RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences: Higher Education Effectiveness PDF Download
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Author: Steven G. Brint
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780871549921
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 0
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Book Description
The American system of higher education includes over 5,000 degree granting institutions, ranging from small for-profit technical training schools up to the nation's elite liberal arts colleges and research universities. Over 20 million students are enrolled, with federal, state, and local governments spending almost 3 percent of GDP on higher education. Yet how can we evaluate the effectiveness of such a large, fragmented system? Are students being adequately prepared for today's labor market? Is the system accessible to all? Are new business methods contributing to greater efficiency and better student outcomes? In Higher Education Effectiveness, editors Steven Brint and Charles Clotfelter and a group of higher education experts address these questions with new evidence and insights regarding the effectiveness of U.S. higher education. Beginning with the editors' authoritative introduction, the contributors assess the effectiveness of U.S. higher education at the national, state, campus, and classroom levels. Several focus on the effects of the steep decline in state funding in recent years, which has contributed to rising tuition at most state universities. Steven Hemelt and David Marcotte find that the financial burdens of attendance, even at public institutions, is a significant and growing impediment for students from low-income families. John Witte, Barbara Wolfe, and Sara Dahill-Brown analyze 36 years of enrollment trends at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and find increased enrollment of upper-income students, suggesting widening inequality of access. James Rosenbaum and his coauthors examine the effectiveness of "college for all" policies and find that on a wide range of economic and job satisfaction measures, holders of sub-baccalaureate credentials outperform those who start but do not complete four-year colleges. Two papers - by Kevin Dougherty and coauthors and Michael Kurlaender and coauthors - find that the use of new regulatory mechanisms such as performance funding and rating systems are plagued by unintended consequences that can provide misleading measures of institutional effectiveness. Lynn Reimer and co-authors examine the effectiveness of the "promising practices" in STEM education (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) promoted by the National Academy of Sciences, and find that they can increase completion rates among low-income, first-generation, and under-represented students. Expanding college access and effectiveness is a key way to promote economic mobility. The important findings in this issue illuminate the strengths and weaknesses of the U.S. system of higher education and suggest new avenues for improving student outcomes.
Author: Steven G. Brint
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780871549921
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 0
Get Book Here
Book Description
The American system of higher education includes over 5,000 degree granting institutions, ranging from small for-profit technical training schools up to the nation's elite liberal arts colleges and research universities. Over 20 million students are enrolled, with federal, state, and local governments spending almost 3 percent of GDP on higher education. Yet how can we evaluate the effectiveness of such a large, fragmented system? Are students being adequately prepared for today's labor market? Is the system accessible to all? Are new business methods contributing to greater efficiency and better student outcomes? In Higher Education Effectiveness, editors Steven Brint and Charles Clotfelter and a group of higher education experts address these questions with new evidence and insights regarding the effectiveness of U.S. higher education. Beginning with the editors' authoritative introduction, the contributors assess the effectiveness of U.S. higher education at the national, state, campus, and classroom levels. Several focus on the effects of the steep decline in state funding in recent years, which has contributed to rising tuition at most state universities. Steven Hemelt and David Marcotte find that the financial burdens of attendance, even at public institutions, is a significant and growing impediment for students from low-income families. John Witte, Barbara Wolfe, and Sara Dahill-Brown analyze 36 years of enrollment trends at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and find increased enrollment of upper-income students, suggesting widening inequality of access. James Rosenbaum and his coauthors examine the effectiveness of "college for all" policies and find that on a wide range of economic and job satisfaction measures, holders of sub-baccalaureate credentials outperform those who start but do not complete four-year colleges. Two papers - by Kevin Dougherty and coauthors and Michael Kurlaender and coauthors - find that the use of new regulatory mechanisms such as performance funding and rating systems are plagued by unintended consequences that can provide misleading measures of institutional effectiveness. Lynn Reimer and co-authors examine the effectiveness of the "promising practices" in STEM education (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) promoted by the National Academy of Sciences, and find that they can increase completion rates among low-income, first-generation, and under-represented students. Expanding college access and effectiveness is a key way to promote economic mobility. The important findings in this issue illuminate the strengths and weaknesses of the U.S. system of higher education and suggest new avenues for improving student outcomes.
