Benefits Of Higher Education Research Articles

What Do High School Students and Their Parents Expect from Higher Education? A case study of South Korea

This study analyzed the benefits that high school students and their parents expect from higher education in Korea. The majority of high school students expected a 'diverse college experience', while the majority of parents expected 'protection from socioeconomic disadvantages from not having higher education'. Multivariate analyses of variance for the expectations of the benefits by parental income and students' academic ability between high school students and parents were conducted. Students' academic ability was an important criterion in determining students' and their parents' expectations of the benefits of higher education.

Boundary-Spanning Leadership in Higher Education

Executive Summary The adaptive capacity of higher education is not only rooted in the ability for institutions to change one by one, but in a systems level capability which depends upon a specific form of leadership. This leadership process is constructed at the boundary between higher education at large and its interface with society. In this article, we examine the ways that this capacity is represented in the current issue of the Journal, and discuss how it might be intentionally cultivated as an asset critical to higher education's future. ********** Higher Education Leadership: A Changing Systems-Society Perspective The history of higher education reveals a remarkably adaptive nature. The academy, thought of in its collective sense, seems to have an inherent ability to respond to the changing needs of societies. This capacity to change, demonstrated over hundreds of years in a wide variety of different cultural and national contexts, is a reflection of continuous adaptation among individuals and institutions, but it is also rooted in an important special property enjoyed and evident at the level of the enterprise, a particular form of leadership. Not only has higher education adapted to societal changes, it has also changed the societies in which it exists. This ability to be changed and at the same time to influence change in society, also requires a form of leadership, one rooted in higher education's deeply held traditions, values and sense of purpose. This article probes the idea of leadership as a capacity that is inherent in those systems which have the capacity to renew themselves in response to changes in their environments while influencing change in the environment at the same time. This leadership can be thought to take place at a boundary of the system where it interfaces with the society in which it resides. Understanding Higher Education as a Leadership System Robert Birnbaum (1988) suggests that systems share come common characteristics. They have interacting components, elements that, in effect, compose the system by their independent and interdependent activities. In the case of the system of higher education in the United States, these interacting components would be colleges and universities that operate as independent (and occasionally interdependent) entities, and all of the associations, agencies and direct constituents and influencers that comprise the higher education effort in the United States. Systems have boundaries which, in another way, define and limit them. In the case of the system of higher education in the United States, these boundaries are established by the licenses, charters and accreditation processes that separate colleges and universities from other institutions and activities within our society. Systems have inputs and outputs that characterize them as well. Within the system of US colleges and universities, inputs include (for example) students, employees, financial resources, buildings and curriculum. Outputs include graduates, research findings and services to society. Birnbaum goes on to observe that systems can be described as being either generally closed or generally open in their characteristics; and that among systems we can find those that are tightly coupled, (that is having internal structures that relate directly and predictably in response to a change anywhere in the system), or loosely coupled. When we speak of the of higher education in the United States, we are speaking of individual colleges and universities, but also of all colleges and universities together. We are speaking of individual licenses, charters and missions and of the collective license, charter and mission. We are speaking for individual faculty, students, programs and investments and we are speaking of the whole investment and the whole benefit of higher education in the United States. …

Rural Opportunities: Minimalist Policy and Community‐Based Experimentation

Rural America's experiences with federal policies provide lessons on both the benefits and liabilities of minimalist policy attention and community‐based policy experimentation. Prior to the New Deal federal rural policies promoted incentives to settle vast territories, subsidize private development of internal market structures, and invest in the benefits of higher education. The New Deal redirected rural policies to more narrow foci on the farm economic and environmental crises. These new, more centralized policies were built upon the rapid expansion of the Department of Agriculture into the first modern federal bureaucracy, politically legitimized on the basis of community‐based policy experimentation. The seemingly unintended consequence of these emergency efforts to rescue farming was the marginalization of most non‐farm policy concerns. The resulting minimalist federal approach to rural America was due to the absence of a unified national constituency for rural concerns. Understanding rural America's inadvertent experimentation in minimalist policy attention and in community‐based policy structures can inform current policy initiatives to decentralize federal authority.

