Case Study on the Free University of Bozen/Bolzano,Italy

Bozen/Bolzano is situated in a trilingual region in Italy of which the three mother tongue languages are German, Italian, and Ladin (the latter only spoken by 4 percent of the population). The aim of the Free University of Bozen/Bolzano, which was founded in 1997 and launched its first programmes in 1998, is to offer its students a multilingual, practice-oriented education that meets the demands of the local and the European labour market. Trilingual educational activities are conducted in German, Italian, and English in the case of the School of Economics and its courses and in the course programmes in Industrial Engineering. The only exception is found in the Faculty of Education. This Faculty offers the German-, Italian-, and Ladin-speaking students separate training sections.     

Student Loans: are the Policy Objectives being Achieved?

This paper examines two of the stated objectives of the government's student loans scheme, 'to increase the resources available to students' and 'to increase economic awareness among students, and their self reliance'. Following Farrell and Tapper (1992) we also consider a third, less explicit objective, that of exerting an influence on the shape of higher education itself, through economic pressure on students to select courses that are earnings related and vocationally oriented.
The results of a survey of a random sample of students conducted annually between 1992 and 1996 at the University of Brighton demonstrate a substantial increase in student debt over this period. Among students increasing support for the principles underlying the loan scheme was found, as were high levels of 'economic awareness' and 'self-reliance'. There was no evidence of a demand for changes in the pattern of course provision and it is suggested that this is because of the way in which students have responded to their changed financial situation, in particular the high reliance of many on part-time employment in preference to student loans and a desire to maximise current rather than future earnings.     

The Contemporary Trend of Marketing Chinese Universities in Hong Kong—An Incoming Rival to British Counterparts

British universities have always been the market leader in recruiting Hong Kong students to study overseas or to take part in learning programmes. As the transfer of Hong Kong's sovereignty to the People's Republic of China (PRC) in 1997 approaches, some changes in market demands and incoming competitors have complicated the external environment of the market for higher education in Hong Kong. A major impetus for the incoming rivalry of the PRC is the recognition of qualifications obtained in PRC by the Hong Kong Government and continuing economic growth which in turn creates a tremendous demand for professional and managerial personnel in PRC. With the current sophisticated marketing practices and quality services to potential customers, this article attempts to provide information that may help British universities to discover their competitive edge in capitalizing on the experience and strengths of their higher education tradition and system.     

Application of Airborne Television to Public Education

In an effort to bring the advantages of television teaching to the maximum number of public schools, particularly those in hilly or sparsely settled parts of the country, a project has been launched to provide airborne transmission of six simultaneous school lesson program. Coverage area is increased approximately 20 to 1 by this means compared to the usual ground station coverage. Airborne transmission is the most economical and effective use of the available (UHF) frequency spectrum. Results already established regarding the use of television as a teaching medium are projected via an airplane flying at 23,000 feet altitude over an area covering parts of six Midwestern States. Educational advantages and problems inherent in ground station TV are intensified in this larger coverage area, and planning is governed accordingly. Technical problems include multiplex transmission of six lessons simultaneously, keeping the airplane on station, accommodation of transmitting equipment in the airplane, and determination of bandwidth for optimum picture quality.     

Analysis of monograph obsolescence at two levels of an interlibrary loan network

Requests for monographs generated within an interlibrary loan network are analyzed for half-life statistics. It is suggested that demand represents use of the literature more completely than satisfied requests or circulation statistics. Demand in this study is characterized as either regional demand or statewide demand and is related to the level of the network where final processing of the request occurs. A negative exponential distribution is found to adequately characterize both levels of demand as a function of publication date for four subject categories. Corrected demand data is obtained by removing the growth rate of most of the available literature represented by American book publisher output. Based on over 10,000 interlibrary loan requests, negative exponential distributions describe the raw data as well as the corrected data. A shorter half-life was found for regional library demand (10.47 yr) than that found for statewide library demand (15.75 yr). Applying the correction factor to reflect the growth rate of the available literature tends to increase the half-life when compared to the raw data, and changes the ordering of subject classes with respect to ascending half-lives.     

E-Master of Marketing: Phase 2 in Transnational Marketing Education

A previous article in Higher Education in Europe (Vol. 24, No. 2, 1999), by three of the authors of the present article, outlined the beginnings of an on-line course, "Marketing Theory and Practice" (MTP), offered by the Department of Marketing of Monash University in Australia. It noted the opportunities such a development presented in terms of collaboration. Following the successful introduction of MTP on-line (http://www.buseco.monash.edu.au/Subjects/MKT/ MTPonline/) into the undergraduate programme, the project team applied for a significant funding grant to implement a department-wide strategy for the electronic delivery of marketing education. This implementation includes the development of an E-Master's degree in Marketing, details of which are discussed in this article.     

EUROPEAN DISSERTATION SUMMARIES

Co‐operative learning means shared leadership where there is not just one leader in a group but where each member of the group is a leader. A leader demonstrates academic as well as collaborative skills in helping the group achieve a goal. Some academic skills are verbal interactions such as initiating ideas, responding by summarizing or suggesting procedures. Collaborative skills that build and maintain a good working relationship within the group include verbal interactions of praising group members and inviting others to get involved. The purpose of this study was to examine the verbal interactions and non‐verbal behaviours within unstructured learning groups. The verbal interactions were classified as positive if they aided the group to accomplish its goal and negative if they inhibited the group accomplishing its goal. Twenty‐eight students from seven intermediate‐grade level classrooms, grouped heterogeneously for sex and race and homogeneously for their ability in science, were selected for observation as they were doing a science activity. In general students’ verbal interactions were positive (i.e., there were more than four times more positive interactions than negative interactions). Further, in reviewing the positive interactions, students presented ideas more than four times as much as any of the other types of interactions. Females encouraged other members to participate in the activity significantly more than the males did. There was a trend in the number of times the equipment (clay) was handled; the males handled it more than the females as a function of race. Qualitative analyses revealed consistent patterns of interactions within groups of black and white males and females.