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Publisher:
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Languages : en
Pages : 0
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Book Description
Author: Alice O'Connor
Publisher: Russell Sage Foundation
ISBN: 1610444302
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 193
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Book Description
Much like today, the early twentieth century was a period of rising economic inequality and political polarization in America. But it was also an era of progressive reform—a time when the Russell Sage Foundation and other philanthropic organizations were established to promote social science as a way to solve the crises of industrial capitalism. In Social Science for What? Alice O'Connor relates the history of philanthropic social science, exploring its successes and challenges over the years, and asking how these foundations might continue to promote progressive social change in our own politically divided era. The philanthropic foundations established in the early 1900s focused on research which, while intended to be objective, was also politically engaged. In addition to funding social science research, in its early years the Russell Sage Foundation also supported social work and advocated reforms on issues from child welfare to predatory lending. This reformist agenda shaped the foundation's research priorities and methods. The Foundation's landmark Pittsburgh Survey of wage labor, conducted in 1907-1908, involved not only social scientists but leaders of charities, social workers, and progressive activists, and was designed not simply to answer empirical questions, but to reframe the public discourse about industrial labor. After World War II, many philanthropic foundations disengaged from political struggles and shifted their funding toward more value-neutral, academic social inquiry, in the belief that disinterested research would yield more effective public policies. Consequently, these foundations were caught off guard in the 1970s and 1980s by the emergence of a network of right-wing foundations, which was successful in promoting an openly ideological agenda. In order to counter the political in-roads made by conservative organizations, O'Connor argues that progressive philanthropic research foundations should look to the example of their founders. While continuing to support the social science research that has contributed so much to American society over the past 100 years, they should be more direct about the values that motivate their research. In this way, they will help foster a more democratic dialogue on important social issues by using empirical knowledge to engage fundamentally ethical concerns about rising inequality. O'Connor's message is timely: public-interest social science faces unprecedented challenges in this era of cultural warfare, as both liberalism and science itself have come under assault. Social Science for What? is a thought-provoking critique of the role of social science in improving society and an indispensable guide to how progressives can reassert their voice in the national political debate. A Volume in the Russell Sage Foundation's Centennial Series
Author: Kevin J. Dougherty
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 142142083X
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 276
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Book Description
Ultimately, the authors recommend that states create new ways of helping colleges with many at-risk students, define performance indicators and measures better tailored to institutional missions, and improve the capacity of colleges to engage in organizational learning.
Author: Rebecca S. Natow
Publisher: Teachers College Press
ISBN: 0807780936
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 257
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Book Description
This book provides a comprehensive description of the federal government’s relationship with higher education and how that relationship became so expansive and indispensable over time. Drawing from constitutional law, social science research, federal policy documents, and original interviews with key policy insiders, the author explores the U.S. government’s role in regulating, financing, and otherwise influencing higher education. Natow analyzes how the government’s role has evolved over time, the activities of specific governmental branches and agencies that affect higher education, the nature of the government’s role in higher education today, and prospects for the future of federal involvement in higher education. Chapters examine the politics and practices that shape policies affecting nondiscrimination and civil rights, student financial aid, educational quality and student success, campus crime, research and development, intellectual property, student privacy, and more. Book Features: Provides a contemporary and thorough understanding of how federal higher education policies are created, implemented, and influenced by federal and nonfederal policy actors. Situates higher education policy within the constitutional, political, and historical contexts of the federal government. Offers nuanced perspectives informed by insider information about what occurs “behind the scenes” in the federal higher education policy arena. Includes case studies illustrating the profound effects federal policy processes have on the everyday lives of college students, their families, institutions, and other higher education stakeholders.
