Isn’t it a pyrrhic victory?: over-privatization and universal access in tertiary education of Korea

Tuberculosis control needs a complete and patient-centric solution.

It is well-known that there are large disparities in academic achievement between children of different socio-economic status (SES) backgrounds. This study examines the evolution of disparities in literacy skills between adults of different SES backgrounds. It compares countries’ patterns in the evolution of disparities in literacy by SES background as cohorts age and asks which patterns of educational and labour force participation predict a narrowing rather than a widening of these disparities. Since there is no international longitudinal study of skills across the entire adult life span, this study uses three cross-sectional international adult studies (International Adult Literacy Survey, Adult Literacy and Lifeskills and Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies) and matches birth years to create synthetic cohorts. Results indicate that there is large cross-national variation in the evolution of skills disparities associated with SES background. Disparities in literacy proficiency tend to widen when SES disparities in high school completion, professional and blue-collar employment increase. Disparities narrow when workers exit the labour force, a finding that is explained by the large inequalities in the employment experiences of individuals from different SES backgrounds, measured by differences in use of literacy skills at work. These results help to explain cross-national variation in the evolution of skills disparities by SES background, which has implications for policies aimed at closing skills gaps over the life course.

This study provides comparable lower-bound estimates of inequality of opportunity for tertiary education (EIOp) for 31 countries in Europe, by using the two EU-SILC waves for which information on family background is available (2005 and 2011). The results reveal an important degree of heterogeneity, with Northern European countries showing low levels of inequality of opportunity and Mediterranean and Eastern European countries characterized by significant degrees of unfair educational inequalities. Parental education and occupation are the most relevant circumstances in the great majority of the countries considered. This study also exploits the two point-in-time observations available and analyses the relationship between some country-specific characteristics and inequality of opportunity in tertiary education. The analysis documents a negative association between EIOp and real GDP per capita, possibly indicating that higher equality of opportunity in tertiary education and economic growth are complementary objectives. Two results emerge as especially robust: in all the specifications we find a positive association between EIOp and the students/teacher ratio, and a negative one between EIOp and public spending in tertiary education. While we do not claim that such correlations should be interpreted causally, we think that they might indicate a meaningful underlying relationship between equality of opportunity in tertiary education and the availability of financial and non-financial resources.

A frequently cited rationale for increasing the participation of students from low socioeconomic status (SES) backgrounds is that it will create a workforce who will choose to work in low SES and medically underserviced communities. Two theoretical arguments, one that supports and one that contradicts this assumption, are proposed to explain the practice location intentions of medical students which we examine in a longitudinal analysis. SES background and future intentions of 351 applicants to an undergraduate medical degree were assessed at Time 1, with intentions re-assessed one year later for 96% of those who were enrolled as medical students. Students from very low (and very high) SES backgrounds indicated lower intention to practice in low SES or medically underserviced areas than those from mid-range SES backgrounds. Males and students from non-English speaking backgrounds indicated less desire to work in low SES areas, perhaps explained by high aspirational motivation. SES accounted for a relatively small amount of variance in practice intentions. Alternate predictors of practice location, including individual values and training effects, and their implications for selection practice, are discussed.

Machine Learning (ML) is increasingly integral to modern life, requiring its introduction to young individuals across all socioeconomic status (SES) backgrounds. Various initiatives are emerging for the integration of ML into the education of young students including the development of curricula, courses and activities. And although first applications indicate positive findings with regard to the students’ learning, there still is a lack of research on the effect of such teaching efforts across students from different SES backgrounds. Therefore, this study investigates the impact of different SES backgrounds on the students' understanding and application of ML basic concepts through the application of the ML4ALL! course to 266 middle and high school students from different SES backgrounds. The findings reveal significant differences in students' understanding and explanation of ML concepts, indicating that this may be affected by their SES background. However, students' perceived ability to apply ML concepts and the perceived difficulty in learning ML were consistent across all groups. The results indicate that although the SES background may influence students' learning, it does not necessarily limit their perceived ability to engage with AI/ML concepts. The insights from this study may contribute to a better understanding of the perceptions of students from a low SES background regarding AI/ML learning and can assist in facilitating the development of inclusive, effective, and enjoyable educational approaches.

