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Begin New Search Topic Education Political Geography United States Content Type Journal Article Publication Year within 10 Years

1. Improving Transfer in California: Trial and Error in Statewide Reform and Local Implementation

Author:
Andrea Venezia and Su Jin Gatlin Jez
Publication Date:
12-2019
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
California Journal of Politics and Policy
Institution:
Institute of Governmental Studies, UC Berkeley
Abstract:
California’s community colleges play a wide range of crucial roles in providing educational opportunities for state residents, including providing transfer for students to four-year universities. Transfer students represent about half of each entering class in the California State University System (CSU) and almost one-third in the University of California. In 2010, California enacted legislation to streamline transfer from community college to the state’s four-year universities by creating a new transfer degree. It was implemented in 2012. This study examined how students experience policies and practices related to transfer from community college to California State University in the context of the new degree. Key findings reveal that, although there are improvements, capacity within the CSU and other factors have kept transfer complex and confusing for most transfer students. Major implications are that the state and systems need to continue to simplify the transfer process and strengthen supports for students.
Topic:
Education and Governance
Political Geography:
United States and California

2. Arizona: #RedforEd -- Governor Ducey Forced to Invest in Education

Author:
David Wells
Publication Date:
01-2019
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
California Journal of Politics and Policy
Institution:
Institute of Governmental Studies, UC Berkeley
Abstract:
The FY2019 budget saw the country’s largest movement of teachers descend on the state capital and force Governor Doug Ducey to scramble to save his re-election prospects. Gradually growing through social media, the #RedforEd movement culminated with 50,000 teachers and supporters walking out of classrooms and descending onto the Capitol grounds. Gov. Ducey deftly rose to the occasion from his initial one percent raise to a 20 percent raise by FY2021 before the walkout commenced, moving the pressure to legislators to seal the deal, which they did on May 3, 2018. Stronger revenue growth than prior years enabled the governor and Legislature to find the necessary funds.
Topic:
Education, Fiscal Policy, and State Funding
Political Geography:
United States and Arizona

3. Twenty Years of Morocco’s Development

Author:
Edward M. Gabriel
Publication Date:
03-2018
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
The Ambassadors Review
Institution:
Council of American Ambassadors
Abstract:
Twenty years ago, I arrived in Morocco as the new U.S. Ambassador. It was the beginning of a close-up view of the changes going on in Morocco for the next two decades. During my first meeting with King Hassan II, shortly after my arrival, he wasted no time in addressing Morocco’s agenda with the United States, challenging me on our nation’s positions, especially in regard to his Kingdom’s existential issue regarding sovereignty over the Sahara. This unexpected candid and warm exchange set the tone for regular meetings throughout my tenure during which concerns and grievances were voiced in private, rather than aired publicly. King Mohammed VI would continue this practice with me after his father’s death. My first few months in the country also coincided with the beginning of the first government of Alternance, led by opposition leader Abderrahmane El Youssoufi—a watershed moment for Morocco that many political analysts mark as the beginning of significant democratic reform and economic liberalization in Morocco after years of a strong-armed approach to governing and limited civil rights. Abderrahmane El Youssoufi, whose political activities had previously resulted in two years in jail and then 15 years of exile, became Prime Minister after his party, the Socialist Union of Popular Forces (USFP), won the most seats in the November 1997 elections. Since then, the international community has confirmed Moroccan elections as occurring in a fair and transparent manner. In 1998, the unemployment rate in the country was 17 percent and growing, with youths making up a disproportionate percentage of the population. Women lacked equal rights with men. The percentage of the population living at or below the poverty line for lower middle-income countries was around 28 percent, and more than half of the entire adult population was illiterate, with rates among rural women much higher. Electricity in the country reached only around 60 percent of the population, and almost a quarter did not have access to potable water. Infant mortality rates were 23 percent higher than the regional average, and maternal mortality ratios were nearly double the regional average. Overall, the micro-economic picture was in dire shape. The economy was too dependent on agriculture, accounting for 20 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) and heavily reliant on rainfall. Infrastructure was lacking throughout the country, and environmental degradation was widely apparent throughout the cities and the countryside, presenting a challenge to the growth of tourism. Of particular note, the northern part of Morocco was completely neglected after a series of militant actions created an irreparable rift between King Hassan and his citizens there. In contrast to the micro-economic indicators, by 1998 King Hassan had established a strong macro-economic climate: a low ratio of debt to GDP, a low budget deficit and an open, competitive economic system. He adopted International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank reforms that, had Morocco been a member of the European Union, would have qualified it for inclusion in the Monetary Union. Upon his death in 1999, King Hassan left the country unified, with a very strong nationalistic belief in country and King, a reasonably performing economy and, most important, with a solid commitment in its support for U.S. objectives regarding counterterrorism and economic openness, and in promoting peace in the Middle East. Twenty years later, where is Morocco today? Where is it headed tomorrow?
Topic:
Agriculture, Development, Diplomacy, Education, Democracy, Decentralization, and IMF
Political Geography:
Africa, United States, North Africa, and Morocco