Author: Patricia Ewick
Publisher: Russell Sage Foundation
ISBN: 1610441915
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 400
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Book Description
Social science has been an important influence on legal thought since the legal realists of the1930s began to argue that laws should be socially workable as well as legally valid. With the expansion of legal rights in the 1960s, the law and social science were bound together by an optimistic belief that legal interventions, if fully informed by social science, could become an effective instrument of social improvement. Legal justice, it was hoped, could translate directly into social justice. Though this optimism has receded in both disciplines, social science and the law have remained intimately connected. Social Science, Social Policy, and the Law maps out this new relationship, applying social science to particular legal issues and reflecting upon the role of social science in legal thought. Several case studies illustrate the way that the law is embedded within the tangled interests and incentives that drive the social world. One study examines the entrepreneurialism that has shaped our systems of punishment from the colonial practice of deportation to today's privatized jails. Another case shows how many of those who do not qualify for legal aid cannot afford an effective legal defense with the consequence that economic inequality leads to inequality before the law. Two other studies look at the mixed results of legal regulation: the failure of legal safeguards to stop NASA's fatal 1986 Challenger launch decision, and the complicated effects of regulations to curb conflicts of interest in law firms. These two cases demonstrate that the law's effectiveness can depend, not only on how it is drafted, but also on how well it harmonizes with pre-existing social norms and patterns of self-regulation. The contributors to this volume share the belief that social science can and should influence legal policymaking. Empirical research is necessary to offset anecdotal evidence and untested assertions. But research that is acceptable to the academy may not stand up in court, and, as a result, social science does not always get a sympathetic hearing from legal decision makers. The relationship between social science and the law will always be complex; this volume takes a lead in showing how it can nonetheless be productive.
Author: Thomas Adam
Publisher: Texas A&M University Press
ISBN: 1623497442
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 248
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Book Description
In The Economics of Higher Education in the United States, editors Thomas Adam and A. Burcu Bayram have assembled five essays, adapted from the fifty-second annual Walter Prescott Webb Memorial Lecture Series, that focus on the increasing cost of college—a topic that causes great anxiety among students, parents, faculty, administrators, legislators, and taxpayers. Essays focus on the funding of colleges, the funding of professional schools, and the provision of scholarships and student loans for undergraduate students to reveal the impact of money on the structure of institutions of higher education and the organization of colleges. The cost of higher education has risen dramatically as both states and the federal government have significantly lowered their contributions to offset that cost. With rising tuition and cost of living—on top of a growing student population—too many graduates find themselves in financial trouble after earning their undergraduate degree. Mounting student debt prevents an increasing number of young professionals from embarking on the very life for which their education was supposed to prepare them. How have we come from a political environment in which higher education was perceived as a public good, normally free to the user, to an environment in which higher education is seen as a privilege subject primarily to market forces? The Economics of Higher Education in the United States offers a desperately needed analysis in an attempt to understand and tackle this looming problem.
Author: Andrew M. Penner
Publisher: Rsf: The Russell Sage Foundati
ISBN: 9780871547606
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 144
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Book Description
Note: The catalog copy refers to both issues 2 and 3. In the twenty-first century, administrative data collected by the government, schools, hospitals, and other institutions are essential for effectively managing and evaluating public programs. Yet the U. S. lags behind many other countries when it comes to organizing these data and making linkages across different domains, such as education, health, and the labor market. This double issue of RSF, edited by sociologist Andrew Penner and developmental psychologist Kenneth Dodge, illustrates the tremendous potential of administrative data and provides guidance for the researchers and policymakers. Contributors across multiple disciplines demonstrate how linking disparate sources of administrative data can help us better understand the challenges faced by people in need, thereby improving the reach and efficiency of policy solutions. Several contributors show how databases tracking educational attainment yield new insights into the role of schools in either ameliorating or perpetuating socioeconomic inequalities. Sean Reardon analyzes standardized test scores of roughly 45 million K-12 students nationwide to explore how educational opportunity varies by school districts over time. He finds that while affluent districts typically provide high levels of early childhood learning opportunities, there are some schools in high-poverty districts that do have increased average test scores between third and eighth grade. However, this growth still does not close the large achievement gap between low-and high-socioeconomic-status students. Megan Austin and coauthors, using student-level longitudinal data from Indiana, analyze the effects of school voucher programs on academic achievement and find that students who switch from a public to a private school with a voucher experience significant declines in achievement, particularly in math. Other articles demonstrate how the analysis of administrative data can further our understanding of racial and gender inequality. Janelle Downing and Tim Bruckner link housing foreclosure records and birth records to show that foreclosures and related stresses during the Great Recession contributed to premature births and lower birth weights, particularly for Hispanic mothers and their children. Roberto Fernandez and Brian Rubineau investigate hiring data to explore how network recruitment, or recruitment through employer referrals, affects the "glass ceiling" in the workplace. They show that network recruitment increases women's representation strongly at lower job levels, and to a lesser extent at higher levels. Researchers now have unprecedented access to administrative data. As this issue shows, finding innovative ways to combine multiple data sets can facilitate partnerships between social scientists, administrators, and policymakers and extend our understanding of pressing social issues.
