Employer-Sponsored Education Assistance and Graduate Program Choice,Cost, and Finance

Research in Higher Education - This paper studies the impact of the Economic Growth and Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2001 that amended employer-sponsored education assistance (ESEA) fringe...     

Muted transitions

This analysis concentrates on the case of a child, Jenny. The paper suggests that the concept of liminality may hold the key to an understanding of muted subject positions like the one assumed by Jenny in a school class. Liminality is proposed as a way of conceptualizing transitions where the subject in question transgresses established rules and regulations. The claim of this paper is that these particular ways of becoming an othered subject are normalized and that, in this process, Jenny’s fellow pupils become even more themselves while Jenny goes unnoticed. The concept of liminality paves the way for an understanding of imperfect and inconclusive transitions such as Jenny’s.     

PhD students’ work conditions and study environment in university- and industry-based PhD programmes

During the last 10 years, new models of funding and training PhD students have been established in Denmark in order to integrate industry into the entire PhD education. Several programmes have been conducted where it is possible to co-finance PhD scholarships or to become an employee as an industrial PhD in a company. An important question is what impact these new conditions will have on the PhD students’ training, work conditions and study environment. In this article, the new type of programmes will be presented together with data analysis of PhD students’ work conditions and study environment in various programmes mainly based on a research project from 2006. The results of this study show no significant difference between PhD students in a traditional university PhD programme and PhD students in an industrial programme concerning working environment. However, the study shows significant differences in the intercultural dimension, where foreign PhD students are significantly more satisfied with their study environment compared with Danish PhD students. In general the workload is very high and the environment is stressful for all PhD students.     

To Apply or Not to Apply: FAFSA Completion and Financial Aid Gaps

In the United States, college students must complete the Free Application for Student Federal Aid (FAFSA) to access federal aid. However, many eligible students do not apply and consequently forgo significant amounts of financial aid. If students have perfect information about aid eligibility, we would expect that all eligible students complete FAFSA and no aid would go unclaimed. Using data from the National Postsecondary Student Aid Survey, I estimate a multinomial logit model which controls for all variables that contribute to aid eligibility and other student characteristics that may deter FAFSA completion. I find that students who are lower middle income, white, male and independent from parents are less likely to complete FAFSA even when they are eligible for aid. Using propensity score matching, I find that each year applicants forgo $9,741.05 in total aid (including grant and loan aid) which includes $1,281.00 of Pell Grants, $2,439.50 of the balance subsidized student loans, $1,986.65 of the balance of unsubsidized student loans, and $1,016.04 of institutional grants. These aid totals aggregate to $24 billion annually.     

Producing curious affects: visual methodology as an affecting and conflictual wunderkammer

Digital video cameras, smartphones, internet and iPads are increasingly used as visual research methods with the purpose of creating an affective corpus of data. Such visual methods are often combined with interviews or observations. Not only are visual methods part of the used research methods, the visual products are used as requisites in interviews when interviewees are watching the recordings and share their reflections on these. The purpose of this article is to critically interrogate how such research apparatus, on the one hand, privilege a visual sense and, on the other hand, how the visual may turn into a multisensory knowledge situation, in which tense situations, un/expected and perhaps conflicting senses and un/comfortable affects are evoked. The article takes its point of departure in our analysis of a research apparatus we invented and used in the research project Schooling identities. In this project, 60 pupil review conversations with 13–15-year-old pupils were videotaped with the purpose of exploring the management of self-management. In 20 follow-up interviews with the pupils, the videos were played on an old television and used as memory triggers and initiators of reflection upon the affective experience of their own pupils’ review conversation. We argue that methods can be analytically scrutinised as affective “wunderkammers”, in which different realities are juxtaposed. In so doing, our ways of experiencing research and processes of subjectification are affected and complicated. We interrogate the intensification of this “wunderkammer” and the particularity of it, when a television is part of the apparatus. As Lisa Blackman reminds us, television may be a technology of intimacy, a medium of telepresence which makes certain mental touch and affective transfer processes such as empathy and suggestion possible. During the television-watching, the peer-review conversations were not only represented or memorised but the very experience of the conversation, the people and the tasks involved were revitalised. In the interviews, former lived reality, videotaped reality and presence were conflated. These moments of a new reality affected both pupils and ourselves as researchers intensely. The television-initiated loops of reflection worked as an affective and inventive trigger creating an intense situation. It may also affect the everyday life of school.     

Differential time responses in inflammatory and oxidative stress markers after a marathon: An observational study

ABSTRACT

Acute and adaptive changes in systemic markers of oxidatively generated nucleic acid modifications (i.e., 8-oxo-7,8-dihydro-2?-deoxyguanosine (8-oxodG) and 8-oxo-7,8-dihydroguanosine (8-oxoGuo)) as well as inflammatory cytokines (i.e., C-reactive protein, interleukin-6, interleukin-10, and tumour necrosis factor alpha), a liver hormone (i.e., fibroblast growth factor 21 (FGF21)), and bone metabolism markers (sclerostin, osteocalcin, C-terminal telopeptide, and N-terminal propeptide of type 1 procollagen) were investigated following a marathon in 20 study participants. Immediate changes were observed in inflammatory cytokines, FGF21, and bone metabolism markers following the marathon. In contrast, no immediate changes in urinary excretion of 8-oxodG and 8-oxoGuo were evident. Four days after the marathon, decreased urinary excretion of 8-oxodG (-2.9 (95% CI -4.8;-1.1) nmol/24 h, P < 0.01) and 8-oxoGuo (-5.8 (95% CI -10.3;-1.3) nmol/24 h, P = 0.02) was observed. The excretion rate of 8-oxodG remained decreased 7 days after the marathon compared to baseline (-2.3 (95%CI -4.3;-0.4) nmol/24 h, P = 0.02), whereas the excretion rate of 8-oxoGuo was normalized. In conclusion marathon participation immediately induced a considerable inflammatory response, but did not increase excretion rates of oxidatively generated nucleic acid modifications. In fact, a delayed decrease in oxidatively generated nucleic acid modifications was observed suggesting adaptive antioxidative effects following exercise.     

How academic teachers perceive and facilitate creativity

We will present a case study result from a cross-disciplinary education called Medialogy, which is taught in the Technical and Science Faculty at Aalborg University. The aim of Medialogy is to facilitate creativity within technical solutions. The intention of this paper is to answer the following: how do the Medialogy teachers perceive creativity and how do they facilitate it? Many of the answers point to the pedagogical approach used in problem-based learning, which are perceived as an important element for the creative process. In this paper we will also argue the importance of including the social context (both at a macro and at a micro level) in the definition and use of creativity in engineering education.