Gender Imbalance in Higher Education: Insights for College Administrators and Researchers

University administrators often strive for racial, socioeconomic, and geographic diversity in their student populations. Today, administrators face a new demographic challenge as women increasingly outnumber men in applications, enrollments, and graduation rates. This article discusses the causes and potential consequences of the growing gender imbalance and the legality of admissions policies that attempt to restore balance by giving preference to males. Using multiple analytic approaches, we test whether a public institution with increasing female enrollments responded by giving preferences in admissions to males. We conclude with insights for administrators and researchers.     

What determines the return to education: An extra year or a hurdle cleared?

The 1973 Raising of the School Leaving Age from 15 to 16 has been used to identify returns to years’ schooling. However, because the first set of “high stakes” exams are taken in the UK at age 16, the reform affected the proportion with qualifications, as well as schooling length. In order to shed light on whether the returns reflect the extra length of schooling or the increase in qualifications, we exploit another institutional rule – the Easter Leaving Rule – which we argue only affected the probability of obtaining qualifications (and not the length of schooling). We find sizeable returns to academic qualifications – increasing the probability of employment by 40% points – and our results suggest that qualifications drive most of the returns to education.     

Outsourcing academic development in higher education: staff perceptions of an international program

Increasingly, higher education support services are being outsourced. Our case study was of a program from a global, USA-based, non-profit organisation. From in-depth interviews, we investigated staff perceptions of academic development workshops and the efficacy of outsourcing to a transnational tertiary-support program. We found that interviewees valued the academic development. They believed greater consideration should be given to cultural differences between exporting and importing countries; to evidence-based assessment of, and institutional leadership support for, the program; and to discipline-based and tertiary-level skills. Our preliminary findings may inform university management about improved approaches to outsourcing academic development to international commercial providers.     

Out of school: a phenomenological exploration of extended non-attendance

The concept of “extended non-attendance” (“school phobia” or “school refusal”) was distinguished from truancy early in the twentieth century, and refers to children who fear school and avoid attending. Despite much subsequent research, outcomes for those affected remain poor, and their voices remain largely absent from the evidence base. The current study sought to address this by examining the experiences of four secondary-age children with extended attendance difficulties. Data consisted of semi-structured interviews conducted in participants’ homes, subsequently analysed using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis. Although participants differed markedly in their perception of the causes of their non-attendance, their support experiences appear remarkably similar. Emergent themes include being disbelieved, experiencing fragmented support, and feeling blamed and punished. Implications for practitioners include the importance of ensuring early intervention, the need to consider the individual child, and the importance of making sure that local intervention practices are informed by the evidence base.     

Educational policy or practice? Traversing the conceptual divide between subject knowledge,pedagogy and teacher identity in England

This research paper is framed by concerns about recent UK Government policy regarding the training of mathematics and science teachers in England and discusses how two cohorts of pre-service teachers negotiated the development of a professional identity while undertaking subject-specific training. The data reported upon were garnered in two ways; through an evaluation survey that received quantitative and qualitative responses from 159 teacher trainees and through focus groups conducted with 40 trainees. In the paper, the authors take the concept of ‘participation in communities of practice’ as a departure point to explore how trainees demonstrate their development of professional identities as chemistry, maths or physics teachers. In the conclusion, the authors consider the implications of the findings for pre-service teachers and teacher trainers given the current education climate of financial austerity being experienced across Europe.     

Organisational rules, codification and knowledge creation in inter-organisation cooperative agreements

The aim of our paper is to analyse the process of collaboration between independent firms linked by a technological agreement in the energy field, with a specific focus on the degree of codification of inter-organisational rules. Considering the agreement as a collection of different types of more or less codified rules, we show that their degree of codification and some other characteristics have an impact on the process of inter-firm cooperation.The paper first provides an analytical framework defining the concept and the types of rules relevant for our purpose. A rule is conceived to solve a problem of allocation or creation of resources; it serves a main function which can be of a cognitive, incentive or coordination nature; it is ambivalent, i.e. it entails side functions in addition to the main one. Two theoretical propositions are then developed and largely confirmed by our empirical research results based on two detailed case studies in the emerging field of fuel cell (FC) technology.     

Does research organization influence academic production?: Laboratory level evidence from a large European university

The paper analyses scientific research production at the laboratory level. The evidence on which the study is based describes precisely the research activity over the period 1993-2000 of more than eighty labs belonging to Louis Pasteur University, a large and well-ranked European research university. The research organization of the labs is analysed by focusing on the characteristics of the research personnel in relation with the scores in two outcomes that are publications and patents. The paper proposes a five-classes typology of laboratories that highlights different styles of research organization and productivity at the laboratory level. It also studies the determinants of the publication performances of labs. We show how appropriate combinations of inputs in academic labs may be strongly associated to high publication performances. We find that combining full-time researchers and university professors in labs tend to preserve incentives. Highly publishing labs also patent. The size of the labs, the individual promotions, and the role of non-permanent researchers and of non-researchers are also underlined.