Collaborative Learning

Summary The many concerns over the costs and benefits of higher education have created an often intense dialogue across university departmental borders. In response, many departments have moved to collaborative efforts to reinforce the necessity and usefulness of the Liberal Arts curriculum for students. Academic service departments, including archives, seek to have their resources more actively used by the student base. The authors collaborated on an assignment requiring student use of primary source materials held at the Michigan State University Archives and Historical Collections. The dialogue this assignment created and the projects it produced was of benefit to all involved: instructors, faculty, and students.

Link between Higher Education and the Community − a Model

Higher Education (HE) in Pakistan presents a case of the "inverted pyramid". The need of the country is to eradicate illiteracy and yet on the eve of the new millenium it stands at a humble 45 per cent. Poverty in the country is on the rise. Given the constraint of the financial resources the downward spiral is evident and yet the masses at the grassroots level could greatly benefit from increased literacy skills. Equipping them with functional literacy skills would clearly improve their quality of life. Given the two opposing trends whereby the country needs to provide massive literacy skills to its populace and the infrastructure of education heavily biased in favour of HE, an innovative approach within the education system and its mode of delivery is needed. This paper focuses on one such possibility and proposes a model to develop a link between the two to place the benefits of HE at the doorstep of the populace where it is desperately needed.

Perceived Rates of Return to Higher Education: an international review and comparison

The present paper attempts to assess the link between economic factors and the private demand for higher education through an investigation of the findings of relevant studies. After an examination of the various methodologies adopted by different authors in the estimation of the perceived rate of return to higher education, the main findings of available studies conducted in several countries (UK, the Philippines, Egypt, Hong Kong, and Cyprus) are discussed and compared. The main conclusions drawn from this comparison are the following: First, the perceived rates of return to higher education are, for the most part, very realistic, indicating an accurate perception of the economic benefits of higher education on the part of students. Second, non‐economic factors, such as gender, ability and socio‐economic background, appear to constitute strong influences on the private demand for higher education, which educational policy makers should take into account, along with the economic variables. Finally, it is suggested that the methodology discussed in the present paper can be used in the future to estimate the perceived profitability of higher studies at different institutions and countries offering higher education.

Legislative Challenges to Public Higher Education Benefit Adult Learners

Legislative Challenges to Public Higher Education Benefit Adult Learners

The “certification” paradigm

AbstractCan higher education benefit by honoring excellent teachers through certification? The positives and negatives are explored.

Public Policy and America's Land-Grant Educational Enterprise: The Unique West Virginia Experience

INTRODUCTION For almost a century following the Civil War, the principal resources for educating Blacks the college level were what have come be known as the nation's historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) that were established in 19 states, mostly in the South. Although a majority of these more than one hundred institutions were founded as normal schools (teachers' colleges), 18 were initially established as state land-grant colleges or were later given this status conform with federal requirements that the benefits of land-grant programs in the U.S. be available both Blacks and Whites (Ploski & Williams, 1989). American educational policy, as iterated in the 10th Amendment the Constitution, designates the states as having the authority exercise primary responsibility for education every level. However, for more than 130 years, America's federal land-grant legislation has been the center of this country's higher education policy debates. Nowhere have these debates been more evident than in the public policy arena of mission and resource allocation between the two types of land-grant universities: those chartered by the 1862 Morrill Act, which were originally and presently predominantly White; and those chartered by the 1890 Morrill Act, or the nation's public HBCUs (Nelson, 1985; Sink, 1982). This debate continues generate serious policy conflicts between national needs, state control, and institutional aspirations (Desegregation Case, 1992). West Virginia has become the center of a truly unique policy controversy, one without precedent in the entire history of America's land-grant movement (West Virginia State's Land-Grant Status Reinstated, 1991). THE HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE The Federal View As early as 1857, Congressman Justin Smith Morrill of Vermont recognized that federal intervention was necessary remedy the systematic exclusion of the less-advantaged common man from the benefits of higher education. To redress this situation, Morrill put forth legislation aiming to donate public lands the several states and territories which may provide colleges for the benefit of agriculture and the mechanic arts (Morrill Act of 1862, 12 Stat. 503). Morrill's bill was vetoed by President James Buchanan in 1859 on the grounds that it violated the traditional policy of the federal government, which had, up that time, left the control of education the states. On July 2, 1862, President Abraham Lincoln signed into law this landmark piece of educational policy, which provided the foundation for further development of America's major public postsecondary institutions. During the time since their establishment, the land-grant colleges and universities of the United States have grown represent the world a unique system of higher education (Brunner, 1962). Each state accepting the benefits of the 1862 Morrill Act was obligated establish at least one college where the leading objective shall be, without excluding other scientific and classical studies, and including military tactics, teach such branches of learning as are related agriculture and the mechanic arts...in order promote the liberal and practical education of the industrial classes in the several pursuits and professions in life (12 Stat. 503). Currently, 51 such institutions exist in the 50 states. Similar institutions were established in Puerto Rico in 1908, in the District of Columbia in 1969, in Guam and the Virgin Islands in 1973, and in American Samoa and Micronesia (also known as the Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands) in 1981, and in the Northern Mariana Islands in 1986. Ten years after the first Morrill act was passed, the Senator from Vermont introduced a bill provide for the further endowment of the land-grant colleges. Though this bill was defeated in 1873, Senator Morrill was not easily discouraged. He garnered the assistance of two astute 1862 college presidents, Pennsylvania State University's George W. …

