Student Funding Research Articles

The ‘Ins’ and ‘Outs’ of Women’s/Gender Studies: a response to reports of its demise in 2008

In the spring of 2008, fuelled by the impending demise of the undergraduate Women’s/Gender Studies programme at London Metropolitan University, a series of public statements proclaimed the death of Women’s/Gender Studies. This article constitutes a response to these statements. Taking a broadly European view of the state of Women’s/Gender Studies, it argues that the discipline has established a research infrastructure, mainstreamed its undergraduate curricula and its pedagogical underpinnings, and continues to attract research funding and significant numbers of postgraduate students. It finally suggests that the ‘fate’ of disciplines is not teleological but iterative.

Within-district resource allocation and the marginal costs of providing equal educational opportunity: Evidence from Texas and Ohio.

This study explores within-district fiscal resource allocation across elementary schools in Texas and Ohio large city school districts and in their surrounding metropolitan areas. Specifically, I ask whether districts widely reported as achieving greater resource equity through adoption of Weighted Student Funding (WSF) have in fact done so. I compare Houston Independent School District (a WSF district) to other large Texas cities and Cincinnati (also using WSF) to other large Ohio cities. Using a conventional expenditure function approach, I evaluate the sensitivity of elementary school budgets to special education populations, poverty rates, and school size. Next, I estimate two-stage least squares cost functions across schools to evaluate the relative costs of achieving average outcomes with respect to varied poverty rates within and across school districts within metropolitan areas. I use these estimates to evaluate whether urban core schools on average spend sufficient resources to compete with neighboring schools in other districts in the same Core Based Statistical Area. I find first that widely reported WSF success stories provide no more predictable funding with respect to student needs than other large urban districts in the same state. I also find that in some cases, resource levels in urban core elementary schools are relatively insufficient for competing with schools in neighboring districts to achieve comparable outcomes.

The regional transnationalization of Latin American nursing

As a knowledge generator, the university has always worked towards the internationalization of its research function, based on the researchers’ autonomy. As from the 1990’s, as a consequence of the globalization process, this assertion is no longer restricted to the research function, but also includes the teaching function. Nowadays, the university should work to produce pluriversity knowledge, that is, contextual knowledge to the extent that the principle organizing its production is its possible application. As the knowledge is applied beyond the university walls, the initiative to formulate the problems one intends to solve and to determine criteria for their relevance is the result of sharing between researchers and users. In pluriversity knowledge production, unilaterality is replaced by interactivity, which has gained enormous power by the revolution in information and communication technologies. Technological development is considered one of the most important tools for internationalization and for the use of the web to strengthen distance education and build collaborative research networks. As a result of globalization, the university increasingly needs to find regional synergies and intensify networks so as to stimulate and expand existing forms of transnational cooperation and multiply them in the framework of bilateral or multilateral agreements, in line with principles of mutual benefit. In this sense, Latin American Nursing has made efforts to transnationalize teaching and research institutions and establish regional collaborative networks. Initiatives in this sense include welcoming foreign students, mainly in graduate programs; international associations involving consulting services to foreign universities; collaborative research projects, distance education, virtual learning, faculty mobility, on-line libraries, research funding for students and faculty, among others. Some regional actions are just beginning, such as student exchange at undergraduate level and curriculum adaptations, while others are flourishing, such as the Collaborative Networks coordinated by the Pan American Health Organization/World Health Organization (nursing in patient safety, mental health nursing, child health nursing, nursing researchers and HIV, care management, nurse migration, nurses in elderly health, nursing journal editors etc.); the offering of distance education, such as the courses offered to health professionals from Latin American countries with a view to skills development in drugs abuse control and the Electronic journal portal in the Virtual Health Library-Nursing, currently joining 18 Nursing journals published in Brazil, Colombia, Chile and Spain. Thus, transnational research centers need to be created, addressing themes and problems of specific interest to this region, and the dissemination of their research results needs to expand. In this context, the Latin American Journal of Nursing invites researchers from Argentina, Belize, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Dominican Republic, Uruguay and Venezuela to submit manuscripts about regional problems, with a view to encouraging new regional partnerships and contributing to the transnationalization of Nursing knowledge dissemination in Latin American nursing.

