Faculty accountability and faculty workload: A preliminary cost analysis of their relationship as revealed by PhD productivity

General concerns for faculty accountability are examined in the context of faculty workload and costs. Graduating a PhD student is used as the unit for analysis. The unit is compared to instructional productivity. The data came from a 10-year interval at a major graduate university. Six liberal arts departments with a 225-member faculty provide the PhD output and workload information. Work equivalents are determined from institutional and faculty self-reports. Graduating a PhD is found to be equivalent to one-third of a full workload. Implications are given for comparisons between programs within a university and between types of institutions in the larger system of higher education. Concerns also emerge for improved personnel practices with respect to faculty work assignments.     

Management priorities of college presidents

All U.S. college and university presidents were recently surveyed to determine their priorities among potential planning and management improvements at their institutions. Based on 900 returned questionnaires, the highest priority areas were: (1) communicating institutional strengths to potential students, their parents, and the general public; (2) communicating institutional strengths to the state legislature and state budget officials (for public institutions); (3) integrating program-review results in program-planning and budget processes; (4) resource allocation and reallocation; (5) faculty vitality and renewal; (6) implementing institutional goals and objectives through the planning and budgeting process; and (7) forecasting institutional revenue needs more accurately. Most of these high priority areas were interpreted as reflecting the current invironment of retrenchment and the need to prepare for a noor slow-growth era.     

Faculty at work: Focus on teaching

Within the framework of cognitive motivation theory, selected personal and environmental motivational variables for faculty in English, chemistry, and psychology from community colleges, comprehensive colleges and universities, and research universities were regressed against faculty allocation of work effort given to teaching. The data came from a 1988 national survey. Gender (sociodemographic); quality of graduate school attended, career age, and rank (career); self-competence, self-efficacy, institutional commitment, personal interest in teaching, and percent time preferred to give to teaching (self-valuations); and institutional preference, consensus and support, and colleague commitment to teaching (perception of the environment) were entered into regressions.R ² were generally strong (.86 for community college chemists) and significant. For all institutional types, self-valuation and perception of the environment motivators significantly accounted for the explained variance whereas sociodemographic and career variables did not.     

Erziehungswissenschaft im Spiegel ihrer Studieng?nge

What happens to study programs for a major in education science in the wake of the Bologna reform? What are the consequences of the transition to Bachelor and Master degree programs for the institutional organization of the discipline in the form of its study programs and thus for the position of the discipline in the university system? This contribution investigates both the structural characteristics and the subject-related orientation of these new training models on the basis of a survey of the current study programs offered in education science major programs. The technical terms used and the module manuals are compared with the ??Core Curriculum Education Science?? proposed by the German Society for Education Studies (DGfE). Despite the limited validity of this investigation, it is clear that the clash of political reorganization of higher education processes with an identity-seeking discipline has drastic consequences for the institutional organization of education science. This is reflected in an increased differentiation of the major study programs within education science, which can affect both the position of the discipline in the academic system as well as the disciplinary self-reproduction.     

我了解我的生活

I have heard people complain as they age of what they may have missed
Well if they complain then that is for them, because for 30 years I have had your kiss     

Book Reviews

The Accidental Webmaster by Julie M. Still Information Today, 2003. Pp 192. Paperback $29.50. ISBN 1‐57387‐164‐8 Clark's Publishing Agreements – A Book of Precedents, 6th edn, General Editor Lynette Owen Butterworths Lexis Nexis, 2002, £70.85. 615 pp. Hardback and CD‐ROM. ISBN 0‐406‐93916‐0     

Academic Reform in Fractured Disciplines – On the Interaction of Bologna,New-Public-Management and the Dynamics of Disciplinary Development

Minerva - At the intersection of science studies and higher education research, this contribution looks at the way in which the requirements of universities as organizations release development...     

ATTITUDES OF OLDER WOMEN TOWARD CONTINUING ADULT EDUCATION AT THE UNIVERSITY LEVEL: IMPLICATIONS FOR PROGRAM CURRICULUM DEVELOPMENT

Current low rates of participation by elderly people in formal learning situations may be improved by developing programs that consider their attitudes, learning interests, and needs. This study was conducted to examine the attitudes of potential participants in continuing education programs concerning (1) factors that would reduce anxiety and (2) appropriate educational experiences given the abilities and learning needs of the target group.

Twenty‐seven white predominantly upper middle‐class, highly educated women aged 65 years and over were given a questionnaire concerning attitudes toward continuing education. Most (89%) indicated an interest in taking humanities classes (i.e., history, literature, music, languages, and current affairs). In addition, 55% preferred the lecture format; 81% preferred mixed ages in classes; 48% reported interest in having a companion enroll with them; and 65% reported that family members did not suggest that they enroll.

Highly educated elderly women appear interested in taking universitylevel classes. Future research should examine whether there is an increase in enrollment in programs specifically designed to meet their needs and interests. Caution is advised in generalizing results of need and attitude assessment of highly educated old people to less economically, occupationally, and educationally privileged elderly.     

Personalised learning: lessons to be learnt

Personalised learning is now broadly endorsed as a key strategy to improve student curricular engagement and academic attainment, but there is also strong critique of this construct. We review claims made for this approach, as well as concerns about its conceptual coherence and effects on different learner cohorts. Drawing on literature around differentiation of the curriculum, self‐regulated learning, and ‘relational agency’ we propose a framework for conceptualising and enacting this construct. We then report on an attempt to introduce personalised learning as one strategy, among several, to improve student academic performance and wellbeing in four low SES regional secondary schools in Australia. We report on a survey of 2407 students’ perceptions of the extent to which their school provided a personalised learning environment, and a case study of a programme within one school that aimed to apply a personalised approach to the mathematics curriculum. We found that while there were ongoing challenges in this approach, there was also evidence of success in the mathematics case.