4. Tuition as a Path for Affordability? The Pursuit of a Progressive Tuition Model at the University of California

Author:
John Aubrey Douglass and Patrick A. Lapid
Publication Date:
01-2018
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
California Journal of Politics and Policy
Institution:
Institute of Governmental Studies, UC Berkeley
Abstract:
In an environment of declining public funding and rising tuition rates, many public universities in the US are moving toward a “progressive tuition model” that attempts to invest approximately one-third of tuition income into institutional financial aid for lower-income and middle-class students. The objective is to mitigate the cost of rising tuition and keep college affordable. But is this model as currently formulated working? Utilizing data from the Student Experience in the Research University (SERU) Survey of undergraduates and other data sources, this study explores these issues by focusing on students at the University of California (UC) and 10 research-intensive public institutions that are members of the SERU Consortium. Focusing mostly on survey data from 2014, we find that increases in tuition, and costs related to housing and other living expenses, have not had a significant negative impact on the number of lower-income students attending UC or on their behaviors. Since the onset of the Great Recession, there has been an actual increase in their number—a counterintuitive finding to the general perception that higher tuition equals less access for the economically vulnerable. At the same time, there is evidence of a “middle-class” squeeze, with a marginal drop in the number of students from this economic class. With these and other nuances and caveats discussed in this study, the progressive tuition model appears to have worked in terms of affordability and with only moderate indicators of increased financial stress and changed student behaviors. This study indicates that tuition can and should be a part of the search for a viable funding model for many public universities, like UC, and that demanding lower or no tuition does not appear to be based on any substantial analysis of the correlation of tuition and affordability.
Topic:
Education, Economic Policy, Higher Education, and State Funding
Political Geography:
United States and California

