Tracking academic engagement and library use: an eight-week student journaling at two public research universities

State governments and public colleges and universities have a symbiotic relationship. Public higher education institutions play an important role in creating an educated citizenry and improving state and local economies, while states bear the primary responsibility of funding postsecondary education. Still, there is widespread evidence that the state-university relationship is eroding, as seen by the drastic cuts in appropriations for higher education during the past two and a half decades. Adjusted to account for inflation, state appropriations for higher education have declined 40% since 1978, and current state investment effort per personal income dropped $32.1 billion below that of 1980 (Mortenson, 2004). There are many factors that explain the nationwide decline in state support for public colleges and universities, but the majority of the blame rests on painful economic recessions that have occurred in the last 25 years. Recessions in FY1980-83 and FY1990-94 contributed heavily to the slide in support for higher education. The cuts during FY1990-91 were especially formidable, marking the first time in 33 years that state budgets allotted less money to higher education than the previous year (Schuh, 1993). The freefall in support for higher education only intensified as state appropriations were slashed $650 per student between FY2001 and FY2004, a period marked by widespread fiscal crisis among states (Jenny & Arbak, 2004). In addition to these economic hardships, drops in state support for discretionary programs such as higher education have also been attributed to a conservative shift in the federal government's role. During the last 25 years, the federal government transferred partial or full responsibility for many programs to the state and local level. This shift in philosophy, known as new federalism, resulted in steep cuts in federal and state aid for municipal and county governments (Peterson, 1995). Not surprisingly, this shift resulted in a significant squeeze in higher education appropriations for most states. The funding pinch occurred because public universities are forced to compete more intensely for dollars with other state programs such as Medicaid, K-12 schools, social services, and corrections (Schuh, 1993). Medicaid is forecasted to put an especially intense squeeze on higher education funding in the next decade as a larger share of public funds will be required to support the aging population of Baby Boomers (Kane, Orszag, & Gunter, 2003). Due to these economic and political factors, the relationship between states and public higher education is fundamentally changing across the country. This change is especially noticeable at major public research universities that are increasingly becoming quasi-private institutions. For example, state support accounted for approximately 35% of the budget at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1988, as opposed to 21% of its budget in 2004 (University of Wisconsin-Madison Office of Budget, Planning, and Analysis, 2004). As at many other research universities, rising tuition and support have picked up the budget shortfall at the Madison campus. Fundraising especially is emerging as a high priority for colleges and universities, including UW-Madison, which is en route to completing a $1.5 billion campaign (University of Wisconsin Foundation, 2003). This shift toward an increasingly private public research university been accompanied by an increasing tension between higher education administrators and state legislators. Mark Yudof, President of the University of Texas System, bemoaned the fact that the compact that once governed states and public research universities has withered, leaving public research universities in a purgatory of insufficient resources and declining competitiveness (Yudof, 2002, p. B24). Other public research university presidents have echoed Yudof's concerns, saying that further state cuts will radically change the character of their institutions (Gose, 2002). …