This paper reviews the literature on best practices to engage parents in order to equip them to support their children’s higher education aspirations. Parents from low socio-economic status (SES) backgrounds, in common with other parents, report that they want “the best” for their children’s future. Getting a good education is a part of the aspiration of most parents, regardless of SES. However, unlike parents from mid and high SES backgrounds who usually have “educational cultural capital” to support their children’s educational aspiration, parents from low SES backgrounds often are unable to confidently access information they need about possible education pathways within and beyond school. Additionally, they need to know where to find out about financial and other support resources available to facilitate access to higher education. Higher education participation by students from non-traditional backgrounds could be improved by outreach that promotes parents’ social capital and “educational cultural” capital. This project has built upon University of Tasmania and University of Wollongong’s combined experience, international literature and workshops with parent engagement practitioners to identify features of parent engagement programmes and resources that are efficient and effective in engaging parents from low SES backgrounds to support their children’s higher education aspirations. From this, the higher education Design and Evaluation Matrix for Outreach was modified to develop a tool to plan, design, modify and evaluate parent engagement programmes.

The influence of one’s socioeconomic status (SES) background on employee outcomes is increasingly recognized. Drawing on sociological and psychological research on SES and relative deprivation theory (RDT), we examine when and why SES background influence perceptions of overqualification and downstream behavioral reactions in the workplace. In a time-lagged, multisource field study involving 400 employees and 400 coworkers, we find that employees with higher SES backgrounds experience higher level of perceived overqualification, thus increasing both knowledge hiding and information seeking behaviors. Furthermore, relational mobility moderates the indirect effects, such that the positive effect on knowledge hiding is weakened and the positive effect on information seeking is strengthened when relational mobility is high versus when it is low. Our theory and findings highlight that SES background can have long-term impact on workplace behaviors and offer a more comprehensive view of how people’s behaviors to manage perceived overqualification may be strategic instead of plainly reactionary.

This study investigated the effectiveness of a storytelling-based morphological intervention program on the language and literacy knowledge and reading motivation of kindergarten children from low and mid socioeconomic status (SES) backgrounds. It also explored how these groups compared in change scores against a non-intervened high SES group. Employing a cluster randomization approach, this study included 158 kindergarten children, comprising intervention and comparison groups from low and mid SES backgrounds, as well as a non-intervened high SES group. Assessments were conducted on morphological awareness (MA), print concepts, vocabulary, and reading motivation. Children in the intervention groups showed better performance in MA and print concept scores than those in their respective comparison groups. The mid SES intervention group also displayed significant improvement in vocabulary and motivation scores compared to its counterpart. When examining the effects of SES on change scores, the low SES intervention group achieved superior results in vocabulary and print concept scores compared to both the mid SES intervention and the non-intervened high SES groups. For reading motivation, the mid SES group outperformed the low SES group. The morphological intervention program using storytelling positively impacts both the literacy skills and reading motivation of kindergarten children, especially those from low and mid SES backgrounds. This study emphasizes the significance of designing interventions that cater to the distinct educational needs of children from different SES backgrounds.

Teen mothers often have a lower socioeconomic position as adults than other women due to selection, opportunity costs of childbearing, or both. Few studies examine whether that is the case after an induced abortion as well. Also, few studies explore whether the strength of the association between teen pregnancy and adulthood socioeconomic position differs by family background. This study uses Finnish register data of 53,252 women born between 1975 and 1979 to examine with logistic regression whether the likelihood of having tertiary education depends differently on teen birth and abortion experiences by parental socioeconomic position. I also control for and report whether having a partner providing childcare helps mitigate the negative association between teen motherhood and education. The results show teen mothers had lower odds than those who aborted to have tertiary education, and both groups were behind those with no teen pregnancy. These groups’ education did not vary statistically significantly by family background, although the gap in the probability of having tertiary education between teen mothers and those with no teen pregnancy among the lowest socioeconomic backgrounds was 43%-points, and only 27%-points among the highest. Teen mothers with and without a partner had similar probabilities of having tertiary education (8– 11%). Those who had an abortion and subsequently separated from their partner, however, had similar probability of having tertiary education as teen mothers (13%), although others who had an abortion had a much higher probability (20%). Selection shapes these relationships. Survey and register data should be combined to study these associations using methods of causal inference.