Keeping College Affordable: Government and Educational Opportunity.

As Congress debates the reauthorization of the basic federal student aid legislation, and as governors and state legislators cope with increasingly severe budgetary problems of their own, the issues of preserving college opportunity and sharing the burden of college costs are particularly critical and timely. This book assesses the role of government subsidies for higher education --especially but not exclusively federal student aid --in keeping college affordable for Americans of all economic and social backgrounds. The authors examine the effects of student aid policies of the last twenty years. They address several vital questions, including: Has federal student aid encouraged the enrollment and broadened the educational choices of disadvantaged students? Has it made higher education institutions more secure and educationally more effective --or has it raised costs and prices as schools try to capture additional aid? Has federal student aid made the distribution of higher education's benefits, and the sharing of costs, fairer? And what are the likely trends in patterns of college affordability?Drawing on their analysis, the authors highlight some of the principal dimensions of policy choice on which the debate has focused, as well as some that have been relatively neglected. Building upon their conclusion that student aid works, they propose reforms that would bolster the role of income-tested aid in the overall student financing picture. McPherson and Schapiro recommend a number of incremental reforms that could improve the effectiveness of existing federal aid programs and present a proposal to replace a substantial fraction of state-operating subsidies to colleges and universities with expanded federal aid.

The importance of mature, part-time students to higher education in the U.K.

This paper assesses the contribution made by mature part-time students to the statistics on higher education. It shows that part-time numbers currently account for approximately 40% of total student numbers in the UK, 33% of university students, (mostly in the Open University) and 43% of the total in polytechnics and colleges, (1989–90 figures). The majority are mature people, over 25 years of age, who combine both education and employment. The principal change over the past ten years has been the increasing proportion of women, who now form more than 44% of the total number of students and 42% of the part-time total. A theoretical analysis is carried out, using the Human Capital model, which shows that part-time higher education might produce significant rates of return, both to the individual and society. It is noted that most of the research efforts in the UK, into the benefits of higher education, have concentrated on young, 18–21 year olds, who study full-time, and that current government policy is primarily concerned with improving the participation rate of this age group. This paper concludes that there is sufficient evidence to warrant a more thorough investigation of the costs and benefits of part-time study and suggests that there is considerable potential for expansion in this area.

Financing higher education in India

This paper is an attempt to analyse the present pattern of funding higher education in India and to discuss the desirability and feasibility of various alternative methods of funding the same. Higher education in India is basically a state funded sector. But as higher education benefits not only society at large, but also individuals specifically, and as it attracts relatively more privileged sections of the society, there is a rationale for shifting the financial burden to the individual domain from the social domain.

