 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
 |
NIDRR Seeks Reviewers [September 28, 2007] Department Of Education Funds Project To Measure Student Outcomes [September 27, 2007] Accountability And Transparency In Higher Education [September 26, 2007] How The U.S. Compares To Other Countries In Higher Education [September 25, 2007] Panel Discussions On Higher Education Accreditation [September 24, 2007] National Profile On Use, Health Benefits, And Disparities Of Preventive Care [September 21, 2007] Minority Enrollment In Higher Education [September 20, 2007] Recent Demographic Changes In Relation To Health Care [September 19, 2007] Significant Differences In State Health Spending [September 18, 2007] Students And Information Technology [September 17, 2007] How Higher Education Improves Quality Of Life [September 14, 2007] Evolving Organizational Models Of Academic Health Centers [September 13, 2007] College Capacity Increases [September 12, 2007] Congress Passes $20 Billion Student Aid Package [September 11, 2007] Research Funding Flattens As Health Costs Climb [September 10, 2007] Mini-Digest Of Education Statistics [September 7, 2007] Importance Of Health Care To Voters [September 6, 2007] Rising Health Care Costs Continue to Pose A Challenge [September 5, 2007] U.S. Obesity Policies Are Failing [September 4, 2007] More Than 300 Counties Now “Majority-Minority” (August 17, 2007) Use Of Temporary Nurses Does Not Lower Quality Of Care [August 16, 2007] Accountability And The Higher Education Act [August 15, 2007] To Teach Or Not To Teach? [August 14, 2007] Differential Characteristics Of Two-Year Postsecondary Institutions [August 13, 2007] 2007 Status Report On The Pell Grant Program [August 10, 2007] Official Discusses Department Of Education's Efforts To Change Higher Education [August 9, 2007] Attitudes Of Employees Currently In And Students About To Enter The Workforce [August 8, 2007] Allied Health Tutorial Site Online [August 6, 2007] Growing Older In America [August 3, 2007] Tenure Track Faculty Job Satisfaction Survey Results [August 2, 2007] Cell Phones As An Impediment To Conducting Survey Research [August 1, 2007] The National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research (NIDRR) is seeking peer reviewers to evaluate its Field Initiated Project (FIP) applications. NIDRR receives more than 200 FIP applications per year. Generally, peer reviewers serve for three-year terms on standing panels with one review per year. NIDRR uses the following standing panels: 1) employment outcomes; 2) health and function; 3) technology for access and function; 4) participation and community living; and (5) statistics, outcomes research, disability studies, rehabilitation science, and policy. You may nominate yourself or others to serve as reviewers. If interested in participating as a reviewer, submit the following three items to David Keer at david.keer@ed.gov by November 1: If you nominate another individual, please contact the individual to determine if the prospective nominee is willing to serve. Please provide the same aforementioned information. Department Of Education Funds Project To Measure Student Outcomes Today, the Education Department plans to announce that it is giving three college associations a $2.4 million grant to help them assess existing mechanisms and develop new tests and other tools to measure student outcomes on a wide range of skills. The proposal put forward by the three associations — the Association of American Colleges and Universities (AACU), the American Association of State Colleges and Universities (AASCU), and the National Association of State Universities and Land-Grant Colleges (NASULGC), which the Education Department chose over several competing proposals in a competition— aims to find ways to measure the broad array of learning outcomes that most colleges and universities consider essential to a good education such as those AACU laid out in its recent report, “College Learning for the New Global Century.” NASULGC will lead the way on a project that will review the effectiveness of three major standardized measures of general education skills that are part of the Voluntary System of Accountability that the land-grant association and AASCU are crafting. AASCU's part of the project (in which AACU will also participate) will involve an attempt to try to develop tools for measuring student outcomes that aren't easily measured such as civic engagement, teamwork, personal and social responsibility. This effort aims to respond to the idea that many of the traits that a good liberal arts or general education develops are hugely important, but not easily measurable and hence difficult to assess. The goal would be to develop metrics or “rubrics” that colleges could use to measure some of those traits in their students. The third piece of the project, on which the Association of American Colleges and Universities will take the lead, seeks to tap into the significant work that many colleges have done to try to measure their students' development using electronic portfolios. Accountability And Transparency In Higher Education As an example of a response to a call by the Secretary's Commission on the Future of Higher Education for greater accountability and