Part I: Crisis and Opportunity in Transnational Education

The author, the Vice‐Chancellor and President of Central Queensland University in Australia, argues that globalization and the new information technologies permit a deconstruction of the functions of the vertically integrated typical university. Thus, some of these functions, particularly the offering of instructional services, the evaluation of acquired knowledge and skills, and the credentialling of graduates can be accomplished separately, often electronically, at locations distant from the main campus, and at a lower cost to the learner than attendance at a typical and traditional university. The author describes the operation of four for‐profit branch “outlets” of his university, a public institution, in partnership with Campus Management Services, a private for‐profit business. He considers that such for‐profit operations are the wave of the future and that if traditional typical universities survive it will only be as the result of their socialization and character‐building functions.     

The language of science and the high school student: The recognition of concept definitions: A comparison between hindi speaking students in India and english speaking students in Australia

Sixteen concept words (mass, length, area, volume, solid, liquid, gas, element, compound, mixture, electron, proton, neutron, atom, molecule, and ion) associated with the theme, the nature of matter were described as simple text book definitions after examination of classroom notes and school texts of the last three decades. Sixteen multiple-choice items all of the same form were constructed for each of the concept definitions. The English version of the sixteen item test was given to 1635 high school students in Tasmania (where the language of instruction and the home language is English) and the Hindi version of the test was given to 826 students from the Bhopal/Barwani region of India where the medium of instruction is Hindi. The English and Hindi speaking data are compared from the point of view of development, performance for individual items, and overall performance at grade 10. A number of linguistic hypotheses are examined and reported upon. Although the overall score at grade 10 was identical (10.8/16) for both groups there are differences in development overall and for individual items which are of interest. Overall, the science specificity of the Hindi words does not appear to confer any clearly defined advantage or disadvantage though again there are some interesting individual anomolies.     

Broadcasting

May Shiers' Bibliography of the History of Electronics (Metuchen, N.J.: Scarecrow Press, 1972—$8.50)

R.F. Pocock and G.R.M. Garratt's The Origins of Maritime Radio: The Story of the Introduction of Wireless Telegraphy in the Royal Navy between 1896 and 1900 (London: Her Majesty's Stationery Office, 1972—about $2.50, paper)

Art Chipman's KMED: The First Half Century (KMED, P.O. Box 10, Medford, Oregon 97501 —$1.00, paper)

Anthony B. Neany Sr.'s Radio-TV Hypnosis: Mass Killers of Jobs and Gross National Product (Brooklyn: Pageant-Poseiden Ltd, 644 Pacific St., 1972—$5.95)

Marvin Kitman's The Marvin Kitman TV Show (New York: Outerbridge & Lazard, 1972—$5.95)     

An investigation of sex differences on incidental memory for verbal and pictorial material

Previous research has sometimes claimed a female advantage on tasks of incidental memory. However, it is uncertain whether the sex difference was due to the incidental, or to the heavily verbal, nature of the tasks used, since women are known to have better verbal memory than men. The current study asked whether a female superiority would be found under less verbally-loaded conditions. No sex difference was found on two different pictorial tasks, both of which measured incidental memory for the content of complex scenes. In contrast, a female advantage was observed across both incidental and intentional conditions when easily labeled stimuli were used. This advantage was eliminated on the incidental condition when the effects of intentional verbal memory were controlled for. These findings strongly suggest that previous reports of a female advantage on incidental memory may have been due to the choice of verbalizable stimuli.     

The language of science and preferential thinking styles: A comparison between hindi speaking students (in India) and english speaking students (in Tasmania)

A study of science textbooks and students' responses indicates that many key concepts are treated at different levels of meaning. As a consequence of these observations we have attempted to examine what we have termed students' “preferential thinking style.” To do this, the level of meaning that students preferred when thinking about each of 16 key concept definitions associated with the theme, the nature of matter, was measured for each concept. The same concept definitions had already been studied in respect to students' ability to recognize them. Each of the 16 concept terms was formulated at the three levels of meaning defined by us as: membership, partial association, and generalization. The resulting test of preferential thinking style was administered to representative samples of Hindi-speaking high school students in India (826) and English-speaking high school students in Tasmania (1635). Some marked changes in the relative development of preferential thinking styles for the two groups were observed which raises questions associated with the importance of this notion as an outcome of science teaching.     

Affording Universal Higher Education

Can we achieve universal or near–universal higher education within the next two decades, without a massive increase in government investment in higher education? It is argued that the answer is yes, with greater involvement of the private, for–profit sector, or by encouraging existing not–for–profit universities to open for–profit campuses, at which the emphasis is on high–quality and convenient undergraduate teaching, with little or no research, and a concentration on high–demand, low–cost disciplines. This position requires us to recognise that research engagement is not conceptually essential for an institution to count as a university, understood both historically and through international comparison. Rather, this assumption operates as a significant entry barrier to new, low–cost entrants. This paper provides a case study of the ways in which Central Queensland University has extended its operations by developing surplus–generating campuses through joint–venture operations with the private sector, and argues such an operation could just as easily be developed as a free–standing, for–profit mode of university degree delivery – provided that present, artificial, protectionist limitations on the use of the name ‘university’ are removed. Degree programmes of such institutions should, of course, be subject to the same quality assurance standards as apply to existing universities.