HIGHER EDUCATION AND THE WORLD OF WORK: AN OVERVIEW

This article presents an overview of the state of the art in studies of higher education and the world of work, based on papers, some of which are published in this issue, presented at the 1992 annual meeting of the Consortium of Higher Education Researchers. It considers the contributions made to the study of the subject by different disciplines and sketches the range of relationships between higher education and work. It discusses the contribution of higher education to the labour market, its diversity and dynamics, and the employment experiences of graduates. It analyses the different value systems of the two sides, their expressions of needs, and reciprocal impacts. It asks what role government and institutions play in effecting the relationship. It analyses the knowledge and skills content of higher education. And, finally, it offers a research agenda. The emphasis of the paper is on the substantive issues against their institutional and structural aspects.     

Computerized Cognitive Diagnostic Adaptive Testing: Effect on Remedial Instruction as Empirical Validation

The purpose of this study is to show the usefulness of cognitive diagnoses for remedial instruction. Cognitive diagnoses were done by an adaptive testing system using the rule-space methodology, which was developed by K. K. Tatsuoka and her associates (K. K. Tatsuoka, 1983, 1990; K. K. Tatsuoka & M. M. atsuoka, 1987; M. M. Tatsuoka & K. K. Tatsuoka, 1989). The results of the study strongly indicate that knowing students'knowledge states prior to remediation is very effective and that the rule-space method can effectively diagnose students' knowledge states and can point out ways for remediating their errors quickly with minimum effort. It is also found that the design of instructional units for remediation can be effectively guided by the rule-space model, because the determination of all possible knowledge states in a domain of interest, given an incidence matrix, is based on a partially ordered tree structure of knowledge states, which is equivalent to item-score patterns determined logically from the incidence matrix.     

Capital Costs: Lottery Funding in Britain and the Consequences for Museums

Funding for London museums has increased enormously in recent years. The lottery has contributed hundreds of millions of pounds for capital developments; central government revenue in the tens of millions goes to funding free admission to the national museums and galleries. The research described in this paper focuses on museums that opened lottery‐funded capital projects in 2000, and on the relationship between this additional funding and museum attendance. The authors found that the extra money led to extra visits—and for the first time attempted to calculate what those visits cost. This research also looks at whether people chose improved museums over other museums, and briefly investigates the impact on attendance of the outbreak of foot and mouth disease and the downturn in tourism following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.     

Measuring the ethnic diversity of the museum workforce and the impact and cost of positive-action training,with particular reference to the Diversify scheme

This paper attempts to determine the ethnic profile (sometimes called “cultural diversity”) of the museum sector workforce. It sets the museum sector workforce in the context of the population as a whole and makes some comparisons to the diversity of the wider cultural sector workforce. It looks also at positive action training schemes, targeted at under-represented minority groups, in particular the Museums Association's Diversify scheme, looking at their cost and effectiveness in securing employment. It also describes other positive action schemes such as Arts Council England's Inspire programme and Diversify management-level traineeships and traineeships for deaf and disabled people. It tentatively considers the impact and value for money of positive-action training. It also sets out the legal and policy context for workforce diversification, in particular the implications for data collection of section 37 of the Race Relations Act 1976.

The headline finding is that the proportion of people from minority-ethnic backgrounds in the UK museum sector increased from 2.5% in 1993 to about 7% in 2006–2008. This varies between 1.3% and 10.4% depending on the type of museum and the type of job and compares to an overall minority-ethnic working age population of 12.6% in England in 2008.

There is a significant under-representation of most (but probably not all) minority-ethnic groups in most areas of museum work. The paper concludes by making brief suggestions about how policy makers and researchers might respond.     

Modifying landing mat material properties may decrease peak contact forces but increase forefoot forces in gymnastics landings

This study investigated how changes in the material properties of a landing mat could minimise ground reaction forces (GRF) and internal loading on a gymnast during landing. A multi-layer model of a gymnastics competition landing mat and a subject-specific seven-link wobbling mass model of a gymnast were developed to address this aim. Landing mat properties (stiffness and damping) were optimised using a Simplex algorithm to minimise GRF and internal loading. The optimisation of the landing mat parameters was characterised by minimal changes to the mat's stiffness (<0.5%) but increased damping (272%) compared to the competition landing mat. Changes to the landing mat resulted in reduced peak vertical and horizontal GRF and reduced bone bending moments in the shank and thigh compared to a matching simulation. Peak bone bending moments within the thigh and shank were reduced by 6% from 321.5 Nm to 302.5Nm and GRF by 12% from 8626 N to 7552 N when compared to a matching simulation. The reduction in these forces may help to reduce the risk of bone fracture injury associated with a single landing and reduce the risk of a chronic injury such as a stress fracture.     

Gay-Lussac (1778–1850): A view of chemistry,industry and society in post-revolutionary France

This year marks the bicentenary of the births of two distinguished chemists, Joseph Gay-Lussac and Humphry Davy. This study of the life of Gay-Lussac shows how his work was related to that of Davy as well as to that of his French contemporaries. His keen interest in the application of chemistry earned him some criticism in his lifetime, but in retrospect can be seen to have contributed to his professional stature.