Pursuit Of Prestige Research Articles

Institutional Striving and Gender Equity in Faculty Salaries and Employment

Climbing the ladder of institutional prestige is often promoted by leaders and policymakers in higher education, but there may be trade-offs associated with striving for status. This study examines the impact of Texas’s National Research University Fund (NRUF), which uses financial incentives to support institutions’ pursuit of prestige, on the salaries and employment of faculty. For full professors, the NRUF had a positive effect on the salaries of both men and women, but the policy also contributed to widening the gender gap in salary. In regard to employment, the NRUF had a negative impact on the share of women among full professors. The findings suggest that organizational pursuit of prestige may have unintended consequences for faculty gender equity.

Sports mega-events and changing world order.

Processes of making, sustaining, reforming, and un-making world orders are constants in global politics and development. Understood in the neo-Gramscian tradition pioneered by Robert Cox, ideas, institutions, and material capabilities combine to shape the range of possibilities for more and less stable orders. Sports mega-events (SMEs)-most prominently, the Olympic Games-have played an underappreciated role in this process. This paper examines the ways in which the Olympics manifested and supported the rise of globalized neoliberal hegemony in the early 1980s, the reconfiguration and erosion of this order through the 1990s and 2000s, and efforts to fundamentally revise this order in the new millennium. Particular emphasis is placed on the dual role of SMEs and the Olympics as manifestations of conspicuous consumption and the pursuit of prestige on the one hand, and as focal points for sanctions campaigns and boycotts on the other.

Gender Differences in the Pursuit of Prestige in Charitable Giving: An Experiment

Gender Differences in the Pursuit of Prestige in Charitable Giving: An Experiment

Measuring the unknown

PurposeIn the current digital era where online content is riddled with fabricated metrics and rankings, this research aims to investigate the underpinning mechanisms of the calculative practices which actors engage with to evaluate digital platform content in the absence of well-defined performance measures.Design/methodology/approachThe paper focuses on the online, photo-sharing platform Instagram which is devoid of common performance measures such as rankings, ratings and reviews. The authors applied netnographic methods to capture users' actions and interactions at the Greek Instagram community. The authors adopt a practice lens as informed by Schatzki's ‘site ontology’ to capture actors' calculative practices as organised by rules, teleoaffective structures and general and practical understandings.FindingsPlatform actors engage in aesthetic and palpable evaluations of other user profiles and their posted content. They employ permissible (e.g., using third-party apps) and illicit (e.g., lobbying and procuring engagement) tactics to measure and manage digital platform performance, fabricate metrics and blur others' evaluations, in pursuit of prestige and material teleologies. Their calculative practices are conditioned by an implicit social etiquette, which permeates the platform both horizontally and vertically.Originality/valueFirst, the paper captures and theorises the mechanisms which underpin actors' calculative practices for performance measurement in the absence of robust judgement devices. Second, it demonstrates how ambiguous assemblages of material and prestige teleologies, aesthetic and palpable evaluative regimes and implicit rules and practical expertise collectively invoke platform actors' calculative practices and the construction of performance measures. In doing so, it contributes to performance measurement literature via demonstrating how management accounting is implicated in the evaluation of digital platform outputs.Practical implicationsThe paper provides insight on how platform actors fabricate performance metrics, what they perceive as ‘good’ online content and what constitutes an ‘impactful’ user account or a ‘successful’ social media campaign. Such findings are valuable to management accountants, entrepreneurs and practitioners who seek to evaluate digital platform performance.

Branding: A Prosthesis of Identity

This article investigates the prosthesis of identity through the process of branding. It examines cross-cultural manifestations of this phenomena from sixth millennium BCE Syria to twelfth century Japan and Britain. From the Neolithic Era, humanity has sort to extend their identities using pictorial signs that were characteristically simple. Designed to be distinctive and instantly recognisable, the totemic symbols served to signal the origin of the bearer. Subsequently, the development of branding coincided with periods of increased in mobility both in respect to geography and social strata. This includes fifth millennium Mesopotamia, nineteenth century Britain, and America during the 1920s. There are fewer articles of greater influence on contemporary culture than A Theory of Human Motivation written by Abraham Maslow in 1943. Nearly seventy-five years later, his theories about the societal need for “belongingness” and “esteem” remain a mainstay of advertising campaigns (Maslow). Although the principles are used to sell a broad range of products from shampoo to breakfast cereal they are epitomised by apparel. This is with refence to garments and accessories bearing corporation logos. Whereas other purchased items, imbued with abstract products, are intended for personal consumption the public display of these symbols may be interpreted as a form of signalling. The intention of the wearers is to literally seek the fulfilment of the aforementioned social needs.