transparency, the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities (NAICU), which has challenged the Bush administration's efforts to expand its data collection activities in higher education, launched its own consumer-friendly Web site today. It is called the University and College Accountability Network (U-CAN) , comprised of profiles of hundreds of private colleges. It can be accessed on the Web at http://www.ucan-network.org/ How The U.S. Compares To Other Countries In Higher Education The 2007 edition of Education at a Glance prepared by the Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD) enables countries to view themselves in the light of other countries' performance. It provides a rich, comparable and up-to-date array of indicators on the performance of education systems. The indicators look at who participates in education, what is spent on it and how education systems operate, and at the results achieved. Some findings are: As a result of varying dynamics in the expansion of higher education, the United States has moved from first place for higher education attainment levels among 55-to-64-year-olds to fourth place among 35-to-44-year-olds and tenth place among 25-to-34-year-olds. Only 54% of entrants to higher education in the United States obtain a degree. Along with New Zealand, this is the lowest survival rate among OECD countries, where the average is 71% and as high as 91% as in Japan. The United States devotes a larger part of expenditure to higher education than do all other OECD countries (36.4%, against 23.9% on average) and a smaller part to primary, secondary and post-secondary non-tertiary (such as a Vocational Certificate) (57.8% against 66.5% on average), although the distribution of students across the different levels of education in the United States does not differ very much from that in other countries. For additional information, click Panel Discussions On Higher Education Accreditation An event at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) in Washington, DC on September 21 featured a keynote address by Charles Miller, chairman of the Commission on the Future of Higher Education known as the Spellings Commission, who talked about the group's recommendations and the need for reform. In the first panel, Judith Eaton, president of the Council for Higher Education Accreditation; Sara Martinez Tucker, under secretary of education at the U.S. Department of Education, who is also a Spellings commission member; and Arthur Rothkopf, former president of Lafayette College and a current senior vice president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, discussed the current state of the accreditation system and whether it really needs to be changed. AEI's Richard Vedder, who was also a member of the Commission on the Future of Higher Education, served as moderator. In the second panel, Indiana University law professor William Henderson, who has conducted research on law school rankings and on the data used to accredit law schools; Anne D. Neal, president of the American Council of Trustees and Alumni; and Jeff Sandefer, a higher education entrepreneur and the founder of the Acton MBA, reviewed and discussed possible substitutes for the existing process. Candace de Russy, a former trustee for the State University of New York, was the moderator. An audio version of that day's events can be accessed by clicking National Profile On Use, Health Benefits, And Disparities Of Preventive Care A new report demonstrates that there is significant under use of effective preventive care in the United States, resulting in lost lives, unnecessary poor health, and inefficient use of health care dollars. Following up on the National Commission on Prevention Priorities' rankings that demonstrate the most valuable preventive services for the U.S. population, this report: d ocuments the use of preventive care across the United States; estimates the health benefits for the U.S. population of increasing the use of preventive services from current utilization rates to 90 percent; quantifies disparities in use of preventive care by comparing the use of services by racial and ethnic groups to the white, non-Hispanic population; and gives special attention to cancer screenings by estimating the lives that would be saved if breast, cervical, and colorectal cancer screening rates increased from current screening rates to 90 percent among racial and ethnic groups. The report can be accessed by clicking Minority Enrollment In Higher Education Total minority enrollment at the nation's colleges and universities rose by 49 percent between 1994 and 2004 to more than 4.8 million students, while the number of white students during the same period increased by 6 percent to 10.6 million students, according to the American Council on Education's (ACE) Minorities in Higher Education 22nd Annual Status Report: 2007 Supplement. The report shows that while students of color continue to make gains in college enrollment, they continue to lag behind their white peers in the percentage of 18- to 24-year-old high school graduates enrolled in college, commonly referred to as the college participation rate. The release of this year's edition marks a new publication schedule for the highly regarded annual report that is widely