ROPS 2017

Capitalizing on the findings in our preceding study of a purely theoretical model, this paper aims to empirically examine whether and to what extent public universities’ institutional missions have transformed in recent years in the States of California and New York by quantifying a degree of functional diversification of universities. We focus on research funding and productivity, and public service activities, and have developed a Concentration Equality Index (CEI) to help in this analysis. We then apply the CEI over time to a selected group of public university-system campuses within...

A singular vision has propelled higher education and ministries of education in Asia since the new millennium. It is a vision launched
by the once rising tide of a globalized world order that spilled into higher education: in order to be competitive on the world scene,
each Asian country had to build “World Class Universities,” which could be compared and rank-ordered with the pre-eminent
research universities of America, Britain and elsewhere. And if the pre-eminent American and British research universities could
not be quickly surpassed, punctuated jumps up the status ladder...

The Trump administration has no significant plan or strategy related to higher education. The only major policy declarations -- to eliminate federal regulations on for-profit colleges and revisit federal guidelines on sexual assault on college campuses – both unravel policies developed under the Obama administration. Where the fate of higher education lies is in the innumerable initiatives bent on pleasing Trump’s base and in the search for some sort of major legislative victory. As of this writing, this now includes a Republican coalition that wants to cut the funding for most federal...

When the University of California moved to a permanent campus site in Berkeley, many described what they found there as a wilderness. Early faculty and students proceeded to build a campus and community, creating clubs, musical groups, fraternities, and athletics. This experience is brought to life in this essay through contemporary memoirs and campus publications, notably, the papers of a leading university family, Joseph Le Conte with his son, J.N. Le Conte, and youngest daughter, Carrie Le Conte. Through these sources, we can glimpse student life between 1880, when Carrie matriculated,...

This study examines how student pre-college participation in extracurricular activities and volunteer and community services varies by demographic and academic variables, and how their experience participating in these activities affects first-year college engagement and learning outcomes. The analysis focuses on students at the University of California’s (UC) nine undergraduate campuses and is based on the self-reported data that compares their high school experience with their first year experience at UC. Students differ significantly in their participation in precollege activities...

Public research universities are a key vehicle for educational mobility. Yet rising student debt for undergraduate students has created new risks, particularly for lower income students at lower ranked universities. We find that student loan default rates reached 35 percent for low-income students at public universities with low research rankings during the Great Recession. Given these troubling loan default rates, we find encouraging evidence that a few U.S. states have adopted robust need-based grant aid programs to make college more affordable for low-income students. Such grant...

Making doctoral education accessible and successful for students from low income, first generation families as well as members of immigrant or specific ethnic groups is a world- wide problem. In the US the traditional explanation for the low numbers of Ph.D. recipients from these groups are lack of preparation, lack of interest and a “leaky pipeline.” These alone are not enough to explain disparities. This article argues that the most powerful vehicles of exclusion are tacit knowledge and the implicit bias of faculty and is related to doctoral/faculty socialization. Faculty share the...