The Heterogeneous Non-resident Student Body: Measuring the Effect of Out-Of-State Students’ Home-State Wealth on Tuition and Fee Price Variations

More than 40 years of research has found a positive relationship between increases in the proportion of non-resident students enrolling in an institution and increases in the tuition prices this institution charges to these same students. Notably, this line of research has consistently treated this non-resident student body as if they constitute a homogeneous group in terms of their socioeconomic well-being, when in reality these students come from states with differing levels of socioeconomic prosperity. Notably, given that tuition and fee charges to non-resident students are market-based, institutions charge what out-of-state students are willing to pay. Under this rationale, it follows that the wealthier the student body of an institution is, the more institutions will be able to charge them in terms of tuition and fees for their education. The purpose of this study is twofold. First, it offers a method to measure the level of wealth of the non-resident student body enrolling at an institution considering the level of wealth of these students’ home states, therefore creating a measure of heterogeneity of the non-resident student body. The second purpose is to evaluate whether this measure of heterogeneity is associated with larger increases in the net tuition and fee prices charged to these students compared to the increases related to the homogeneous structure that ignores these students’ home-state wealth. This twofold purpose was addressed utilizing a dataset built from regional, state, and institutional information of 1743 public and private not-for-profit 4-year institutions across the contiguous United States. Since all the outcome variables were found to be spatially dependent, spatial econometrics techniques were employed for model estimation. Results corroborated that treating non-resident students as a homogeneous structure rendered downwardly biased estimates of institutions’ abilities and/or decisions to set higher or lower tuition and fee prices compared to the estimates obtained using the heterogeneous structure. Considering current general disinvestment of states in higher education, the analysis of factors driving non-resident tuition and fee price-setting has become especially relevant for public policy officials and decision-makers at both the institution- and state-levels. Accordingly, this study examines a critical issue in the finance of higher education—the setting of institutional tuition and fees for non-resident students.     

Investigating the Multidimensionality of Need Fulfillment: A Bifactor Exploratory Structural Equation Modeling Representation

This article assesses the multidimensionality of the Basic Psychological Need Satisfaction and Frustration Scale (BPNSFS) using bifactor exploratory structural equation modeling (bifactor ESEM). The first study relies on a sample of community adults (N = 2,301), and revealed the superiority of a bifactor ESEM representation, supporting the 6-factor structure of BPNSFS ratings, and the presence of a single continuum of need fulfillment relative to 2 distinct dimensions reflecting need satisfaction and frustration. These results were replicated in a second representative sample of the Hungarian adult population (N = 504), as well as across gender, and found no evidence of differential item functioning as a function of age. Relative to males, females presented higher levels of relatedness satisfaction and lower levels of competence satisfaction. Finally, autonomy frustration decreased with age, whereas competence satisfaction and frustration presented opposite curvilinear tendencies, showing that the fulfillment of this need increased sharply for younger participants, a tendency that became less pronounced with age.     

The policy of school autonomy and the reform of educational administration Hungarian changes in an East European perspective

The paper presents the background, the main elements and the contradictions of the reform of educational administration in Hungary in the late '80s in a Central and East European perspective. It also tries to provide an analysis of the challenges that have emerged with the political changes of the '90s. The introductory part of the paper analyses the differences between policies of decentralization in Eastern and Western Europe. In the second part, the most important changes introduced by the 1985 Hungarian Education Act are summarized, and the policy background of these changes is presented. It is assumed that the policy behind the decentralization measures had a negative character: it intended more to abolish the existing structures of control than to establish new ones. In the final part of the paper those factors are presented which may play a role in the future for or against the policy of decentralization.

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Zusammenfassung Dieser Artikel befaßt sich mit Hintergrund, Hauptelementen und Widersprüchen der Reformen der ungarischen Bildungsverwaltung in den späten 80ern aus zentral- und osteuropäischer Perspektive. Er versucht außerdem, die Herausforderungen zu analysieren, die mit den politischen Änderungen der 90er Jahre einhergingen. Der erste Teil des Artikels untersucht die Unterschiede in der Dezentralisierungspolitik in Ost- und Westeuropa. Der zweite Teil faßt die wichtigsten vom ungarischen Bildungsgesetz von 1985 eingeführten Änderungen zusammen und geht auf den politischen Hintergrund dazu ein. Es wird vermutet, daß die Politik hinter den Dezentralisierungsmaßnahmen negativen Charakter hatte: man wollte eher die bestehenden Kontrollmechanismen abbauen als neue einführen. Der Schlußteil des Artikels stellt die Faktoren dar, die sich in Zukunft positiv oder negativ auf eine Politik der Dezentralisierung auswirken könnten.