recognized as the national source of information on advances made by students of color in higher education. Beginning in 2008 with the 23rd edition, ACE will issue the full Status Report every other year. ACE will release an abridged version of the Status Report in the interim years. The Status Report uses data from the U.S. Department of Education's National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) and the U.S. Census Bureau. It no longer relies on data from tables constructed by NCES. Instead, the statistics reported are based on author analysis of the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS). The status report can be accessed by clicking http://www.acenet.edu/AM/Template.cfm?Section=CAREE&Template=/CM/ContentDisplay.cfm&ContentID=23716 . Recent Demographic Changes In Relation To Health Care Demographic changes will have a profound impact on health care in the United States. Aging of the population, the percentage of individuals who can speak English, and the extent to which workers remain in the labor force will affect such important matters as whether there will be enough health personnel to provide care for the aged, the compatibility between English speaking health care professionals and non-English speaking patients, and the ability of indivudals to earn enough income to cover health care expenditures. A child born in the United States in 2005 can expect to live nearly 78 years (77.9) – a new high – according to a new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, “Deaths: Preliminary Data for 2005.” It is based on approximately 99 percent of death records reported in all 50 states and the District of Columbia for 2005 and documents the latest trends in the leading causes of death and infant mortality. The increase in life expectancy represents a continuation of a long-running trend. Over the past decade, life expectancy has increased from 75.8 years in 1995, and from 69.6 years in 1955. Data were compiled by the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS). According to a new report from the U.S. Census Bureau, nationally, nearly one in four persons between the ages of 65 and 74 (23.2 percent) were in the labor force (either working or looking for work) in 2006, an increase from 19.6 percent in 2000. States with some of the lowest rates of older workers in the labor force include West Virginia (15.7 percent), Michigan (18.8 percent) and Arizona (19.4 percent). (Michigan and Arizona were not statistically different.) Some of the highest rates were found in South Dakota, Nebraska and Washington, D.C., all with about one-third of this age group in the labor force. Among the 20 largest metro areas, Washington, D.C., had the highest percentage (31.8 percent). Others with high percentages include Boston (28.1 percent), Dallas-Fort Worth (27.9 percent), Minneapolis-St. Paul (27.4 percent) and Houston (26.5 percent), none of which were statistically different from the other. In 2006, about 8 million more individuals spoke a foreign language at home than in 2000. Nationally, one in five (19.7 percent) over age five spoke a language other than English at home, compared to 17.9 percent in 2000. Among states, California (42.5 percent) had the highest percentage in this category, followed by New Mexico (36.5 percent) and Texas (33.8 percent). About one in 10 California households were linguistically isolated, which means everyone 14 or older in those households had at least some difficulty speaking English. More information about the NCHS report on the aging of the population can be accessed at Additional information about the Census Bureau report can be accessed by clicking Significant Differences In State Health Spending Individuals who live in the New England and Mideast regions of the United States spend significantly more on health care than those who live elsewhere in the nation, according to a federal government report appearing in the journal Health Affairs . Nine northeastern states (MA, ME, NY, CT, DE, RI, VT, WV, PA) and Alaska spent 20 percent more than the U.S. average on health care services in 2004 ($6,345 per capita versus $5,283) -- a wide disparity partly attributable to the concentration of physicians, the age distribution of a state's population, residents' income levels, and the number of persons who lack health insurance, say officials from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) in the journal's September 18 Web edition. Four states (MA, NY, CT, DE) had high per capita personal income. Six states (MA, NY,CT, RI, VT, and PA) had among the highest concentrations of physicians to population and among the lowest shares of the uninsured population. The article can be accessed by clicking http://content.healthaffairs.org/cgi/content/full/hlthaff.26.6.w651/DC1 . Students And Information Technology A 2007 Educause Center for Applied Research (ECAR) study is a longitudinal extension of the 2004, 2005, and 2006 ECAR studies of students and information technology. The study, which reports noticeable changes from previous years, is based on quantitative data from a spring 2007 survey and interviews with 27,846 freshman, senior, and community college students at 103 higher education institutions. It focuses on what kinds of information technologies these