Building Universities of Quality: An Analysis of the Views of University Students concerning their Academic Training

The primary objective of this paper has been to define a quality university from the user's perspective, based on what students expressed regarding different aspects of the institution. Two methodologically different formats of collecting information have assisted in testing the coherence of their opinions. A qualitative and quantitative approach helped to evaluate the results.     

Continuing Education and the Redrawing of Boundaries

Continuing education, broadly defined to include both vocational and non-vocational kinds of provision, is having an increasing impact within higher education. Its further expansion is now part of government strategy. This expansion will not be achieved without difficulties, and it poses considerable and varied challenges to those who work in higher education. In this paper, we focus on the effects that continuing education is having on established boundaries within higher education — boundaries between different sectors and types of provision, between different subjects and ways of teaching, and between higher education staff and their different skills. As the provision of continuing education increases, existing boundaries will change, become more permeable or be broken down altogether while new divisions and distinctions are created and built up.     

Georg von Békésy,Nobel Laureate in Physiology,Experimental Physicist and Art Collector was Born 100 Years Ago

Georg von Békésy was born one hundred years ago, on July 3, 1899 in Budapest, Hungary. He graduated from the University of Bern as a chemist in 1921. He received a Ph.D. in physics in Budapest under the supervision of Charles Tangl in 1923. From 1926 to 1947 he worked in Hungary's best-equipped research laboratory, in the Postal Experimental Institution as a postal engineer. Here he lead basic physical research on ear preparations and on realistic models of the ear, made by himself, to investigate the structure and the working of the ear and, first of all, theinner ear (cochlea). For the results of his research in Hungary, Békésy received the Nobel Prize in Physiology in 1961. The paper also introduces Georg von Békésy as a passionate art collector and expert.     

IS THERE REAL OPINION CHANGE?

Public opinion research in general and the study of opinionchange in particular have frequently been challenged as unreliable.Attitudinal measurements are characterized as merely reflectingnon-attitudes, labile moods, and/or methodological artefacts.Given this basis, the measurement of opinion change is seenas a product of random variations and systematic biases ratherthan as reliably measuring true change. However, most opinionchange is (1) not chaotic, but slow and steady and (2) largelyexplicable. Even opinion change that is rapid and/or multi-directionalcan be plausibly explained. Measurement variation does howeveroften distort time series and greatly complicates the reliableassessment of true change.     

Applying scientific openmindedness to religion and science education

Mahner's and Bunge's two main theses are nearly correct as social reports but the extent to which they are wrong is philosophically very important. I draw attention to a philosophically superior way of viewing the essential relation between science and religion which can have a humane or benign influence upon how both science and religion are taught. On the one hand, science does not need to fight religion nor try to suppress it. A generous openness of mind, which distinguishes the critical rationality implicit in the advance of science, deserves to be applied without acrimony to any systems of thought that purport to explain the universe. On the other hand, religions have no need to fear the growth of scientific knowledge, provided science is not confused, as Mahner and Bunge confuse it, with its materialistic interpretation.