5. The Role of Universities in Our Changing Economy

Author:
Jefferey Bleich
Publication Date:
03-2017
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
The Ambassadors Review
Institution:
Council of American Ambassadors
Abstract:
We grew up in a century defined by the Second Industrial Revolution. Today, that revolution is being eclipsed by a Digital Revolution. The uncertainty that we are experiencing in every aspect of our society is the same disorientation that occurred between 1870 and 1910 when the first Industrial Revolution ended and a second one began. It eventually vaulted nations like America and Australia to the top of the world order. But it also produced the Gilded Age, labor unrest, mass migrations, the Great Depression and two world wars. That era is closing, and we are now experiencing the new great dis­ruption that Silicon Valley promised. Digital technology—while solving crucial problems—is creating or compounding others. It has outstripped the capacity of government to control it and amplified the collapse of public confidence in democratic governments. It has inflamed rivalries between those who benefit and those who don’t. It has undermined standards—of altruism and of civility—that are necessary for us to find common ground. To appreciate this, we have to see where we’ve come from. A hundred and fifty years ago, we went through the same thing. Changes in technology revolutionized media, global integration and demographics. The changes were profound. In 1879, during a three-month period, both the electric light and a workable internal combustion engine were invented. Those two inventions alone produced over the next 40 years a dizzying number of new technologies. The telephone, phonograph, motion pictures, cars, airplanes, elevators, X-rays, electric machinery, consumer appliances, highways, suburbs and supermarkets—all were created in a 40-year burst from 1875 to 1915. Technology fundamentally transformed how people live. We’ve known for a while that the structures created by this Second Industrial Revolution were running their course, at least in advanced economies, and that it was being replaced by a new revolution, the digital revolution. Recently, the pace of these advances has started to build exponen­tially, and the pressure has been mounting. Everyone who has had to throw out their CD player for a DVD player for an iPod for an iPhone for Spotify knows what I mean. Further, the pace at which our world is being changed just keeps accelerating. Every year a new massive theory of disruption emerges: “the digital economy,” “the social network,” “the Internet of things,” “sharing economy” and “big data.” Last year, “machine learning”—where machines teach themselves things we do not know—was the buzzword. The word in Silicon Valley this year is “singularity”—where our species itself is altered by technology (gene-editing, bionics, artificial intelligence), creating a new hybrid species.
Topic:
Economics, Education, Digital Economy, Higher Education, and Digital Revolution
Political Geography:
United States, Europe, Australia, and North America

6. The Fund for American Studies: Celebrating 50 Years of Educating Leaders Throughout the World

Author:
Roger R Ream
Publication Date:
03-2017
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
The Ambassadors Review
Institution:
Council of American Ambassadors
Abstract:
In an interview a few years after he was awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, F.A. Hayek expressed his strong belief that the climate of opinion mattered much more than current politics. Having engaged for more than half a century in the intellectual debate between socialism and freedom, he came to the following conclusion from his experience: So far as the movement of intellectual opinion is concerned, it is now for the first time in my life moving in the right direction….When I was a young man, only the really old men believed in a free market system. When I was in my middle age, almost I myself and no one else believed in it. Now I have the pleasure of having lived long enough to see the young people believe again in it. That is a very important change. Whether this comes in time to save the world, I don’t know.[1] The Fund for American Studies (TFAS) was founded in 1967 with a mission focused on influencing the intellectual climate in the world by giving young people entering leadership positions a balanced perspective on political and economic systems. It was founded in the heat of the Cold War and during a period of growing unrest and even violent upheaval on college campuses. Many of the founders of the organization were actively engaged in international programs, including former Congressman Walter Judd and political organizer David R. Jones. While TFAS cannot lay claim to the title of ending the Cold War or calming the campuses, TFAS alumni have gone on to play key roles in world and national events. Several have served in Congress, including two serving today, Sen. Claire McCaskill (MO) and Rep. David Rouzer (NC). When TFAS was incorporated in February 1967, the founding articles stressed several priorities, including granting scholarships for preparatory studies for careers in public service and journalism and for summer programs stressing leadership development and internship experience. A distinct objective was to encourage foreign travel and study to encourage youth “to compare the American way of life with that of peoples of other lands and to better understand the problems confronting our Government in the conduct of foreign affairs.” This last objective wasn’t realized until 1993, when TFAS developed overseas institutes where college students from the United States could study with young people from other regions in the world. TFAS now organizes summer programs in Prague, Czech Republic, Hong Kong and Santiago, Chile. Many of the graduates of these overseas programs are now in leadership positions in their countries, including the president of the Central Bank of Latvia, a deputy minister in Georgia, and numerous serving in diplomatic positions or elsewhere in government or international business. TFAS alumni are contrib­uting articles to foreign policy journals, covering breaking news throughout the world, and participating in democracy-building initiatives and conflict resolution programs.
Topic:
Education, Intellectual History, and Higher Education
Political Geography:
United States and North America

