School tracking and educational inequality: a comparison of 12 education systems in Switzerland

Using data from the super-sample of the ‘PISA Suisse’ 2003 assessment, this article examines the relationship between the characteristics of education systems (made up of homogeneous or heterogeneous tracks) and their consequences in terms of effectiveness and equity. Our results indicate that it is not so much the official structure of tracks as the ways in which tracking is really organised – and, in particular, the degree of segregation that tracking methods involve – which make it possible to explain inequalities among students. They also show that some education systems are more inegalitarian than others and that the factors leading to inequalities can vary significantly from one Swiss canton to another. Finally, through multilevel analyses, we demonstrate that when the individual and aggregate characteristics of students are taken into account, the type of track a student attends is of only limited significance for explaining inequalities, which suggests that the effects of tracking are in fact linked to the nature of the population educated in the tracks.     

Engineering a General Education Program: Designing Mechanical Engineering General Education Courses

The Department of Mechanical Engineering at our institution created two engineering courses for the General Education Program that count towards second level general science credit (traditional science courses are first level). The courses were designed for the general student population based upon the requirements of our General Education Program and engineering concepts. We explain the results and impact of the classes so as to expand the conceptualization of general education courses and to enable engineering curricula to reach a larger audience as well as to broaden student understanding of the forces shaping their world.     

Global,Social, and Economic Influences on the Access Policies of South African Higher Education

The access policies of South African universities are influenced by sets of global, social, and economic factors. Although the second and third sets are predominantly local (South African), they are influenced by the first factor that gives rises to a fourth imperative, the economic factor. The latter, which is of increasing importance and is affected by the fact that students can ''vote'' for higher education institutions and programmes with their feet, is tricky. For if institutions sacrifice their core values to market imperatives, they will lose much of their utility as education institutions.     

Hypersensitizing commercial panchromatic plates

Since ammonia, when added to the dye bath in preparing bathed plates, increases the sensitizing action of the dye, its action on commercial plates was investigated.In the course of the work three methods of sensitometry were used. Of these, one was used as a first qualitative test; the second, the spectrograph method, was used to study the effect of the ammonia on the sensitivity of the plate to each wave-length; the third, the Hurter and Driffield method, gives the absolute value of the speed of the plate.It was found that by bathing commercial panchromatic plates in a solution of 25 c.c. ethyl-alcohol, 75 c.c. water, and 3 c.c. of strong ammonia water (20 per cent. NH₃) for four minutes at 18° C. and drying rapidly, the speed to white light is increased 100 per cent. in nearly all cases, and the sensitivity in the red. extended one hundred or more Ångström units. The speed in the red is increased, in many cases, 400 per cent. If the plates be bathed without the alcohol (100 c.c. water, $\text{3}\text{1}\text{2}$ c.c. ammonia water) the speed is still more increased, but the plates should be used immediately after drying.Ordinary plates do not have their sensitivity appreciably changed. Most brands of orthochromatic plates are not improved, although one, the Cramer Trichromatic, showed the same increase as the panchromatic plate.