An increasing effort has been put into dealing with the question of time-series analysis regarding institutional efficiency, including in the area of higher education. Universities are important institutions for economies and societies and are expected to provide excellence as well as efficiency in their processes and outputs. This is reflected in…

Shortly after we published "Addressing Flawed Research in Developmental Education" (2012) in the "Journal of Developmental Education," Thomas Bailey, Shanna Smith Jaggars, and Judith Scott- Clayton from the Community College Research Center (CCRC) wrote a response rebutting several of our claims. Though their response corrects…

Finding a periodic solution to a nonlinear ordinary differential equation is in general a difficult task. Only in a very few cases can direct methods be applied to an equation to find initial values leading to a solution of the corresponding initial value problem that is periodic. Oscillatory periodic solutions have such practical importance that…

A well-known "study" comparing the top school problems of 1940 (talking and gum chewing) with those of 1987 (drug abuse, pregnancy, and violence) is nonexistent. In 1940, 49 percent of all youth did not finish high school, 37,000 teenagers died from violence or disease, and 335,000 teens gave birth. Educators should discount pastoral…

Concludes that for most researchers trained in classical statistics, the use of the Bayesian approach requires substantial retooling. Observes that the technical details of the Bayesian approach are formidable, and will require studying textbooks, applications, and computer packages, as well as consulting colleagues. (Author/JDH)

In this paper, tables for the appropriate sample sizes are presented and discussed in the context that the determination of the effect size must precede the determination of the sample size. (Author/PN)

Results from numerous school- and teacher-effectiveness studies suggest that variation between classes is more significant than variation between schools, though evidence often seems contradictory. This article considers why different studies generate different findings, identifies key study design issues, and relates these observations to…

Conducting research in university classrooms is difficult because the lecture method stifles discussion and limits opportunities to observe student/professor interactions. A recent study found that university classrooms are probably as chilly for minority students as they are for women. Bias against foreign students is less discernible. Study…

Psacharopoulos has found a declining rate-of-return to education pattern across levels of per capita income, using international data. A reexamination of Psacharopoulos's cross-country data refutes his declining rate-of-return hypothesis and points to diversity of cross-country experience as a possibly significant factor in interpreting the data.…

Ideally, there should be a global statistical picture of TVET presenting, for every country in the world, data such as: (1) Enrolment rates by gender, age and programme; (2) The relative proportions of people enrolled in general and vocational programmes; (3) The relative proportions enrolled in programmes provided by enterprises, government and…