The Agon Motif: Redux. A Study of the Contest Element in Sport

Abstract The contest element of modern sport has its ancient roots in the “agon” of early Greek life. We begin with an overview of the material and historical continuities in the social development of sport, followed by a discussion of our suppositions regarding the original linkage of sport and war in terms of what we call “the agon motif”, and conclude with speculations about residuals of the agon motif in modern sport. We argue it is important to recognize that notwithstanding of the many transitions and transformations in the social development of sport since the agon of Homeric and Hellenic Greek cultures there are notable, long-standing, material and historical continuities in the structure of sport and the ethos of agonal contests. To better depict the relationships between the concepts of sport and contest, we highlight these vestiges of agon. We employ the phrase “the agon motif” to embrace both the concept of “agon”and the concept of “aethlos”. In a structural sense the agon motif refers to the overall properties, processes, and products of agonal competition, including contestants, spectators, battle grounds, sporting venues, festivals and spectacles, prizes and award ceremonies. Whereas, in an ideational sense, the agon motif refers to the ethos of chivalric competition associated with the pursuit of prestige (status-honor) and the active quest to achieve excellence (bodily and moral) through physical prowess in agonal contests wherein individuals place their reputation, moral character, and at times, their very lives at stake. There is a close link to the cult of masculinity and masculine domination in the Western world, since the primary avenues of pursuing the agon motif through war and sport are two of the most highly and rigidly “gendered” activities in the history of humankind. We suggest that the most fundamental dynamic of the agon motif as well as the most enduring residual of the agon motif in modern sport is the pursuit of prestige, honor and excellence through physical prowess. The ethical framework of archaic (heroic) agon represents the epitome of a morality of honor and an ethics of virtue and offers a largely unfamiliar picture from a contemporary viewpoint of winning and losing in sport.

O lucro adiado: conceito essencial da sociologia da literatura de Bourdieu

Com As regras da arte: a gênese e estrutura do campo literário (Les Règles de l’art. Genèse et structure du champ littéraire), Bourdieu revoluciona a Sociologia da Literatura e incute-lhe novo vigor. Diferente dos trabalhos de profunda erudição e intenso matiz filosófico da “Escola de Frankfurt”, ele focou na objetividade da análise empírica. O que, neste caso, não significa superficialidade: após a descrição dos fatos, Bourdieu empreende uma profunda análise do conjunto de forças que opera sobre os agentes do campo literário. Este artigo pretende discutir um dos elementos principais deste livro do sociólogo francês: o lucro adiado e a busca por prestígio.

Is Canada Ready for Nationwide Collaboration on Medical School Admissions Practices and Policies?

The report by the Association of Faculties of Medicine of Canada (AFMC) entitled "The Future of Medical Education in Canada: A Collective Vision for MD Education" includes recommendations to enhance admissions processes and increase national collaboration. To achieve these goals, the AFMC conducted a nationwide environmental scan appraising medical schools' readiness for national collaboration and progress toward establishing "made-in-Canada" admissions processes. A critical narrative review of the academic and gray literature was conducted as part of this environmental scan. Four core admissions practice and policy domains were identified: (1) social accountability strategies, (2) standardized admissions testing, (3) interviewing procedures, and (4) application procedures.In this article, the authors summarize and discuss the findings of this narrative review with regard to the four domains. They provide documentation of historical and present-day admissions factors relevant to Canadian medical schools' readiness for nationwide collaboration and a descriptive analysis of the facilitators and barriers to establishing "made-in-Canada" admissions processes.All four domains had facilitators and barriers. One barrier, however, cut across multiple domains-medical schools' pursuit of prestige and its potential to conflict with the goals of the other domains. The authors recommend holding a national forum to debate these issues and to advance the AFMC's goals, a process that will not be straightforward. Yet, national collaboration holds promise for applicants, medical schools, and Canada's diverse population of patients, so efforts toward this end must continue.

Monitoring Internationalization of Higher Education

Monitoring internationalization through global surveys shows its increasing importance in higher education and the centrality of preparing students for a globalized world for many institutions. The pursuit of prestige, the focus on student mobility and the persistent popularity of Europe as a priority, are some of the trends that require vigilance to avoid risk of exclusion for less well-resourced institutions and regions.