Reviewed by: The Future of the Public University in America: Beyond the Crossroads Alan P. Wagner (bio) James J. Duderstadt and Farris W. Womack. The Future of the Public University in America: Beyond the Crossroads. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003. 236 pp. Cloth: $34.36. ISBN: 0-8018-7218-9. Written by two experienced public research university leaders, this volume is a diagnosis of the difficulties public research universities face in addressing challenges of new demands for learning, eroded or redirected public funding, rising costs of instruction and research, and new accountability. The authors, in this first-person account "from the helm" of a leading public research university (the University of Michigan), reflect on their experiences with these challenges at the same time they look forward to a new position and functioning of the public research university. Through this volume, Duderstadt and Womack contribute to a continuing discourse on the changing roles, structure, governance, financing, and functioning of universities at a time when advanced-level learning comes very high on the policy agendas of federal, state, and local governments in the United States and around the world. Duderstadt and Womack take the view that we are "beyond the crossroads" of debate about whether change is needed. The present challenge is to "develop effective strategies to shape the evolution of public universities so that they will play key, albeit different, roles" (p. 3). They argue that what is needed is not "richer and more selective universities, but more institutions capable of providing quality educational opportunities for our citizens. We need to increase our flow of human capital, not refine it" (p. 44). They locate that growth as part of a natural, longer-term evolution of the U.S. public research university, as it has provided for widening outreach and expanded participation over the past 150 years. The authors argue that the public research university should continue to develop in ways that cater to new demands for learning and relearning over adult life (evaporating the distinction between student and alumni) and forge new partnerships and alliances with all manner of entities for delivering content and providing appropriate field-based learning experiences. Where others have called for a sharpening of profiles by type of institution, Duderstadt and Womack raise as one possible future an application of "the extraordinary intellectual resources of the public research university to assist the broader higher education enterprise in its evolution into forms better capable of serving the changing educational needs of a knowledge-driven society. . . . [by entering] into alliances with other types of educational institutions, or even newly emerging forms such as for-profit or cyberspace universities" (p. 194). This proposal opens up a much more nuanced and strategic view of the public university's future role, one that embraces a very wide range of partnerships, networks, and arrangements—public and private, domestic and cross-border—to best exploit and nourish the unique combinations of expertise and activity available at the public research university. Such a future already exists in some measure, and not just in the United States. Examples from elsewhere include the French pôle universitaire, a regional network of universities, government and [End Page 452] firms; the Swiss Lemanic project, leading to the coordination and profiling of three, separately governed and financed university-level institutions in the Lake Geneva region (Universities of Geneva and Lausanne, and the Federal Polytechnic Institute in Lausanne); Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology's offering of programs within Australia's Technical and Further Education (TAFE) system alongside RMIT university degree courses; and the ambitious vision of "Network Norway," giving students and institutions access to educational resources throughout the country. Prescriptions for reforms in university administration, governance, funding, and policy appear in many chapters, accompanied by first- person accounts of experiences with initiatives at the University of Michigan, among which are efforts to advance Michigan's "diversity and excellence" strategy, including elements of admissions practices at the heart of the 2003 U.S. Supreme Court decisions on affirmative action. The prescriptions aim to sustain—indeed, encourage—greater staff initiatives in their primary activities of teaching and research. On this point, Duderstadt and Womack observe that "the most vibrant universities will...

Background Technology-enhanced classrooms now integrate a range of educational apps designed to improve student outcomes. The effectiveness of these applications is influenced by multiple factors related to the courses and the applications themselves. A critical factor is student engagement, which involves interacting with the course content (academic engagement) and the educational applications (app engagement) to achieve potential academic benefits. This study examined the following research questions to explore this relationship: (1) To what degree are students’ academic and application engagement associated with their performance across different courses? (2) How does the correlation between students’ engagement (academic and application) and academic performance vary in each course? (3) What unique contributions do academic engagement and app engagement make to student performance? Results This study employs a multimethod approach to examine the relationship between academic engagement and app engagement with students’ academic performance among 252 students: 110 in a first-year engineering (FYE) course and 142 in a physics (PHYS) course. In these courses, students used the CourseMIRROR mobile application, where they created and submitted a reflection after each lecture throughout the semester, and reflections were summarized using natural language processing (NLP) algorithms. This study collected app engagement as the number of times students viewed those summaries. For academic engagement, the data were collected using a validated self-reported survey comprising 22 items. For academic performance, we used the final course score. We analyzed the data using Pearson product-moment correlation, multiple regression, and stepwise hierarchical regression methods. The findings showed app engagement was significantly correlated with academic performance in FYE (r = 0.235, p < 0.01), while in PHYS, academic performance was strongly associated with three out of four constructs of academic engagement (r = 0.267 to 0.289, p < 0.01). Notably, app engagement explained most of the variance in the engineering course, while social-academic engagement was significantly related to students’ academic performance in the physics course. In both courses, app and academic behavioral engagement positively and substantially contributed to academic performance. Conclusion This study provides insightful results on the multifaceted and multidimensional engagement construct using two conceptualizations and the contexts of two courses, i.e., the FYE and PHYS courses, while accounting for gender and race/ethnicity. It demonstrates that the effectiveness of engagement is context-dependent, influenced by its intended purpose and implementation method.

