Factors affecting parental control over children's television viewing: A pilot study

In the pre-divestiture era, the regulatory environment in the US was fairly uniform and harmonious with the FCC setting the course and the PUCs making accommodative changes. The divestiture fractured this monolithic system as it forced the PUCs to respond to new forces unleashed in their own backyards. Within this new environment, there is considerable disparity among the PUCs in their ability to implement new ideas. This paper seeks to understand, via a comparative study of local telephone competition policy making in Arkansas and New York, the structural factors that influence PUCs' ability to introduce new ideas into their states.     

Market-Based Higher Education: Does Colorado’s Voucher Model Improve Higher Education Access and Efficiency?

In 2004, Colorado introduced the nation’s first voucher model for financing public higher education. With state appropriations now allocated to students, rather than institutions, state officials expect this model to create cost efficiencies while also expanding college access. Using difference-in-difference regression analysis, we find limited evidence that these outcomes occurred within the 4-year sector; however, the policy increased cost efficiencies among community college and reduced college access for some underrepresented groups. The paper discusses the challenges of applying market-based reforms to public higher education.     

PROGRESS TOWARD INTEGRATION

Public higher education has undergone a process similar to that in the national polity: a one-sided struggle by those with power to shape the institution to be more market driven, more focused on what will generate (non-state) revenues, more dominated by top administrators, and less concerned about the working class and people of color. This article examines these trends nationally with a focus on one case study, the University of Massachusetts Amherst, the state's public higher education flagship university. First the article examines the concentration of power in fewer hands. Second it looks at the squeeze in the middle, the way cuts in state appropriations coincide with increases in tuition and fees. Third, it examines attacks on the working class and people of color through changing the rules on affirmative action, reducing support services for students of color and others, and shifting away from needs-based financial aid toward an increased reliance on so-called merit-based financial aid. Fourth, the article describes a vigorous attempt to contest these changes, which has won some victories and has certainly helped to raise awareness of the class issues involved in the transformation of public universities. Finally, the article assesses both the main trends and the efforts to contest those changes.     

La inteligencia artificial y su aplicación en la enseñanza

Podríamos decir que un educador es una «inteligencia natural» que moviliza sus recursos cognitivos para enseñar lo mejor posible. ¿Hasta dónde ha llegado hay la ciencia en ese ambicioso objetivo de copiar la mente humana? ¿Puede simularse la mente natural de un profesor experto y competente y situarla en un programa que eduque a través del ordenador? Este artículo introduce el tema y hace un balance de las posibilidades.