7. Coming of Political Age: American Schools and the Civic Development of Immigrant Youth, Rebecca M. Callahan and Chandra Muller

Author:
Sara Z. Poggio
Publication Date:
01-2015
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Political Science Quarterly
Institution:
Academy of Political Science
Abstract:
In this insightful study, Rebecca M. Callahan and Chandra Muller show the importance of the national educational system of the United States in the social and civic integration of children of immigrants—one of the fastest­ growing segments of the U.S. population. The relevance of education, and public education in particular, has been highlighted, as mentioned by the authors, in the education program “No Child Left Behind,” initiated by President George W. Bush in 2001 and in “Race to the Top.” one of several programs initiated by the administration of Barack Obama. - See more at: http://www.psqonline.org/article.cfm?IDArticle=19338#sthash.ik0TWfYQ.dpuf
Topic:
Development, Education, Politics, and Immigration
Political Geography:
United States and America

8. The Education of an Anti-Imperialist: Robert La Follette and U.S. Expansion, Richard Drake

Author:
Edward Rhodes
Publication Date:
01-2015
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Political Science Quarterly
Institution:
Academy of Political Science
Abstract:
“History,” Winston Churchill is reported to have observed, “is written by the vic¬tors.” The losers, if they are lucky enough to avoid vilification, are airbrushed out. When it comes to our understanding of American foreign policies of the first four decades of the twentieth century, the history-writing victors have, for the most part, been liberal internationalists. Democrats and Republicans alike, in the wake of the Second World War, concluded that the task of making the world safe for America demanded active, global U.S. politico-military engagement. In the name of liberal international institutions, Washington's “Farewell” injunctions against entangling alliances would be consigned to the waste bin of quaint anachronisms.- See more at: http://www.psqonline.org/article.cfm?IDArticle=19341#sthash.wG3JMQox.dpuf
Topic:
Foreign Policy, Education, and War
Political Geography:
United States and Washington

9. “Creating a Home away from Home”: Chinese Undergraduate Student Enclaves in US Higher Education

Author:
Yajing Chen and Heidi Ross
Publication Date:
09-2015
Content Type:
Journal Article
Institution:
German Institute of Global and Area Studies
Abstract:
This paper draws on the theory of ethnic enclaves to study Chinese international student communities and their role in constructing Chinese undergraduate student experiences on US campuses. Enclave theory has primarily been used by sociologists to study immigrant and diaspora populations, but it can also provide an important analytical tool for scholars examining the internationalisation of student populations in higher-education settings. Student interviews and participant observation at a representative research-intensive, doctoral-granting institution in the American Midwest indicate that institutional and media characterisations of Chinese international student communities as closed and segregated are far too simplistic. Chinese student enclaves provide their members with crucial information, support, and social spaces that help them adapt to – and in turn change – their host institutions. Chinese students are active participants in and creators of campus cultures that are often in- visible to university administrators, faculty, and peers.
Topic:
Education, Migration, Immigration, Culture, and Students
Political Geography:
United States, China, Asia, and North America

10. Ask the Experts

Author:
Alicia Barcena, Franciso Rivera-Batiz, Georges Haddad, and Rebeca Grynspan
Publication Date:
03-2014
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Americas Quarterly
Institution:
Council of the Americas
Abstract:
Educational achievement has always marked and defined the middle class. Public policies that have led to mass access to education have led to a broad-based improvement in educational accomplishments, among them higher completion rates in secondary and tertiary education. This has led to more upward mobility in terms of earnings and types of occupation. Still, there has been an education depreciation effect. The higher the average years of schooling, the more demanding the labor market becomes in rewarding those educational achievements. Many non-manual jobs that require more schooling often see their rate of return to education deteriorate. As those non-manual jobs pay less for schooled employees, their workers fall below the income threshold characteristic of the middle class.
Topic:
Education
Political Geography:
United States and Latin America