Background/Objectives: Academic engagement (AE) and work engagement (WE) are important indicators of performance and well-being in educational and occupational settings. Although these constructs are well researched independently, few studies have examined them concurrently among individuals navigating both academic and professional demands. Nursing students who are simultaneously employed as nurses represent a unique and under-researched population in this context. Understanding how personality traits influence both AE and WE in this dual-role group may offer insights relevant for academic success and well-being in healthcare settings. Methods: The sample consisted of 230 nursing students from a public university in Croatia who were also working as nurses. This study employed a repeated cross-sectional descriptive predictive research design (2022-2025). The participants completed questionnaires (UWES-9, UWES-S-9, and IPIP-15) during their university lectures. Results: The analysis yielded two personality clusters (adaptive-lower levels of neuroticism and higher levels of the other personality traits and maladaptive-the opposite). The participants in the adaptive cluster had higher levels of WE and AE. Regression analysis revealed that conscientiousness was a significant predictor for WE and AE, whereas agreeableness was a significant predictor for only WE. Conclusions: The findings highlight the importance of personality traits when addressing AE and WE, and fostering traits such as conscientiousness and agreeableness may enhance positive work and academic outcomes. Personality traits showed similar patterns of association with both AE and WE, indicating that dispositional factors may play a more crucial role in WE and AE than external influences.

A major challenge for contemporary public research universities is the need to affirm to the public and to the political community that the quality of higher education found at these largely autonomous institutions is of such import that it should be sustained by both public and private support. This challenge is made all the more difficult by the growing reluctance expressed by both state and federal policymakers to fund the university's educational mission at anywhere near the level university officials feel is required to sustain that mission. A further complication is the perception within a growing number of politically influential groups that research universities have largely eluded the beneficial effects of market-driven efficiency. Our objective in this article is to examine how research universities are responding to this complex challenge in the connection between revenue generation and budgetary expenditure in a market-driven age. We argue that the response might involve a recognition that American research universities have a long record of institutional adaptation (Graham & Diamond, 1997). We examine funding and expenditure patterns during this decade and conclude that there is support for the argument that universities are adapting to the current climate by incorporating market-like behavior into their business plans. Specifically, we find noteworthy differences in behavior between institutions which experience enrollment declines and those that do not, and we find a strong relationship between increased reliance on particular sources of revenues and expenditures on student services, findings that seem to indicate market-like responses of public research universities to changing conditions. Historical Context American universities are distinguished by their relative autonomy as state institutions. Students of the American state formation draw attention to the strong tradition of locality and a corresponding skepticism of national institutions (Skowronek, 1982; Skocpol, 1995). In such a political culture, state universities have largely escaped the sort of control exercised by European ministries of education; indeed, the control exercised by subnational education departments as well. The great number of American state and private universities engendered fairly early on a competition for students and faculty and the expectation that universities could have a good deal of latitude in that competition. Of course, as we know, universities as autonomous institutions are complicated by their own internal organization as collections of semi-autonomous units. This strong tradition of decentralization within the state university may contribute to the capacity to innovate at the margins without appearing to deviate from traditional conceptions of what a university should be (Tierney, 1998). In the current debate over the public research university, commentators are often too willing to use images from fashionable films, to describe universities metaphorically as great ships speeding along on a predetermined course, ships of such size that even when they see the iceberg of public discontent they are unable to avoid the crash in time. The reality is often that a public research university is more like a flotilla of ships of quite diverse size and function that, when taken as whole, might be more profitably understood as a fleet quite capable of engendering radical shifts in direction at the margin that allow steady adjustment at the center. It can be argued that American public research universities have in large measure prospered by adopting a strategy that embodies a potent, almost paradoxical, combination of continuity and radical change at the same time. This has certainly been the case over the last half of this century. Indeed, public research universities are remarkably evolving blends of public and private initiatives. It is not surprising that these universities that are often regarded as agents of social and economic change, themselves, undergo change. …