Legal Education in the Corporate University

State disinvestment in higher education has been a notable characteristic of neoliberalism all over the world, and the corporatization of universities has been the typical response. It has led to a proliferation of law schools with students paying high fees. Corporatization has also engendered a culture of relentless competition between universities, which manifests itself in league tables and rankings. The pursuit of prestige has compelled law schools to prioritize research over teaching, which poses a dilemma for what is taught and how it is taught. The contradictions of the corporatization thesis are graphically illustrated by the experiences of Australia, which might be described as the canary in the mine shaft. Although corporatization plays out differently in decentralized regimes with a substantial private sector, such as the United States, its impact on the legal academy in those places has been similarly profound. It is apparent that the dilemmas posed by corporatization for the legal academy require considered scholarly attention.

In Pursuit of Prestige: the Folly of the US News and World Report Survey

Oh my goodness! That is a sanitized version of my actual response when I realized in late December 2011 that another US News and World Report (USNWR) survey had arrived and that I had missed my opportunity to vote. Somehow, my questionnaire got lost among the large volume of mail that flows through my office. Fortunately, after some frantic and determined communication with USNWR, we were directed to the group running the survey (it is subcontracted to someone else) and I was able to submit my opinion. When I glanced at the ballot, I wondered how administrative voters at the 124 other colleges and schools of pharmacy listed would have informed opinions about the University of Michigan College of Pharmacy. They may know that a required research experience for all our doctor of pharmacy (PharmD) students is a key and highly valued feature of our curriculum because it was described at a 2011 American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy meeting and a few years ago in an American Journal of Pharmaceutical Education editorial. (1) They may know about the positive impact our faculty members and alumni have had on the profession of pharmacy, pharmaceutical science, and society since 1868. But would they know, for example, that we have instituted a new PharmD curriculum in the past 2 years that extensively uses active-learning techniques? Would they know the extent to which our academic medical center/health system and college are operationally, educationally, and philosophically integrated? I concluded that only a few of the USNWR survey respondents would know about these defining attributes and most of these individuals would be our graduates. I also concluded that, despite being in academia for 35 years, I knew comparatively little about many of the colleges and schools on the list, especially the newer ones. I was not always this invested in the periodic USNWR survey. In fact, when I received my first questionnaire as a dean in fall 2007, I casually completed and returned it. The results were published in 2008 and we were ranked fifth. That we were perceived positively by our fellow educators was gratifying, but because of the survey's limitations (eg, it only measured focused exclusively on our PharmD program, and based its conclusions on a relatively low response rate of 56%), I chose to ignore the results. I assumed everyone else, including our key constituents (university administrators, alumni, current, and prospective students), would either be unaware of the rankings or ignore the findings for the same reasons I had. I was wrong. Soon after the results were published, I started receiving comments from our PharmD students. They were upset that we had dropped from previous rankings (I think from third to fifth) and that we had tied (rather than outranked) Ohio State University (spillover from the 2 universities' storied rivalry in football and other sports). The students wanted to know what I was going to do to improve our standing next time (a tough question). Similar observations also arrived from our alumni. I was troubled but understood that both constituent groups are prone to ascribe disproportionate value to these ranking systems because they are not familiar with our internal assessment processes. Then, to my chagrin, our university administrators started commenting on the rankings. Fortunately, it was positive for us, as our college was one among many highly-ranked units on campus, and our alleged superiority provided fodder for playful one-upmanship with my University of Michigan dean colleagues, enlivening otherwise serious meeting topics. However, I also recognized that our administrators were using these rankings to argue for more resources as a means to protect or improve their/ our strong reputation, an administrative practice common both nationally and globally. (2) The collective interest in these ranking systems was troubling and I was faced with a dilemma: how to acknowledge our positive reputation among our fellow educators, while guarding against repercussions from future unpredictable shifts that inevitably occur in reputational surveys. …

Civic Engagement in Higher Education: Concepts and Practices

As the new millennium dawned, it became clear that American higher education had done some serious soul-searching in light of concerns that it was losing distinctiveness in pursuit of prestige. Moreover, many institutions began returning to their roots in response to exhortations to take a new leadership role in preparing students for active, responsible citizenship. Ernest Boyer struck a responsive chord when he proposed the scholarship of engagement as a means whereby the academy would employ its considerable resources to tackle the social, civic, and ethical problems that beset our communities (Boyer, 1996). In 1999, higher education leaders across the country articulated their commitment to the civic purposes of their institutions as vital agents and architects of a flourishing democracy (Campus Compact, 2000). The present decade has witnessed a widespread renewal of higher education’s historical commitment to public engagement and the growth of service-learning as a pedagogical approach to developing civic knowledge and skills. However, much work remains to be done. Social problems persist, locally and globally; today’s youth view political involvement with skepticism; civic learning is lacking, or lagging. That is the basis of Civic Engagement in Higher Education: Concepts and Practices.

