In this article, the author explores the features of the higher education (HE) industry (nationally and globally) in terms of an industrial economic analysis. Specifically, the author explores the following questions: (1) Can HE as an industry and HEIs as service-providers control costs in the absence of a free and genuinely/ruthlessly competitive…

On October 6, 1957, most Americans had concluded that Sputnik, a manmade satellite that the Russians had sent into orbit, was not a hoax nor an electronic Potemkin Village, a product of what is called today as "special effects." Initially, the idea that Russian technology could surpass the American's was unthinkable. And the brains'…

Two kinds of scoring templates were empirically derived from summaries written by experts and students to evaluate the quality of summaries written by the students. This paper reports students' attitudes towards the use of the two templates and its differential statistical effects on the judgment of students' summarization performance. It was…

Drawing on her experience with County Durham Learning and subsequently as a Recognising and Recording Progress and Achievement in Non-Accredited Learning (RARPA) Champion for the Learning and Skills Council and as a trainer for the National Institute of Adult Continuing Education (NIACE) and the Learning and Skills Network, the author outlines the…

Purpose: The purpose of this research is to investigate the future of education (pre-primary, primary and secondary education) in Cyprus until the year 2020. Design/methodology/approach: A three-round Delphi forecasting technique is used in order to make predictions about the future of schools and schooling in Cyprus based on the opinions of a…

Having experienced three stages of "preliminary establishment", "rapid and comprehensive development" and "steady development" for twenty years, China's postdoctoral system is moving towards a new one, the stage of "quality improvement and innovation development." Remarkable achievements in the system…

High-stakes testing and accountability implicate failing schools more frequently and more precisely than ever before. Consequently, efforts to turn around these schools have become paramount for educators, policy actors, and community members. Through a synthesis of research on failing schools, this article unpacks the constructs of school failure…

Electrical engineering (EE) curricula in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) region have gone through an evolutionary process, and are now approaching a maturity level. In order to address academic and local industrial needs in a unified way, a need has been felt to investigate EE curricula in a way that highlights theoretical understanding, design…

Validation efforts typically focus around what, exactly, is measured by an instrument(s), and whether what is measured corresponds to the theoretical domain(s) originally specified. The authors' goal for this article is to build instruments focused around measuring the mathematical knowledge used in teaching: not only the content that teachers…

This study applied the Theory of Reasoned Action and the Technology Acceptance Model to measure outcomes of general education courses (GECs) under the University of Botswana Computer and Information Skills (CIS) program. An exploratory model was validated for responses from 298 students. The results suggest that resources currently committed to…

In 2001 the Church of England published "The Way Ahead," a confident report on its role in education, boldly asserting that its schools are "at the centre of the Church's mission to the nation" and recommending the establishment of another 100 church secondary schools. In an empirical investigation into the distinctiveness of…

This paper extends the theory of conditional covariances to polytomous items. It has been proven that under some mild conditions, commonly assumed in the analysis of response data, the conditional covariance of two items, dichotomously or polytomously scored, given an appropriately chosen composite is positive if, and only if, the two items…

Following the incorporation of Japanese national universities in April 2004, the ownership of university inventions is now similar to that in the USA. However, in contrast to the USA, joint research projects involving close collaboration with company researchers who are frequently named as co-inventors are common. A large proportion of university…

This article discusses methodological issues in relation to models of quality assurance for higher education. It first traces the historical development of the widely adopted pragmatic model and shows how this model has been adapted by the Higher Education Quality Committee (HEQC) for the South African context. It then sets out some basic tenets…

This article describes the findings of studies conducted on a large-scale, classroom-based performance assessment of literacy for the early grades designed to provide information that is useful for reporting, as well as teaching. Technical studies found the assessment to be a promising instrument that is reliable and valid. Follow-up studies of…