Higher education reform in a transitional economy: a case study from the School of Economic Studies in Mongolia

One of the issues to be faced by countries in central and eastern Europe and parts of Asia undergoing transition to a market economy is how to prepare students for the new environment. This article explores the experience from a three year Technical Assistance to the former Commonwealth of Independent States (TACIS) funded project aimed at reforming economics education at the School of Economic Studies (SES) within the National University of Mongolia. The focus of the project was initially on curriculum reform, but it soon became evident that to be effective this would need to be supported by managerial reform.The article therefore commences by briefly outlining the context of the reform process in Mongolia and by describing the nature of curriculum reform within the SES, including issues relating to the learning environment, course content and structure, and learning and assessment methods. That leads to an analysis of consequential reform of institutional management including issues relating to the codification and common ownership of information, conditions of service of staff, financial flexibility and management information systems.The article reflects on achievements and constraints of implementing reform at a sub-institutional (School) level and concludes with a summary of findings which might be of general value to those involved in the management of change as institutions begin to prepare their students to operate within a market economy.     

Use of Case Study Method To Increase Near and Far Transfer of Learning

The purpose of vocational, technical and professional education is to produce practitioners who perform competently on the job. However, many programs, particularly those of third world countries with strong colonial legacies, employ instructional strategies that do not result in high degrees of transfer. This article presents a field-based experimental study conducted in Ivory Coast with 162 secondary school accounting clerk subjects. The study, which lasted ten weeks, employed three case study method (CSM) treatment groups and a control (lecture and textbook) group. The control group performed significantly better on a theory post-test than all treatment groups. All CSM treatment groups significantly outperformed the control groups on a transfer post-test designed as an internship simulation laboratory. The behaviorist-based CSM treatment group performed significantly better on the near transfer post-test compared to the cognitivist-based CSM treatment group. The cognitivist-based CSM treatment group performed significantly better than the behaviorist-based CSM group on the far transfer post-test. Both groups performed significantly better on the transfer post-test than a third, mixed behaviorist-cognitivist CSM treatment group. This study suggests that low-cost, well designed and targeted cases can lead to high degrees of specific types of transfer compared with lecture-textbook methods.     

The Effects of Incentives on Workplace Performance: A Meta‐analytic Review of Research Studies 1

A meta‐analytic review of all adequately designed field and laboratory research on the use of incentives to motivate performance is reported. Of approximately 600 studies, 45 qualified. The overall average effect of all incentive programs in all work settings and on all work tasks was a 22% gain in performance. Team‐directed incentives had a markedly superior effect on performance compared to individually‐directed incentives. This effect was not influenced by the location of the study (business, government, or school), the competitive structure of the incentive system (programs where only the highest performers get incentives versus programs where everyone who increased performance receives incentives), the type of study (whether the study was a laboratory experiment or a field study), or the performance outcome (quality, quantity, or both). In these studies, money was found to result in higher performance gains than non‐monetary, tangible incentives (gifts, travel). More research is needed on the relative cost‐benefit of cash and gift incentives, and the way different types of tangible incentives are selected. Long‐term programs led to greater performance gains than shorter‐term programs did, and somewhat greater performance gains were realized for manual than for cognitive work. Explanations based on cognitive psychological principles accompany each of the analyses.     

For-profit post-secondary education and civic engagement

Theorists such as Gumport (2000) suggest thatdifferent conceptions of higher education mayhave important consequences for students andsociety. We explore this possibility byconsidering a specific research question: Dostudents who attend for-profit post-secondaryschools show lower levels of civic engagementthan students who attend non-profit communitycolleges, either at the beginning of theirstudy or two years later? Using longitudinal data from the U.S. NationalCenter for Education Statistics (NCES)National Post-secondary Student Aid Survey(NPSAS90) and Beginning Post-secondary Survey(BPS), we test the hypothesis that students whoattend for-profit, post-secondary vocationalschools will show lower levels of civicengagement on several measures than similarstudents in community colleges. Studentsattending the two types of schools are alike intheir levels of civic engagement at thebeginning of their post-secondary education,but different four years later. We considerwhether observed differences in civic behaviorare due to variations in who attends thedifferent types of schools or to identifiableexperiences students may have in theirprograms, such as interactions with faculty orother students. The effect of proprietary school attendance onseven out of the ten different types of civicengagement measured here appears to be direct,rather than being mediated by measurableeducational experiences. We reflect further onprocesses that might explain the differencesand consider the policy implications of thesefindings for educational decision-makers.