The Justification of Equal Opportunity

As a preliminary to the justification of equal opportunity, we require a few words on the concept. An opportunity is a chance to attain some goal or obtain some benefit. More precisely, it is the lack of some obstacle or obstacles to the attainment of some goal(s) or benefit(s). Opportunities are equal in some specified or understood sense when persons face roughly the same obstacles or obstacles of roughly the same difficulty of some specified or understood sort. In different contexts we might have different sorts of benefits or obstacles in mind. But in the current social context, and in the context of this discussion, we refer to educational and occupational opportunities, chances to attain the benefits of higher education and of socially and economically desirable positions, benefits assumed to be desired by many or most individuals, other things being equal. And we generally divide obstacles into two broad classes: those imposed by the social system or by other persons in the society, for example, the hardships of life in the lower economic classes or barriers from prejudices based on race, sex, or ethnic background; and those imposed by natural disabilities, for example, low intelligence or lack of talents.The initial question is whether a moral society is obligated to create equality in opportunities in the senses just defined. I shall assume here initially that there is some such obligation on the part of society or the state, although I shall specify its nature and limits more precisely below. With the exception of certain libertarians, almost everyone, liberal and conservative alike, agrees in this assumption.

Tax reform and individual giving to higher education

Higher education benefits from a number of special provisions of U.S. tax laws. One of the most important is the deducibility of charitable contributions. One effect of recent proposals for tax reform would be to increase the net cost to donors of making such gifts, thereby reducing current tax incentives to give. Higher education would be especially impacted by such proposals because of its dependence on gifts from high income donors and on gifts of appreciated property. Simulations of taxpayer behavior under the assumption of a passive response by higher education institutions and contributors imply that tax reform could lead to a significant reduction in giving.

The Facilitation of Attainment Aspirations

Within the context of the restructuring of higher education and possible changing perceptions about the benefits of higher education among those involved, the impact of selected structural and social psychological variables upon the transition of a group of young people from Year 12 of high school to higher education and/or the workforce is examined. The data reveal that the transition from high school to tertiary education is dependent upon social origins, prior school achievements and aspirations as well as on the processes of interpersonal encouragement and academic self-assessment. Such dependence differs between the sexes. Specifically where educational aspirations are constant social background is more important for men than women while perceived encouragement from significant others, academic self- assessment and academic achievement are more important for women.

Rethinking the Benefits of Higher Education

Rethinking the Benefits of Higher Education

A Further Look at the Hansen-Weisbrod-Pechman Debate

An intergenerational model of the income distribution, including educational effects, is presented. It is used to analyze issues in the debate over equity effects of subsidies for higher education. In particular, the analysis supports Pechman's view that conventional net benefit calculations are poor indicators of such equity effects. In this Journal [4, 7, 8, 9, 11, 13, 14] and elsewhere [16, references there], Hansen and Weisbrod, Pechman, and others have debated the equity effects of subsidized tuition for higher education. At the heart of the debate are net benefit calculations presented by Hansen and Weisbrod [7]. Pechman's critical view of these calculations may be summarized in his own words [16, p. S256]: The traditional way of looking at the burdens and benefits of higher education is to distribute the net benefits received by students by the income classes of parents (taxpayers). This sweeps the problem created by the intergenerational nature of the benefit transfer under the rug. It seems to me that a more useful way of looking at the problem is to acknowledge that the benefits of public higher education are received by one generation while the costs are paid by another and that there is no way of merging the benefits and costs in one distribution to evaluate the equity of the system. If such net benefit calculations do not measure the equity effects of subsidized tuition, what calculations do? Intuitively, the issue involves comparison of two societies identical in all respects except that one subsidizes higher education more generously. As time passes, will a difference in distributional The author is Professor of Economics, University of California, San Diego. * Richard Attiyeh and two anonymous referees provided most helpful comments. This research was supported by NSF grant SOC74-15238. [Manuscript received May 1975; accepted June 1976.] The Journal of Human Resources * XII * 2 This content downloaded from 157.55.39.207 on Thu, 20 Oct 2016 04:05:27 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 148 1 THE JOURNAL OF HUMAN RESOURCES equality develop between the societies, and in which direction? Analytically, a natural approach to this question is to construct a complete intergenerational model of the size distribution of income, including higher education variables and tuition subsidy parameters; then to derive income distribution indicators and analyze the sensitivities of the indicators to changes in the subsidy parameters, and, in particular, to see whether distributional inequality increases or decreases with an increase in the rate of subsidization. Sections I and II present an appropriate intergenerational model. In principle, a sufficiently elaborated version of the model, fit to appropriate data, might yield a respectable estimate of the equity effects of higher educational subsidies. However, the appropriate data are not available, and the needed elaborations of the model would be major projects in themselves. Therefore, this paper sets two more modest goals. The first is to propose a promising approach for analyzing the subsidization issue. The second is to use the model in sorting out the logic of the net benefit calculations referred to in the Pechman quotation. Sections III and IV concern the second goal. The model will yield a measure-call it the equity measure-of the sensitivity of income inequality to the level of higher educational subsidy. The equity measure will represent what we would like to know, but cannot estimate directly due to lack of data. The model will also yield a net benefit measure of the sort referred to in the Pechman quotation. The net benefit measure will represent what we can directly estimate from available data (as Hansen and Weisbrod [7] have done). The Hansen-Weisbrod-Pechman debate will be interpreted as a debate over the following proposal: that the net benefit measure be used as a proxy for the equity measure. Hansen and Weisbrod might be identified with the affirmative, Pechman with the negative. It turns out in the model that the equity measure is not well proxied by the net benefit measure, thus favoring Pechman's side. Of course, it should be emphasized that the true debate (as opposed to my characterization of it) is about equity and net benefits in real life, not in a highly simplified model. However, if the logical connection between equity and net benefits does not hold up in a simple economy, it seems improbable that it will hold up in a complicated one.