Author: Beverly Lindsay
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000533409
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 204
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Book Description
Recognizing that institutes of higher education function simultaneously in local and global contexts, this volume explores the applications of domestic and global policies in a range of industrialized nations in North America and Australia, and developing ones of Brazil, Indonesia, Myanmar, and in Southern Africa and the Caribbean The chapters focus on policies relating to global matters such as diversity, STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) innovations, and development amid natural disasters and conflicts. In each case, authors consider how policies were envisioned, how they compare to the realities of implementation, and how far they have been successfully supported by the communities and translated into legislations and formal or informal programs. Based upon decades of research and executive positions by senior scholars and perspectives of emerging professionals, the volume concentrates on motifs that portray relationships among policies and comparative analysis that reveals the need for global collaborations. This important book will be of great interest to researchers, scholars, postgraduates, and government and philanthropic professionals in the fields of higher education, public and educational policy, comparative education, and international affairs.
Author: Pamela Herd
Publisher: Russell Sage Foundation
ISBN: 1610448782
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 360
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Book Description
Bureaucracy, confusing paperwork, and complex regulations—or what public policy scholars Pamela Herd and Donald Moynihan call administrative burdens—often introduce delay and frustration into our experiences with government agencies. Administrative burdens diminish the effectiveness of public programs and can even block individuals from fundamental rights like voting. In AdministrativeBurden, Herd and Moynihan document that the administrative burdens citizens regularly encounter in their interactions with the state are not simply unintended byproducts of governance, but the result of deliberate policy choices. Because burdens affect people’s perceptions of government and often perpetuate long-standing inequalities, understanding why administrative burdens exist and how they can be reduced is essential for maintaining a healthy public sector. Through in-depth case studies of federal programs and controversial legislation, the authors show that administrative burdens are the nuts-and-bolts of policy design. Regarding controversial issues such as voter enfranchisement or abortion rights, lawmakers often use administrative burdens to limit access to rights or services they oppose. For instance, legislators have implemented administrative burdens such as complicated registration requirements and strict voter-identification laws to suppress turnout of African American voters. Similarly, the right to an abortion is legally protected, but many states require women seeking abortions to comply with burdens such as mandatory waiting periods, ultrasounds, and scripted counseling. As Herd and Moynihan demonstrate, administrative burdens often disproportionately affect the disadvantaged who lack the resources to deal with the financial and psychological costs of navigating these obstacles. However, policymakers have sometimes reduced administrative burdens or shifted them away from citizens and onto the government. One example is Social Security, which early administrators of the program implemented in the 1930s with the goal of minimizing burdens for beneficiaries. As a result, the take-up rate is about 100 percent because the Social Security Administration keeps track of peoples’ earnings for them, automatically calculates benefits and eligibility, and simply requires an easy online enrollment or visiting one of 1,200 field offices. Making more programs and public services operate this efficiently, the authors argue, requires adoption of a nonpartisan, evidence-based metric for determining when and how to institute administrative burdens, with a bias toward reducing them. By ensuring that the public’s interaction with government is no more onerous than it need be, policymakers and administrators can reduce inequality, boost civic engagement, and build an efficient state that works for all citizens.
