Higher Education Policy

International Trends in Higher Education and the Indian Scenario

Asha Gupta
2005

This paper highlights the political, economic, socio-cultural, ethical, philosophical, legal, and practical aspects of the far-reaching theme of international trends in private higher education, in general. It also focuses on the driving forces, causes and consequences of the emergence of private higher education in India during the last three decades, in particular. Though there has been more acceptance of private higher education institutions in India today than the ‘trepidation’ felt at their emergence three decades ago, certain basic questions about its role remain. Is the...

The Merits Of The National Merit Scholars Program: Questions And Concerns

Patrick Hayashi
2005

After passage of Proposition 209, the University of California began searching for race-neutral admissions criteria that would allow it to minimize drops in enrollment of underrepresented minorities. Concern for underrepresented minorities led to several changes in admissions policies, most notably the introduction of comprehensive or holistic review for freshmen admission at all UC campuses. These efforts to identify criteria that would support UC’s efforts to maintain a racially and ethnically diverse student body have led to another unexpected development. The Board of...

The Logic of Opportunity: A Formal Analysis of the University of California's Outreach and Diversity Discourse

John W. Mohr
Michael Bourgeois
Vincent Duquenne
2004

Since 1995, the University of California has been prohibited from employing affirmative action principles in student admissions. In response to this constraint, the UC has sought to pursue a number of other avenues for promoting the selection and retention of a diverse student body. In this paper we look at how officials and staff within the UC system have sought to develop an alternative rationale for managing the categorical problem of identifying types and classes of applicants along with strategies of action that stay within legally allowable frameworks. We argue that a new...

Report: Public Trust in Higher Education and A Media Review of Press Articles in California

Warren H. Fox
Sarah Earl-Novell
2004

The purpose of this report is to better determine the level of general public trust in public higher education and the content of published articles in the press that may influence and reflect public confidence. By conducting a six-month media scan of four California newspapers, an overview is provided of the key concerns and issues facing higher education today.

California And The SAT: A Reanalysis Of University Of California Admissions Data

Rebecca Zwick
Terran Brown
Jeffrey C. Sklar
2004

As part of the University of California's recent reconsideration of the role of the SAT in admissions, the UC Office of the President published an extensive report, UC and the SAT (2001), which examined the value of SAT I Reasoning Test scores, SAT II Subject Test scores, and high school grades in predicting the grade-point averages of UC freshmen (UCGPA), as well as the role of economic factors in predicting UCGPA. The analyses in UC and the SAT were based primarily on data that had been aggregated across freshmen cohorts (1996 through 1999) and across UC campuses. In the current...

Paradoxes And Dilemmas In Managing E-Learning In Higher Education

Sarah Guri-Rosenblit
2003

The new information and communication technologies (ICT) affect currently most spheres of life, including all educational levels. Their effects are most likely to grow in the future. However, many predictions in the last few years as to the sweeping impact of the ICT on restructuring the teaching/learning practices at universities and their high profit prospects have not been materialized; and several large ventures of e-learning undertaken by the corporate world, new for-profit organizations and some leading universities failed to yield the expected results. This paper examines...

University Teaching as E-Business? Research and Policy Agendas

Diane Harley
Gary Matkin
Michael Goldstein
Sally Johnstone
Peter Lyman
Roger Geiger
Hal Abelson
Vijay Kumar
Robert Lapiner
Phillip B. Stark
Geoffrey Cox
Andy DiPaolo
Julius Zalmanowitz
Kurt Larson
2002

After reviewing the transcripts of the meeting, we decided that their high quality warrantedasking individual authors and respondents to review and revise their contributions in lightof the discussions. The results of their efforts form the basis of this collection. Althoughboth they and we have done significant editing of the original transcripts, we did notattempt to force the papers into one editorial style; rather, each represents the style andperspective of its author. Some authors chose to rework their talks into formal papers, andsome authors chose the extemporaneous tone that...

Investing In Educational Technologies: The Challenge Of Reconciling Institutional Strategies, Faculty Goals, And Student Expectations

Diane Harley
2002

The Higher Education in the Digital Age Project (HEDA) is concerned with the policy implications of information and communication technologies (ICTs) for higher education. This paper specifically analyzes some of the ways in which ICTs are being employed as possible solutions to the triad of pressures facing US research universities: (a) holding down costs, (b) providing access to an increasingly diverse demographic, and (c) maintaining quality. It presents a brief review of activities taking place throughout the US, and discusses some of the pressures that US research universities...

California After Racial Preferences

Martin Trow
1999

This paper provides comments on William Bowen and Derek Bok's book, The Shape of the River, and the issue of racial and ethnic preferences in California higher education.

Trust, Markets And Accountability In Higher Education: A Comparative Perspective

Martin Trow
1996

In recent years problems have emerged around the American system of accrediting colleges and universities - a peculiar system involving voluntary regional associations of colleges and universities, public and private, which appoint committees of academics to make visits to their member institutions and report first on whether they are reasonably decent institutions of higher education, and secondly, on how they might improve themselves. This paper explores these issues comparatively in the American and European contexts.