Note on the Intergenerational Transfer of Public Higher-Education Benefits

The traditional way of looking at the burdens and benefits of higher education is to distribute the net benefits received by students by the income classes of parents (taxpayers). This sweeps the problem created by the intergenerational nature of the benefit transfer under the rug. It seems to me that a more useful way of looking at the problem is to acknowledge that the benefits of public higher education are received by one generation while the costs are paid by another and that there is no way of merging benefits and costs in one distribution to evaluate the equity of the system. The benefits of higher education are received by the students who attend college (although their parents may also feel better knowing that their children are being educated). The costs are shared by the parents, who pay for most of the out-of-pocket costs (tuition and room and board), the taxpayers, who subsidize higher education, and the students, who bear the cost of foregone earnings. Let us omit foregone earnings for the moment. The remainder of the costs are borne by a generation of people (either parents or taxpayers) who are, in effect, making a gift to those who are going to a public college or university. Of course, there is an understanding that each generation of earners will pay for the higher education of the succeeding generation. There is no practical way of obtaining a distribution of net benefits (or net burdens) by income classes in such a system, because the persons who receive the benefits are not the same persons who pay the costs.'

Equity Implications of State Tuition Policy and Student Loans

Many economists have for some time now advocated tuition increases, complemented by expanded student loan programs, at state-supported colleges and universities. The present system of state support, it is argued, does not contribute to economic efficiency in at least two senses. First, relative prices, facing the student consumer, between the public and private education sectors distort the true cost ratios in the two sectors. Second, the social benefits of higher education are doubtful (or of low value); therefore it is improper to drive a wedge between public and private rates of return to higher education. Most recently, the attack on subsidized state tuitions has rested on equity grounds: Not only do we have an inefficient system, but the poor are paying for it. Thus, many economists-and, more important, legislators -have argued that substituting loan programs for subsidized tuition will not only cure inefficiency but also will improve the equitability of our system of financing higher education. This paper is focused only on the equity effects of removing state tuition support and introducing loan finance. The efficiency arguments either are self-evident or depend heavily on the political and social values one brings to the evaluation of social benefits. The discussion of equity effects of a low-tuition policy has been flawed in three ways: 1. The distribution of benefits and costs has been measured in terms of transfers from the taxpaying public to children whose parents are of prime earning age, thus failing to specify the permanent income of beneficiaries and payers. 2. The criterion of equity being used has not been made clear. If transfers are intergenerational, what constitutes equity? Is the gain in income by some to be weighted differently from the losses of others?