The Politics of Off-the-Shelf School Finance Reform

This article summarizes and evaluates two Off-the-Shelf school finance reforms that gained then waned in popularity over the past several years. The 65 percent solution claims that requiring all public school districts to allocate 65 cents of every education dollar “to the classroom” would drive substantial additional resources to children without increasing total spending, therefore improving the efficiency of public education systems. The 100 percent solution promotes a combination of decentralized school-based governance and budgeting, coupled with a district-to-school budget allocation strategy called Weighted Student Funding. We begin by evaluating the life cycles of these two reforms, concluding that the 65 percent solution has run its cycle, but that the 100 solution remains viable, mainly because it contains potentially more substantive reform elements. We point out that the research literature on productivity and efficiency of public schooling is far from decisive with respect to either shares of dollars allocated to the classroom or decentralized governance, despite bold claims of proponents of the solutions. Finally, we provide a series of empirical analysis and discussions of related research raising additional questions about the central claims of the reforms, including the claim that Weighted Student Funding is a panacea for funding inequities that persist across schools within large urban districts.

Funds of knowledge and discourses and hybrid space

AbstractThe findings reported on in this manuscript emerged from a design experiment conducted at a low‐income urban middle school intended to support the teacher in incorporating pedagogical practices supportive of students' everyday knowledge and practices during a 6th grade unit on food and nutrition from the LiFE curriculum. In studying the impact of the design experiment we noticed qualitative shifts in classroom Discourse marked by a changing role and understandings of the funds of knowledge students brought to science learning. Using qualitative data and grounded theory we present an analysis of the different types of funds of knowledge and Discourse that students brought into science class. We focus on how the students' strategic use of these funds augmented the learning experience of the students and the learning community as well as the learning outcomes. We discuss the implications these funds of knowledge and Discourses had on the development of three related third space transformations: physical, political, and pedagogical. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 46: 50–73, 2009

Social Work Students: Stress, Support and Well-Being

This appears to be the first piece of research in the UK to focus exclusively on stress, support and well-being of social work students. The findings of a postal questionnaire indicated no statistically significant differences related to gender, age, year of study or family commitments. Social work students enjoyed a high sense of personal accomplishment. They enjoyed their work with users. Students undertaking part-time work were subject to significantly more demands than other students. Important support was obtained from fellow students, course tutors and practice teachers, but significant numbers of students experienced problems with low self-esteem and emotional exhaustion. They would probably benefit from additional opportunities for mutual group support, individual tutorial support and stress management courses. Wider structural issues include the need for more adequate funding for students to reduce the need to undertake part-time employment. Findings from this study encourage a focus on intervention at different levels to reduce stress with individual students, groups of students, practice teachers, course staff and the institutional environment.

Decision on funding for degree students in England due in 2009

Students will have to wait until next year to be told of any changes to the bursary system, according to the chief nursing officer (CNO) for England.

Informed choice? The new English student funding system and widening participation

The new English system of student finance seeks to resolve a higher education policy trilemma created by government's desire to switch more of the costs on to students, whilst seeking to promote both increased and widening participation. The rationale for this new funding system is based upon orthodox economic analysis which, the authors argue, rests upon inappropriate assumptions. Survey evidence from recent entrants is presented to support this critique and to question whether the current system can promote both informed student decision-making and widening participation.