Resource Allocation in Public Research Universities José L. Santos A study of internal resource allocation in public Research I universities is particularly timely and important as the patterns of expenditures and revenues at public universities, after a period of substantial change, stabilized in 1999. After 1999, a period of new retrenchments ensued as a result of intensified budget cutting that, in some cases, resulted in budget rescissions for some universities in fiscal years 2001–2002 and 2002–2003. An analysis of the revenue streams for public institutions of higher education over the 15 years from 1985 to 1999 reveals a decline in the proportion of current-fund revenue provided from the state from 45.1% to 35.8%, an absolute decrease of 21%. During the same period, tuition and fees rose sharply from 14.6% in 1985 to 18.5% in 1999, an absolute increase of 27% while private gifts, grants, and contracts rose from 3.1% in 1985 to 4.8% in 1999, an absolute increase of 55% (National Center for Education Statistics [NCES], 1993, p. 322; NCES, 1996, p. 4; NCES, 2003, p. 372). In the period between 1986 and 1999, institutional expenditures (measured in 1999 constant dollars, using the Higher Education Price Index [HEPI] deflator) increased by $38 billion, from $103 billion in 1986 to $141 billion in 1999, a 37% increase (inflation adjusted) while government funding increased by $11 billion, from $62 billion in 1986 to $73 billion in 1999, a 17% increase [End Page 125] (inflation adjusted) (NCES, 1993, p. 332; NCES, 1996, pp. 4, 5; NCES, 2003, p. 391; Research Associates of Washington, 2003). In short, government investment in public universities has declined, resulting in institutions' search for new revenue streams led by tuition and fees (Mayhew, Ford, & Hubbard, 1990) and private gifts, grants, and contracts. It is therefore important to explore how this public financing shift plays out in the internal resource allocation function. Internal resource allocation has been studied in a number of different ways. As early as the 1980s, resource allocation became an important research topic because of fiscal volatility and budget crises. Researchers typically studied departments housed in different colleges within universities (Ashar, 1987; Ashar & Shapiro, 1990; Hackman, 1985; Melchiori, 1982; Morgan, 1984). The next decade characterized by university restructuring brought about studies of resource allocation that shifted the emphasis to faculty performance on productivity measures within departments as the unit of analysis (Layzell, 1996; Levin, 1991; Massy, 1996). In the first decade of the 21st century, state and institutional budget crises have led to increased attention to how scarce institutional resources are distributed. The shift from the department to the individual faculty member has omitted some critical perspectives of how departments, rather than individuals, mediate faculty behavior (Volk, Slaughter, & Thomas, 2001). As a result, using the individual faculty member may be inadequate in furthering our understanding of internal resource allocation in the context of constrained institutional resources. Traditionally, studies on internal resource allocation have employed either rational/political or critical/political frameworks. Only one study (Volk, Slaughter, & Thomas, 2001) uses both conceptual frameworks; however, it focuses on only one public research institution. In this study, I build on the work of Volk, Slaughter, and Thomas by focusing on breadth—that is, I examine resource allocation using departments and fields of study at 10 public research universities to explore the returns to teaching and research productivity on departmental earnings between fields of science. My hope is that a focus on departments as key units of analysis will further our understanding of internal resource allocation. The purpose of this study is to conduct an econometric analysis of internal resource allocation. I estimate the production (allocation) function of public research universities by modeling the income-production function of academic departments. The goal is to estimate the relative "rate of return" that universities assign to teaching and research productivity. The allocation function is modeled by estimating a revenue function that is part of the family of functions...

As constraints on government funding to public universities become a trend in higher education internationally, clarifying the impact of government policies on donor behavior from a comparative perspective is an issue of higher education research. This paper aims to explore the impact of government appropriations and tax policies on macro trends in donations to public research universities in Japan and USA. Panel data of donation revenue to public research universities in both countries is used to answer the following two research questions: (1) whether the trends in capital markets affect the donation revenue of public research universities operating under different tax systems in Japan and USA, and (2) how the level of government support to higher education affects donations to American and Japanese public research universities. The primary finding is that stock prices are positively associated with donations in USA; however, there is no evidence that stock prices have a positive impact on donations to Japanese public research universities. These contrasting results imply that higher stock prices do not always induce donations to universities and that it is important to consider each country’s tax structure when looking for possible links between stock prices and donations to universities. Also, donor behavior is independent of the amount of government appropriations received by universities in both Japan and USA; therefore, the recent decreasing trends in government appropriations in both countries do not necessarily attract donors.