Stress energizes learning. The Autonomic Nervous System (ANS), which is the pattern of nerves running through the body that enacts the body's stress response, acts to maintain a state of anticipatory readiness - one in which we are alert and ready to receive new information. Information presented during this alert state is subsequently better retained. For my recent research, hosted at the Medical Research Council Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit in Cambridge, I have been leading a small research unit to study stress and learning in typical, middle-class young children. Our research has focused on exploring these 'good' aspects of stress. We have shown, for the first time, that children who show a larger spontaneous response to an experimentally presented stressor are also better at learning pictures of other children's faces. Using new, advanced analytical techniques based on time-series analyses, we have also shown that children who show more spontaneous, sudden fluctuations in stress levels show better learning. However, there is also a down-side to stress. This is shown most markedly in individuals from low socio-economic status (SES) backgrounds. A number of recent studies have concluded that the associations widely observed between low SES and poor academic performance may be entirely attributable to the fact that individuals from low SES backgrounds tend to experience more frequent, and intense, stressful early life events. Although the exact mechanisms are unknown, it is thought that increased stress during early life associates with a poorer ability to concentrate, and therefore to learn. So how to reconcile these 'good' and 'bad' aspects of stress during early development? Understanding this question is vital - both for understanding the mechanisms that disrupt early learning in high-risk individuals, and for developing new techniques to improve learning across all children. Yet remarkably little previous research has recorded whether different individuals are exposed to different levels of external, environmental noise during early development - nor investigated how these associate with differences in their internal stress reactivity. Under this Fellowship, I would use recently developed technologies to do this for the first time. To address these questions, I shall take a cohort of infants from mixed socio-economic status backgrounds, recruited at birth in East London, and quantitatively track how attention, learning, ANS activity and external environmental stressors vary during early life. Using cutting-edge new technologies I shall examine whether children differ in the total amount of environmental noise to which they are exposed - and whether relationships can be found between how much noise and individual is exposed to, and how well they perform on attention and learning. To mentor me on this project I have been fortunate to secure the support of three leading international scientists. Professor Cynthia Fu, based at the University of East London, will assist me in setting up the recruitment of children from mixed SES backgrounds. Professor John Duncan, in Cambridge, is an internationally renowned expert on attention, and will advise me on the cognitive and analytical aspects of the project. Professor Mark Johnson, at the Centre for Brain and Cognitive Development, is an expert on understanding early typical and atypical development, including the early development of Autism and Attention Deficit Disorder, and will advise me on potential links to clinical populations. The proposal also includes a visit to the lab of Dr Ronny Geva, in Israel, to learn new techniques for measuring early stress from experts in her lab

Development of selective attention in preschool-age children from lower socioeconomic status backgrounds

The relationship of socioeconomic status and gender to the occupational choices of grade 12 students

Protecting health professionals, our most precious resource

Child, home and institutional predictors of preschool vocabulary growth

BackgroundSocioeconomic status (SES) is often inversely related to health outcomes and is likely to play a role in the use of psychoactive substances among young individuals, although little consensus exists on the association between SES and substance use.The purpose of the study was to determine the association of three SES indicators (perceived family income, education level of participants, and parental education level) with past year use of alcohol, tobacco, cannabis, other illicit drugs and non-medical use of prescription drugs (NMPD) among Swiss young men.MethodsPopulation-based cross-sectional study of 5,702 men at mean age twenty. Associations between SES indicators and substance use were assessed with regression models adjusted for age and linguistic region.ResultsParticipants with average or below average perceived family income were less likely to report any use of alcohol (OR = O.75) but more likely to use tobacco daily (OR = 1.31) and cannabis weekly (OR = 1.27) compared to those with perceived above average family income.Participants whose parents had only achieved obligatory education were less likely to engage in any use of alcohol (OR = 0.30), monthly risky single occasion drinking (RSOD, defined as 6 or more drinks per occasion) (OR = 0.48), any use of cannabis (OR = 0.53) and other illicit drugs (OR = 0.58), whereas those whose parents had only achieved secondary education were less at risk of engaging in cannabis (OR = 0.66 for any use and OR = 0.77 for more than once a week use) and other illicit drugs (OR = 0.74) use, compared to those whose parents had achieved tertiary education. Compared to participants who completed secondary or tertiary education, those who completed only obligatory education reported a higher risk of tobacco (OR = 1.18 for any use, OR = 1.31 for daily use), cannabis (OR = 1.23 for any use, OR = 1.37 for more than once a week use), and other illicit drugs (OR = 1.48) use. No association was found between NMPD and the studied SES variables.ConclusionThe relationship between SES and substance use was complex in this sample. Higher socioeconomic status was associated with more alcohol and other illicit drugs use, while lower socioeconomic status was related to more tobacco use. Education level and perceived family income may have different impacts on substance use and may vary by substance.