Equality of Opportunity and School Finance: A Commentary on Ladd, Satz, and Brighouse and Swift

This article discusses issues of justice concerning school finance with a focus on the development of a conception of equality of educational opportunity. Emphasis is put on discussing the views of the other contributors in this symposium. The main conclusions of the discussion are that (1) equity and adequacy are not inconsistent views because they address fundamentally different questions; (2) adequacy sets a floor under the education that the state owes to all children, but it does not relieve the state of the obligation to provide whatever additional education it chooses to provide equally; (3) equality of opportunity may be limited by conflicting rights; and (4) weighted student funding (WSF) is theoretically attractive because it emphasizes the funding of students rather than districts and is sensitive to relevant differences among them, however the level of theoretical agreement and empirical knowledge required to implement WSF in a nuanced way is not available.

Reflections on Equity, Adequacy, and Weighted Student Funding

Within the context of the school finance literature, the concepts of equity and adequacy raise a number of complex definitional and pragmatic issues. The purpose of this article is to clarify those issues and to use those concepts to evaluate the recent policy proposal called weighted student funding (WSF). Though WSF contains some equity-enhancing elements, it could fall short of its equity goals because of imperfect weights. This approach also fails to take full account of the concentrations of challenging-to-educate students and their effects on the distribution of teachers. In addition, the WSF proposal can be faulted for paying no attention to adequacy, potentially stigmatizing individual students, and placing so much focus on individual schools. A more complete evaluation of WSF would require a broader institutional perspective that extends beyond the equity and adequacy considerations of this article.

Equality, Adequacy, and Educational Policy

In this article I argue that the distinction between an adequate education and an equal education has been overdrawn. In my view, a certain type of equality—civic equality—is internal to the idea of educational adequacy. An education system that completely separates the children of the poor and minorities from those of the wealthy and middle class cannot be adequate for a democratic society. Educational adequacy should be tied to the requirements of equal citizenship. I also argue that my conception of adequacy in education has advantages over competing frameworks. I contrast its implications for a recent policy proposal that argues for weighted student funding (WSF) with the assessment of this proposal from an equality framework. While weighting in favor of the least advantaged students is important, the critical issue is whether or not such weighting is sufficient for bringing all students up to adequacy's high bar. This means that to be adequate, WSF must be placed in a larger policy context.

An equity perspective on access to, enrolment in and finance of tertiary education

Failure to achieve equitable access to university studies has contributed to turning the focus to the funding of higher education systems. This paper aims to review critically the literature assessing the effectiveness of existing financing schemes and changes in them as a means for reducing the prevalent under‐representation of students from a socially disadvantaged background. While the theoretical literature fails to be consensual with respect to the equity effects of student funding schemes, empirical studies remain scarce and inconclusive due to the lack of harmonized data that comprehensively describe the social make‐up of higher education attendees. For reasons of space, references are kept at a minimum but can be found elsewhere.1

Unions demand parity in funds for students

Unions demand parity in funds for students

Does the fear of debt constrain choice of university and subject of study?

The new student funding regime introduced by the 2004 Higher Education Act in England is predicated on the accumulation of student debt. Variable tuition fees, repaid by student loans, will increase average student loan debt on graduation. This article examines how fear of debt and financial constraints affect prospective students’ choices of where and what to study. Using data derived from a survey of about 2000 prospective students, it shows that financial issues constrain lower social class students’ choice of university far more than those from other social classes. It demonstrates that fear of debt is related to two key financially‐driven decisions – applying to a university with low living costs, and applying to one with good term‐time employment opportunities – but only for students from low‐income families. However, concerns about debt do not influence their choice of qualification and subject. The article concludes that low‐income students are more likely than their wealthier peers to perceive the costs of higher education as a debt rather than an investment.

