Browse by: "2007"
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This paper is based mainly on responses – nearly 300 – to a web-based survey of academic staff in UK higher education. The survey examined their personal and professional values and their views on the values that should underpin higher education. Their perceptions of current reality in terms of national policy and processes and of institutional management expectations, with examples provided of events that disturbed them, raise questions about the longer term health of higher education as it has been understood. The project was seen as a pilot aiming to provoke debate about how well traditional values and standards “fit” with mass levels of higher education provision, and government emphases on the economic role of higher education. The findings are set in a theoretical context drawing on models by Clark (1983), Becher and Kogan (1992) and the author (McNay, 1995, 2005a).
Values and ethics are automatically incorporated into any teaching/learning environment or endeavour, whether or not they are consciously stated objectives. The focus on “quality of education” has sharpened as people have become concerned about a perceived rise in materialism as standards of living have improved; materialistic ambitions increasingly fill the ideological gap created by the move to a pluralistic society in which there is a less general consensus of values and ethics. There is increasing demand for insight into the potential of the formal teaching/learning process for inculcating, learning/unlearning (as the case may be) and consolidating values. The manner in which teachers are trained has far-reaching implications for the youth in schools, and a systemic inquiry into the structure, role, responsibilities, aims and curricular objectives of teacher education is the obvious starting point. This paper tries to delineate the global normative aims of education as a model for assessing the composition of the teacher education curriculum in Pakistan. It looks at the intended curriculum, bearing in mind that the formal and the active curricula may not necessarily converge. The paper accepts that ethics and values education is still in a formative stage. However, one critical question that will remain open at the philosophical level is “which values should be included?” and this needs to be vigorously researched to establish guidelines that have global consensus. The next crucial question will then be “how best to teach to ensure that these ethics and values are internalised by learners?”
A clear conclusion from this study is the allocation of public funds would be substantially improved if OECD countries provided departments with a consistent set of guidance on discounting. This guidance should provide for the analysis of long-term projects, programmes and policies, which are increasingly important, particularly with respect to environmental concerns. Finally, guidance should incorporate advances in theory of discounting under long-term uncertainty. A recipe for determining the appropriate rate of decline in the discount rate is included in this paper.
Triggered by sub-prime and Shanghai stock exchange volatility, major stock markets suffered a significant correction at the end of February. Markets have since recovered and European markets have over the past few weeks more than compensated these losses. While another downturn on the Shanghai exchange end of May led to some increases in volatility on major markets, they have so far not altered their course...
This paper analyses changes in the governance of universities as a result of growing demands from society as well as of a strong penetration of management ideology into all kinds of institutions. For this purpose the paper uses a theoretical framework focusing on two governance mechanisms in social systems: entry control and performance control. These belong to a larger set of homogenising forces, which the new institutionalists label as (1) coercive, (2) normative and (3) mimetic. Using this theoretical framework to analyse the development of Swedish universities, the author concludes that their governance has undergone a considerable change. Coercive forces that were previously exercised through detailed budgeting have, in recent years, been operating through representation in leading bodies and through the selection of university leaders. This has occurred through a crowding out of normative forces. At the same time there have been strong mimetic forces based on modern management ideas.
National and international rankings of institutional performance are playing a growing role in contemporary higher education. It is critical that researchers develop pragmatic, educationally sensitive and methodologically informed approaches for managing this aspect of higher education. This paper compares three approaches for modelling key indicators which underpin a national evaluation of university education in Australia: rankings of aggregate institutional performance; comparisons of institutional change over time; and performance variations within fields of education. The results show that simple institution-level aggregations are misleading, and that contemporary analytical methods must be used to account for the influence of fields of education. More broadly, the findings expose the need for a more robust methodological development of university rankings.
This report examines developments in environmental financing in Eastern Europe, Caucasus and Central Asia (EECCA) since 2000. It focuses on expenditures, both domestic sources of finance, as well as external environmental assistance; the latter includes Official Development Assistance/Official Assistance (ODA/OA), and lending from International Financial Institutions (IFIs).