The current study examines how nonresident tuition among public research universities has converged toward a national average over the 1987–2006 time period in the USA. Using dynamic fixed-effect panel modeling estimated via GMM (and instrumental variables fixed-effect model to account for endogeneity), we inquire (1) how do competitive market forces and state higher education governance structures influence nonresident tuition rates at public universities and (2) to what extent is conditional convergence of nonresident tuition rates at public universities occurring. We find that over the past 20 years, there has been a rapid convergence in nonresident tuition at public research universities to a national average, shaped by external market forces such as the demand for education and price competition among neighboring states, tuition for residents, the distribution of higher education appropriations internal to states, and the state higher education governance structures. Nonresident tuition has increased at a faster pace in states with low nonresident tuition as compared to states with high nonresident tuition. Our results have implications for higher education policy guidance as they reveal how a tendency toward “privatization” in certain aspects and segments of public higher education has been constrained in states in which higher education is more regulated via consolidated governing boards.

A Review of: Soria, K. M., Fransen, J., & Nackerud, S. (2017). Beyond books: The extended academic benefits of library use for first-year college students. College & Research Libraries, 78(1), 8-22. https://doi.org/10.5860/crl.78.1.8 Abstract Objectives – To consider the relationship between academic library use and four specific outcomes: academic engagement, engagement in scholarly activities, academic skills development, and grade point average. Design – Hierarchical regression analysis. Setting – A large, public research university in the Midwest US. Subjects – 1,068 non-transfer, first-year students who voluntarily completed the Student Experience in the Research University (SERU) survey. Methods – The SERU survey results were analyzed alongside student data derived from institutional records and 10 library usage variables generated from library systems. Velicer’s minimum average partial (MAP) method was employed to develop a factor analysis. Hierarchical regression analyses measured the relationships between independent variables (demographic characteristics, collegiate experiences, and libraries use) and dependent variables (students’ academic engagement, academic skills, engagement in scholarship, and fall semester grade point average). Main Results – Students’ use of academic libraries was reported to have a positive relationship with all four dependent variables, above and beyond those explained by pre-college and collegiate experiences: academic engagement (R2∆= .130, p < 0.001), academic skills development (R2∆= .025, p < 0.001), fall semester grade point average (R2∆= .018, p < 0.001), and engagement in scholarship (R2∆= .070, p < 0.001). Use of books and web-based library resources had the most positive relationships with academic outcomes; workshop attendance and use of reference services had limited positive relationships with academic outcomes; and use of library computer workstations had no significant effects on academic outcomes. Conclusion – Undergraduate student use of the academic library is positively associated with diverse academic outcomes. Although the explanatory power of library use was relatively low, ranging from 1.8 to 13.0 percent of final variance in the dependent variables, library use is nonetheless reported to contribute significantly to academic outcomes.

The purpose of this chapter was to investigate whether international students' participation in high-impact educational practices was associated with students' development of academic skills and academic engagement. Data from a multi-institutional survey of international students enrolled at 13 large, public research universities in 2013 were analyzed utilizing hierarchical multiple regression. Results suggest that participation in first-year seminars, learning communities, service-learning and community engagement, and common book reading programs are positively associated with international students' academic engagement and academic skills development. Enrollment in diversity-related courses was also associated with students' academic skills development while engagement in creative forms of scholarship was positively associated with academic engagement.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the effectiveness of successful intelligence training program on academic motivation and academic engagement in female high school students of Isfahan city, Iran. The statistical population of this study consisted of all female high school students of Isfahan city, Iran. Subjects were selected by multistep random cluster sampling. The successful intelligence training program was performed on the experimental group. Research instruments included Academic Engagement Questionnaire Archambault et al. (2009) and Academic Motivation Scale Vallerand et al. (1990). The variance analysis with repeated measures was used for data analysis. The results showed a significant difference between academic engagement scores of experimental and control group, in post-test and follow-up stages. This means that successful intelligence training was effective in increasing the academic motivation and academic engagement of female students. The results also indicated that the effect of training had been permanent in a long-term period. Therefore, according to the results, it would be possible to use successful intelligence training program in schools, besides other programs, in order to promote the academic motivation and engagement of students.