Investment in Tertiary Education: Main Determinants and Implications for Policy

Many OECD countries are aiming to reform their tertiary education (TE) systems. This work explores the determinants of the investment in TE, with a focus on institutional setting of TE systems and private incentives to undertake years of schooling beyond upper-secondary degree level. For this purpose the article first develops estimates of three main drivers of graduation patterns, namely institutional arrangements of TE supply, availability of funding for TE students and private returns to tertiary studies. Second, the article empirically assesses how these three factors affect graduation ratios. Based on this analysis, the article then discusses policy-levers of TE investment and explores possible routes of reform for TE systems in OECD countries. The main findings are as follows: graduation ratios increase with private returns to TE as well with the autonomy and accountability of the supply of education. Lack or insufficient financial help to tertiary students negatively affects graduation ratios. There is a number of policy-levers to stimulate investment in TE. They include policies affecting labour market premia, the degree of flexibility of TE provision and the availability of funding for students. (JEL codes: I21, I22, I28, J24)

Predictors of timely doctoral student completions by type of attendance: the utility of a pragmatic approach

Federal government changes to the funding of doctoral students have focused the attention of university management on their completion rates. The aims of this paper are to inform the allocation of institutional resources in a manner that improves the likelihood of timely doctoral completions and to highlight a process that can also be used for analyses of other key indicators of progression and attrition. The analyses and model development used national data readily available to all universities, which are collected in a standard approach through the Graduate Destinations Survey (GDS). The findings show that the most important variable for timely completion was attendance (full‐time compared with part‐time), whereby in terms of full‐time equivalent (FTE) years of study, part‐time students were far more likely to complete quickly than full‐time students. For the full‐time students, the key predictors of timely completion were residency, field of study and English‐speaking background (ESB). The timeliness of part‐time students was predicted by field of study and ESB. This study confirms that there is considerable variation by discipline for timely doctoral completions. The pragmatic application and prospective test of the derived models present a variety of opportunities for research student administrators. For example, those full‐time students scoring highly represented a concentration of timely graduates more than 7.5 times higher than the lowest‐scoring group – almost an order of magnitude of difference. In short, university management could gain tremendous value from more widely using the data available.

Worried women, complacent men? Gendered responses to differential student funding in higher education

Changing financial arrangements for undergraduates have led to a growth in widening participation research. However, hardly any studies explore gender differences in the impact of differential funding on students' sense of well‐being, their financial coping strategies and their educational attainment. Our research shows that there are few gender differences in students' actual financial situation, reflecting the similarity of their social class backgrounds, but women perceive themselves to be under greater pressure. Women worry more about their finances and express lower levels of well‐being, but this has no overall effect on their attainment, since the strategies they use to ameliorate worry align with sound educational practice. Men express a more complacent financial attitude, which does not usually affect their attainment. There is, however, evidence of a gender‐related ‘threshold effect’ among students who express low levels of well‐being. Extreme worriers perceive themselves to be, and genuinely are, worse off than other students, despite the apparent homology of their social class backgrounds. In this extreme group, the strategies women devise to cope with worry, such as curtailing their student life and building supportive friendship groups, appear to consolidate their attainment, but men's complacency sometimes pushes them down into the lowest class of degree.

College tuition funding for HS students and others interested in teaching physics as a career:

College tuition funding for HS students and others interested in teaching physics as a career:

Spotlight on the States: Indiana Mandate for High-Ability Identification and Services Signed by Governor Daniels: Record Funding for High-Ability Students

Spotlight on the States: Indiana Mandate for High-Ability Identification and Services Signed by Governor Daniels: Record Funding for High-Ability Students

Examining Disparities in Mathematics Education: Achievement Gap or Opportunity Gap?

The so-called achievement gap in mathematics is reframed as a problem of unequal opportunities to learn experienced by many low-income students and many Latino and African American students. First, data are presented showing striking and persistent differences on standardized tests among students of different ethnic groups, and socioeconomic levels. Then evidence is presented demonstrating that opportunities to learn mathematics are not equally distributed among all students. Specifically, data show that African American, Latino, and low-income students are less likely to have access to experienced and qualified teachers, more likely to face low expectations, and less likely to receive equitable per student funding. The final section discusses how teachers and schools can provide more equitable opportunities to learn mathematics for all students.