This dissertation includes three essays on the economics of higher education. In the first chapter, I study the effects of college transfer. Over one-third of college students in the United States transfer between institutions, yet little is known about how transferring affect students' educational and labor market outcomes. Using administrative…

In this dissertation, I study some of the factors that determine schooling decisions in middle-income economies in Latin America. In the first chapter, I examine the impacts of a large-scale program in Colombia that installs water treatment facilities in rural schools. To identify causal effects on student and community outcomes, I leverage…

Teaching economic history requires the study of how to combine the economists' modeling and statistical methods with the methods used by historians and the other social sciences. It often involves learning how to search for quantitative data from a variety of sources and then building panel datasets that match the data found with existing…

Purpose: This article examines the prevalence of six economic terms in 17 Swedish upper-secondary school textbooks and how the language shifts between everyday and scientific language. Variations regarding content in the textbooks used in vocational programmes and preparatory programmes for higher education are also investigated. Design: Powerful…

Tom Wessel's view of interdependent local ecologies lays out a conceptual framework for human communities and corporations. His rich examples of biodiversity provide great metaphors for how competition and negative conditions can be transformed by natural cooperation and can lead to self-organized, self-managed natural communities that are…

The financial crisis was partially caused by neoclassical economic theory and theorists. This failure has prompted business educators to rethink the role of neoclassical economics as the foundation of business education. The author connects this question to the more general critique of the scientific model of business education and the old…

This article subjects contemporary informed discourse on the Credit Crunch/Great Recession/Long Recession to educational analysis and deconstruction. Such pro-capitalist but not uncritical discourse is well represented by the UK "Financial Times", whose columns between 2008 and 2012 comprise most of our data. We argue that the metaphors…

Most world history books feature the successes of the Roman Empire during the first and second centuries. During the third and fourth centuries, they turn to the events leading up to the empire's collapse. Explanations of the Roman Empire's decline and fall often cite external military threats, governmental failure and instability,…

As the primary transmitter of advanced skills and incubators of new knowledge, colleges and universities play a crucial role in modern economies. In the U.S., the higher education sector consists of a diverse set of institutions. Public, private non-profit, and private for- profit organizations coexist in this market. Although large research…

This article represents the third in a "ghost story" series by the same authors. Readers may recall that Mr. Bernanke was "visited" by the ghosts of Adam Smith and John Maynard Keynes in the March/April 2010 issue of "Social Education" as these two famous economists debated the economic recovery (see EJ878912). Mr.…

In the current economic climate, many corporate and political leaders seek to reform public education through entrepreneurial efforts that reflect a managerial approach. Similarly, several academic scholars are busily marketing their research. To counter these trends and improve one's own standing, the author suggests that those who are in the…

Teaching economics at the preK-12 level has always been one of the most difficult aspects of social studies education notes C. Frederick Risinger, yet, throughout his teaching career economic issues and events were the drivers of most historical, political, and sociological trends and topics and even human slavery was driven and maintained by…

This paper presents instructive interdisciplinary applications of constrained mechanics calculus in economics on a level appropriate for undergraduate physics education. The aim of the paper is (i) to meet the demand for illustrative examples suitable for presenting the background of the highly expanding research field of econophysics even at the…

University rankings historically have been based on a number of criteria, the most common being research output and quality. Different approaches have been developed which are surrounded by controversy; nevertheless, university rankings remain popular. It can be noted that due to the global economic recession, they receive further interest since…

This article presents the results of the latest "SLJ" survey of school expenditures and collections for 2009-2010. The survey reveals that librarians have used a variety of coping techniques to weather this economic storm, whether it is servicing more than one school, using additional volunteers, taking on more tasks, or seeking outside funding.…