ce qui est des autres questions, cependant, toutes les personnes qui ont répondu étaient d'accord avec les facteurs comme indiqué.

     

Influence of university prestige on graduate wage and job satisfaction: the case of South Korea

ABSTRACT

Obtaining a tertiary degree no longer guarantees entry to the best occupational positions in today’s labour market. Success is no longer about ‘more’ education, but about ‘better’ education for university graduates. This study aims to understand whether university prestige in Korea accounts for occupational outcomes in both monetary and non-monetary aspects, such as salaries and job satisfaction. The study particularly focuses on the way different levels of university prestige are affected by gender. The fourth wave data from the Korean Education and Employment Panel were used, providing information from the results of a panel survey of university graduates in terms of their social and academic background and job employment status. Results show that university prestige continues to matters in occupational outcomes in particular, for wage, but it is not significant for job satisfaction. The effect is more significant among male graduates than among female graduates.     

Korean deaf adolescents' awareness of thematic and taxonomic relations among ordinary concepts represented by pictures and written words

Individuals' relative awareness of thematic and taxonomic relations is influenced by factors such as language and background knowledge. Relatively weak in Korean language skills and also having relatively limited social opportunities, Korean deaf adolescents might be different from hearing adolescents in how they make decisions in taxonomically and thematically associated entities represented by pictures and words. Experiment 1 indicated that deaf adolescents had longer reaction times than hearing adolescents in a forced-choice decision-making task. Both deaf and hearing adolescents had shorter reaction times and higher accuracies with pictures than with words, but deaf adolescents' differences were bigger than those of hearing adolescents. Experiment 2 further showed that deaf adolescents had lower accuracies than hearing adolescents in a priming task of living-nonliving categorization. Both deaf and hearing adolescents had shorter reaction times with taxonomic than with thematic categories, but deaf adolescents' difference was bigger than that of hearing adolescents. In conclusion, Korean deaf adolescents were aware of thematic and taxonomic relations less than hearing adolescents in general. They were more likely than hearing adolescents to show the advantage of pictures over words in their performance in conceptual activities and to prefer taxonomic to thematic associations for written words in Experiment 2.     

Foot and ankle joint movements of dancers and non-dancers: a comparative study

Ballerinas use their ankle joints more extremely and sustain injuries on the ankle joint more frequently than non-dancers. Therefore, the ankle movement of dancers is important and should be studied to prevent injuries. Measuring ankle joint range of motion (ROM) using radiographs could demonstrate the contribution to motion of each joint. The aim of this study was to analyse and compare ankle joint movements and the ratio of each joint’s contribution during movement between dancers and non-dancers, using radiographic images. Dancers have lower dorsiflexion (26.7 ± 6.2°), higher plantarflexion (74.3 ± 7.1°) and higher total (101.1 ± 10.8°) ROMs than non-dancers (33.9 ± 7.0°, 57.2 ± 6.8° and 91.1 ± 9.3°, respectively) (p < 0.05). Although the ROMs were different between the two groups, the ratios of each joint movement were similar between these two groups, in all movements. Regarding total movement, the movement ratio of the talocrural joint was almost 70% and other joints accounted for almost 30% of the movement role in both dancers and non-dancers. Therefore, the differences in ROM between dancers and non-dancers were not a result of a specific joint movement but of all the relevant joints’ collaborative movement.     

Modeling presentations: toward an assessment of emerging classroom cultures of modeling

Educational Studies in Mathematics - Though there is an extensive research literature on understanding and assessing individual modeling competencies, less attention has been given to...     

When Does Tool Use Become Distinctively Human? Hammering in Young Children

This study examines the development of hammering within an ontogenetic and evolutionary framework using motion‐capture technology. Twenty‐four right‐handed toddlers (19–35 months) wore reflective markers while hammering a peg into a peg‐board. The study focuses on the motor characteristics that make tool use uniquely human: wrist involvement, lateralization, and handle use. Older children showed more distally controlled movements, characterized by relatively more reliance on the wrist, but only when hammering with their right hand. Greater age, use of the right hand, and more wrist involvement were associated with higher accuracy; handle use did not systematically change with age. Collectively, the results provide new insights about the emergence of hammering in young children and when hammering begins to manifest distinctively human characteristics.     

Relative effects of three questioning strategies in ill-structured,small group problem solving

The purpose of this research is to investigate the relative effectiveness of using three different question-prompt strategies on promoting metacognitive skills and performance in ill-structured problem solving by examining the interplay between peer interaction and cognitive scaffolding. An ill-structured problem-solving task was given to three groups. One group (Type QP) received instructor-generated question prompts that guided the problem-solving process; the second group (Type PQ) developed their own peer-generated questions; another group (Type PQ-R) developed their own question prompts first and revised them later with an instructor-generated question list. In this study, students in the QP group outperformed those in any other groups. The results revealed that providing instructor-generated question prompts was more effective than letting students develop their own questions, with or without revision, in ill-structured problem solving. Analysis of each of the four problem-solving stages revealed that the provided question prompts were more helpful in the stages of justification, and monitoring and evaluating than student-generated prompts. The difference between PQ and PQ-R groups is not statistically significant either overall or in any of the problem-solving stages.