Are sports club members big spenders?: Findings from sport specific analyses in Germany

This paper analyses the sport expenditures of people who are members of non-profit sports clubs (N = 10,013) in Germany. Adult members, active in 21 sports, were asked about their sport expenditure relating to several defined categories. The results show that members spend an average of €1610 per year on their chosen sport. Sport specific analyses reveal big differences in expenditure between sports, ranging from badminton (€338) to equestrian (€7902). According to sport-specific regression analyses, personal income, level of performance, and weekly time of participation are the main predictors of sport-specific expenditures. Compared to other studies, these results show that the financial status of members of non-profit sports clubs is very strong.     

What it means to be studying against the grain of neoliberalism in a community-based university programme in a ‘disadvantaged area’

Australia is indicative of a country that is deeply confused and conflicted around a policy discourse of inclusion that is sutured within an existential context heavily committed to the tenets of neoliberalism. Nowhere is this more evident than in the case of higher education, in which the proportion of young people from backgrounds of ‘disadvantage’ has remained implacably stuck at around 15% for several decades. The research from which this paper comes is an innovative community-based university-provided programme for young people for whom university education was never a realistic possibility – because of family histories, interruption to their lives, of having undertaken forms of secondary education that prevented them from gaining university entrance qualification, or who had terminated their education before completing the secondary years of schooling. This paper explores the story of one young person in his first year in a university programme, as he struggled with obstacles and impediments of a higher education system and set of neoliberal policy discourses that remain deeply sceptical and antagonistic to his trajectory.     

Where the Performance Issues Are and Are Not: A Meta‐Analytic Examination

The purpose of this study was to examine the often touted but rarely quantified claims of where performance problems actually occur in organizations. Starting in the mid–20th century, organizational development and performance consultants have followed the belief that the vast majority of organizational problems (85%) are tied to variables controlled by the organization and only a small percentage (15%) of performance problems are attributed to the worker. This study is a meta‐analysis that examined 327 performance technology (PT) analysis projects and coded the recommendations according to PT models to quantify the ratio between organizational and individual performance recommendations and corresponding problems. We find broad support for the conventional wisdom regarding the ratio of organizational issues to individual workers.     

Unlocking the gates to the peasants: are policies of ‘fairness’ or ‘inclusion’ more important for equity in higher education?

Attempts to make higher education more equitable more readily succeed at the aggregate (sector) level than at the institutional, with students from disadvantaged groups being overrepresented in low-status institutions. It is suggested that this is because policies of ‘fairness’ (i.e. proportional representation) dominate the contemporary policy framework and are strongly resisted by elite universities. However, using the Australian higher education sector as an example, this paper argues that equity policy is actually a mix of ‘proportional fairness’ and ‘inclusion’ and elite institutions resist not because the policy is deficient but because it might actually work. An alternative approach to higher education equity policy is proposed; one which requires elite institutions to engage meaningfully with disadvantaged students but allows them to retain their status advantage.     

Using Computing Power to Replace Lawyers: Advances in Licensing and Access

Faculty, librarians, students, and administrators are all faced with questions concerning permitted uses of licensed content. Rather than wrangle with the complexities of copyright, many would prefer a simple automated solution. The Stanford Center for Legal Informatics created such a tool through a research project that evolved into SIPX, a commercial copyright service. The Copyright Clearance Center (CCC) created a product concept but faced challenges in converting it into an academic product.