Based on the self-determination theory, this study examined the mediating role of intrinsic motivation with respect to the relationship between basic psychological needs satisfaction and students’ academic engagement. Data was collected from a sample of 365 agriculture students at five public universities in western Iran. Data was collected by employing standardized self-administered scales, which was subsequently analyzed using partial least squares structural equation modeling by the help of the SmartPLS 3.0 software. The results of this study indicated that the satisfaction of the basic psychological need for autonomy, competence, and relatedness exerted direct and positive effects on intrinsic motivation. In addition, the three basic psychological needs satisfaction had indirect and positive effects on academic engagement via intrinsic motivation. This study provides a unique perspective through which educators and researchers may effectively recognize the role of basic psychological needs satisfaction in facilitating and promoting academic motivation and engagement in universities.

Reviewed by: The True Genius of America at Risk: Are We Losing Our Public Universities to de Facto Privatization? D. Bruce Johnstone The True Genius of America at Risk: Are We Losing Our Public Universities to de Facto Privatization?, by Katharine C. Lyall and Kathleen R. Sell. Westport, CT: Praeger, 2006. ISBN 0275989496. The True Genius of America at Risk is a richly documented portrayal of the declining tax support for America's public universities. Much of this portrayal is from firsthand experience in Wisconsin, where Katharine Lyall served as system chancellor from 1991 through 2004 and Kathleen Sell as the system's chief budget officer from 1987 through 2002. In these capacities, they struggled with what they describe as "jerk and fit" state budgeting, which, as in most states, was a debilitating combination of budget cuts frequently combined with a general ignorance of, and great impatience with, the complexity of managing a very complicated system with appropriately multiple and difficult-to-measure products. The resulting fiscal austerity was (and still is) often made worse by dysfunctional bureaucratic intrusion and a stew of political agendas dominated by conservative and neoliberal attacks on public institutions, public employees (especially faculty), and public taxation. The book's subtitle suggests that we are losing our public universities to de facto privatization. That term, however, connotes a variety of quite different policies, both de facto and deliberate, that may include heightened competition for costly scholarly prestige, a legislative or even constitutional shift from the total state control associated with a state agency to a model of state steering associated with a public corporation, a more aggressive quest for philanthropic support, a shift of more instructional costs to parents and students, and/or a contracting out of nonacademic functions such as dormitories, food services, bookstores, and sometimes operations like maintenance and printing. While there are some who may lament most or all of these trends, most higher educational leaders and thoughtful observers (Lyall and Sell certainly included) would acknowledge that these shifts in themselves are neither new nor wrong nor likely to be avoidable. The real problem, I would submit, lies less with these examples of what Lyall and Sell label a de facto privatization and more with the widespread and peculiarly American political fear of taxation, coupled with a conviction (as with the fear of taxation, found among Democrats and Republicans alike) that public universities are wasteful and badly managed because . . . well, everyone just knows they are. The strength of Lyall and Sell's book is the rich and quite up-to-date documentation of the financial austerity that has befallen most public universities. A minor flaw is that the authors sometimes are citing figures on the worsening [End Page 712] financial situation of, and diminishing public tax support for, the entire public higher educational sector and at other times are referring to the fiscal austerity peculiar to the elite or flagship public research extensive universities (especially relative to their private elite research university brethren). But their portrayal of the last 15 or 20 years as a "perfect storm" of fiscal uncertainty and austerity for public higher education, especially for the public elite research university, is well drawn. The authors point out the unfortunate consequences of higher educational and fiscal federalism, especially as this feature of the American political landscape affects the public research university, whose "products"—be they the discoveries of applied and basic research or the education and training of undergraduates, graduates, or advanced professionals—are clearly national and international. As such, a funding base of mainly state budgets—particularly when most states are constrained in their abilities to deficit finance—is clearly going to be inadequate. The squeeze is exacerbated by the ability of the federal government to impose so-called unfunded mandates not just upon states but also upon enterprises like public universities. Congress and the federal executive branch worsen the situation when politicians at the national level (with no constitutional authority over the nation's public colleges and universities) fan the flames of tuition anxiety as well as the public's belief that their universities cannot be well managed, regardless of the many steps these institutions have taken over many...