The pursuit of prestige: the distribution of talented students in Chile's universities

Prestige is a valued capital for academic institutions.Althoughit isdifficult to measure itorevento establish its components, there are no doubts that a talented corpus of students is one of the assets ofhigher education institutions. For students'admission inChilean universities,anationalgrading system is used and therefore, universities compete in capturing the best students. In addition, there are state financed subsidies associated to this attribute. The use of this financial transfer indicator as a mean to measure this portion of academic "wealth" of the institutions is proposed. By using the well known Gini index, its distribution is analyzed. For the sake of comparison, we also propose the use of another "wealth" indicator based on the official results of a national accreditation process. The results show a clearly biased system measured by the two before mentioned parameters with no significant correlation within them. Possible causes for this behavior are discussed.

Change in Higher Education: Not Enough, or Too Much?

Change is a perennial struggle for campuses. Trustees, presidents, policymakers, faculty, staff, students, alumni, and community groups all seek to alter some aspect of colleges and universities. Common wisdom is that higher education faculty, staff, and administrators do not want to change and are slow to innovate. This article examines the challenges of change from a macro perspective, using insights from studies of change and leadership, and the perspective of change agents, to provide a new hypothesis of why change is difficult: the presence of too many simultaneous and competing change initiatives, not the unwillingness of campus constituents to engage in change, prevent progress. Concentrated institutional action is impeded by too many stakeholders interested in different types of change, a lack of synergy among change initiatives, an inability to create priorities, leadership turnover, a pressure for leaders to innovate rather than implement, and the movement away from core institutional purposes in the pursuit of prestige.

Man the Showoff? Or the Ascendance of a Just-so-Story: A Comment on Recent Applications of Costly Signaling Theory in American Archaeology

In several recent, and highly provocative papers, McGuire and Hildebrandt (Hildebrandt and McGuire 2002, 2003; McGuire and Hildebrandt 2005) have helped introduce costly signaling theory into American archaeology. While their efforts are commendable, we feel that their reinterpretations of western North American prehistory overstate the likely influence of costly signaling on the archaeological record. Only by overlooking a considerable body of ethnographic literature that indicates a more limited role for signaling are they able to characterize Great Basin and California hunters as motivated more by the pursuit of prestige than provisioning. We offer three specific challenges to their models: (1) while McGuire and Hildebrandt treat the issue as decided, the relationships among foraging, provisioning, prestige, and fitness is still actively contested among researchers; (2) while ethnographic studies suggest that some types of hunting and low-return, high-risk activities may indeed represent attempts by males to signal costly behavior, these activities contribute very little to the faunal and other residues that accumulate in the archaeological record; and (3) the theoretical underpinnings of costly signaling explicitly preclude the type of runaway positive feedback loops that Hildebrandt and McGuire implicate as the driving force behind an apparent cultural collapse in the Great Basin at the end of the Middle Archaic.

Faculty Salaries and the Maximization of Prestige

Through the lens of the emerging economic theory of higher education, we look at the relationship between salary and prestige. Starting from the premise that academic institutions seek to maximize prestige, we hypothesize that monetary rewards are higher for faculty activities that confer prestige. We use data from the 1999 National Study of Postsecondary Faculty (NSOPF), and regression analysis to examine the determinants of salaries. The results are consistent with the theory that faculty members are financially rewarded for enhancing institutional prestige. There is some evidence that the rewards are higher in science and engineering. Spending more time on teaching has no effect on salary, even in comprehensive universities and liberal arts colleges. Findings suggest that other types of institutions are emulating research institutions in their pursuit of prestige. Looking at faculty salaries through this lens raises serious questions about the implications of the current reward system in higher education.

In Pursuit of Prestige: Strategy and Competition in U.S. Higher Education (review)

A widely held view of American higher education is that it is "schizophrenic," according to Dominic Brewer, Susan Gates, and Charles Goldman and their book, In Pursuit of Prestige: Strategy and Competition in U.S. Higher Education. The system is, at once, the envy of the world, and broadly maligned as wasteful of its resources chasing unclear goals. These are not the polar positions of warring camps, but views held at once by many individuals.

In Pursuit of Prestige: Strategy and Competition in U.S. Higher Education (review)

In Pursuit of Prestige: Strategy and Competition in U.S. Higher Education (review)