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Résumé Cet article présente le contexte, les éléments majeurs et les contradictions de la réforme de l'administration de l'éducation introduite en Hongrie à la fin des années quatre-vingt dans la perspective de l'Europe centrale et de l'Est. Il tente, par ailleurs, d'analyser les défis qui ont émergé avec les changements politiques apparus dans les années quatre-vingt-dix. L'introduction de l'article analyse la différence entre les politiques de décentralisation en Europe de l'Est et de l'Ouest. La deuxième partie renferme un résumé des changements majeurs introduits par la loi sur l'éducation hongroise de 1985 et une présentation du contexte politique de ces événements. L'auteur prétend que la politique sous-jacente aux mesures de décentralisation avait un caractère négatif: elle visait davantage à abolir les structures de contrôle en place qu'à en établir de nouvelles. La dernière partie de l'article présente les facteurs pouvant jouer un rôle à l'avenir pour ou contre cette politique de décentralisation.

     

Towards a controlled vocabulary on software engineering education

Software engineering is the discipline that develops all the aspects of the production of software. Although there are guidelines about what topics to include in a software engineering curricula, it is usually unclear which are the best methods to teach them. In any science discipline the construction of a classification schema is a common approach to understand a thematic area. This study examines previous publications in software engineering education to obtain a first controlled vocabulary (a more formal definition of a classification schema) in the field. Publications from 1988 to 2014 were collected and processed using automatic clustering techniques and the outcomes were analysed manually. The result is an initial controlled vocabulary with a taxonomy form with 43 concepts that were identified as the most used in the research publications. We present the classification of the concepts in three facets: ‘what to teach’, ‘how to teach’ and ‘where to teach’ and the evolution of concepts over time.     

The Latin American studies association vs. the United States: The verdict of history

This paper grew out of a National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Seminar for College Teachers, “Social Problems: The Constructionist Stance”, held at Southern Illinois University in 1992. The author thanks Professor Joel Best, director of the seminar, for his encouragement and suggestions.     

Sources of shifts in pre-service teachers’ patterns of attention: the roles of teaching experience and of observational experience

A key requirement of successful initial teacher education is the development of professional vision, which includes shifting attention to features of the situation relevant to the specialized goals of teaching. Existing research hints at the value of targeted video-based courses in the development of professional vision, but often raises questions about the sources of shifts in the pattern of attention. We argue that existing work makes it difficult to distinguish whether shifts seen across video interventions are the results of the intervention, teaching experience, or methodological issues with the unbalanced use of videos in the data collection in these studies. Our first study suggests pre-service teachers’ teaching practice experience does not notably affect attention, but that choice of video does. Our second study addresses the methodological issues and suggests that we may discount different or unbalanced videos as a source of the shifts in the pattern of attention. Finally, by introducing a new synthesis of the results in the literature, we identify a previously hidden key distinction between studies and suggest reasons why different studies have shown different results in this area.     

What kind of nonformal education? Comments on the Coombs report

The first article of our autumn issue of 1973 (Vol. III, No. 3) entitled Should One Develop Nonformal Education was a large extract of a report¹ by Philip H. Coombs and his colleagues at the International Council for Educational Development (ICED) to Unicef. The Mexican group, Fomento Cultural y Educativo, A. C., which offers us here its thoughts on the report, is concerned with planning and introducing new educational models.The members of the discussion group were Eduardo Lastra, Vicente Arredondo, Ernesto Camou and Enrique González Torres.     

Analysing Some Characteristics of Teaching Practice in Hungary

Practicum as an essential step of teacher education knows several interpretations in the Hungarian experience. Among the various models, two are analysed here: (a) the traditional University Training school system and (b) a system based on partnership with several schools in Budapest. Though responsibilities given to mentors in the two models differ considerably, both show mentor's role as crucial.