The importance of academic activities is very high for ninth grade students because of choosing a course and enrolling in 10th grade. Therefore, the aim of this study was determine the effect of academic buoyancy education on academic self-concept and engagement in ninth grade male students. This research in terms of purpose was applied and in terms of implementation method was semi-experimental with a pre-test and post-test with a control group. The research population was the ninth grade male students of Pishva city in the 2022-23 academic years, which 40 people of them were selected with using the available sampling method as a sample and randomly divided into two equal groups. The experimental group received 12 sessions of 70 minutes the academic buoyancy education and the control group remained on the waiting list for training. Data were collected with the questionnaires of academic self-concept (Liu and Wang, 2005) and academic engagement (Reeve and Tseng, 2011) and analyzed by chi-square and multivariate analysis of covariance method in SPSS-19 software. The results showed that there was a significant difference between the experimental and control groups in terms of both variables of academic self-concept and academic engagement. In other words, academic buoyancy education increased self-concept and engagement in ninth grade male students (P<0.001). The results indicated the effect of academic buoyancy education on improving academic self-concept and engagement. Therefore, to improve the academic performance, including academic self-concept and engagement can be used from academic buoyancy education method along with other effective educational methods.

The True Genius of America at Risk: Are We Losing Our Public Universities to de Facto Privatization?, by Katharine C. Lyall and Kathleen R. Sell. Westport, CT: Praeger, 2006. ISBN 0275989496. The True Genius of America at Risk is a richly documented portrayal of the declining tax support for America's public universities. Much of this portrayal is from firsthand experience in Wisconsin, where Katharine Lyall served as system chancellor from 1991 through 2004 and Kathleen Sell as the system's chief budget officer from 1987 through 2002. In these capacities, they struggled with what they describe as jerk and fit state budgeting, which, as in most states, was a debilitating combination of budget cuts frequently combined with a general ignorance of, and great impatience with, the complexity of managing a very complicated system with appropriately multiple and difficult-to-measure products. The resulting fiscal austerity was (and still is) often made worse by dysfunctional bureaucratic intrusion and a stew of political agendas dominated by conservative and neoliberal attacks on public institutions, public employees (especially faculty), and public taxation. The book's subtitle suggests that we are losing our public universities to de facto privatization. That term, however, connotes a variety of quite different policies, both de facto and deliberate, that may include heightened competition for costly scholarly prestige, a legislative or even constitutional shift from the total state control associated with a state agency to a model of state steering associated with a public corporation, a more aggressive quest for philanthropic support, a shift of more instructional costs to parents and students, and/or a contracting out of nonacademic functions such as dormitories, food services, bookstores, and sometimes operations like maintenance and printing. While there are some who may lament most or all of these trends, most higher educational leaders and thoughtful observers (Lyall and Sell certainly included) would acknowledge that these shifts in themselves are neither new nor wrong nor likely to be avoidable. The real problem, I would submit, lies less with these examples of what Lyall and Sell label a de facto privatization and more with the widespread and peculiarly American political fear of taxation, coupled with a conviction (as with the fear of taxation, found among Democrats and Republicans alike) that public universities are wasteful and badly managed because ... well, everyone just knows they are. The strength of Lyall and Sell's book is the rich and quite up-to-date documentation of the financial austerity that has befallen most public universities. A minor flaw is that the authors sometimes are citing figures on the worsening financial situation of, and diminishing public tax support for, the entire public higher educational sector and at other times are referring to the fiscal austerity peculiar to the elite or flagship public research extensive universities (especially relative to their private elite research university brethren). But their portrayal of the last 15 or 20 years as a perfect storm of fiscal uncertainty and austerity for public higher education, especially for the public elite research university, is well drawn. The authors point out the unfortunate consequences of higher educational and fiscal federalism, especially as this feature of the American political landscape affects the public research university, whose products--be they the discoveries of applied and basic research or the education and training of undergraduates, graduates, or advanced professionals--are clearly national and international. As such, a funding base of mainly state budgets--particularly when most states are constrained in their abilities to deficit finance--is clearly going to be inadequate. …