students use, own, and experience; their technology behaviors, preferences, and skills; how IT impacts their experiences in their courses; and their perceptions of the role of IT in the academic experience. The results of the study can be accessed by clicking How Higher Education Improves Quality Of Life From earnings to pension plans and overall community vigor, higher education yields significant rewards to its recipients and society as a whole, shows a new College Board study. The typical college graduate who enrolls at age 18 earns enough in the first 11 years to compensate for taking time out of the labor force and borrowing to pay the full tuition at a public four-year college, the study shows. In addition to higher personal earnings, the study also reports that the availability of employer-sponsored health benefits and pension plans increases with every level of education completed. For example, almost 70 percent of full-time employees with at least a bachelor's degree have access to pension plans while only 53 percent of high school graduates have that access. The percentage drops to 32 for employees who do not have a high school degree. Likewise, the level of participation in available pension plans increases as education levels increase. College graduates are also more likely than others to engage in behaviors that improve their health. Additionally, society reaps significant rewards when a higher percentage of its residents have postsecondary education, the study shows. Higher rates of volunteering, voting and donating blood correspond to higher levels of education as do lower unemployment and poverty rates. Similarly, socially valuable behaviors, such as tolerance for the opinions of others, seem to increase with education. A more educated workforce also would lead to higher wages for all. The report can be accessed by clicking Evolving Organizational Models Of Academic Health Centers Dr. Steven Wartman, President of the Association of Academic Health Centers (AHC) notes that there is a perception that a wide variety of academic health center organizational models abound, when in fact only two prototypical models have dominated over the last decades: (1) the fully integrated model, where academic, clinical and research functions report to one person and one board of directors; and (2) the split/splintered model, where the academic and clinical/health system operations are managed by two or more individuals reporting to different governing boards. The latter is best exemplified by a defined affiliated relationship between a medical school and a teaching hospital. Obviously, there are various nuances of the two types, including locating the responsibility for a faculty practice plan. In the years ahead, a continuing horizontalization and consolidation of the academic health center enterprise throughout its mission and management areas will be apparent. As this happens, academic health centers will undergo a process of accelerated change as the result of strategic planning processes that drive leaders to make the hard decisions about resource allocation. These changes are essential to ensure accountability at higher levels of authority as well as buy-in from faculty and staff, who must adapt to new rules that involve more interdisciplinary collaboration and institutional team play. An extension of his remarks can be accessed by clicking A report released yesterday by the National Center for Education Statistics shows that the number of American postsecondary institutions grew by 1.5 percent from fall 2005 to fall 2006, and that the number of degrees they awarded grew by 3 percent from academic 2004-5 to academic 2005-6. Almost all of the growth in the number of institutions came in the for-profit sector although those institutions continue to educate a relatively small proportion of the overall total college population. The Education Department report, “Postsecondary Institutions in the United States: Fall 2006 and Degrees and Other Awards Conferred: 2005-06,” contains a wealth of other data on tuition prices and other costs to students. The report can be accessed by clicking http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2007/2007166.pdf . Congress Passes $20 Billion Student Aid Package Congress approved legislation that will cut subsidies to lenders who participate in the federal student loan program and use the savings to boost Pell Grants. The Senate passed The College Cost Reduction and Access Act (H.R. 2669) September 7 on a 79-12 vote and the House followed with an equally overwhelming vote of 292-97. The bill that will go to the president also cuts the student loan interest rate in half, a key promise made by the House Democrats in the 2006 election campaign. The administration has indicated that the president will sign the legislation, despite some reservations about specific provisions in the package. The final bill went further than the president requested and cuts $20 billion in subsidies. Subsidies paid to for-profit lenders will fall by .55 percent and by .40 percent to non-profit lenders. Most of the savings will be used to boost Pell Grant funding from the current level of $4,310 to $4,800 in the 2008-09 and 2009-10 academic years, $5,000 in the 2010-11 and 2011-12 academic years, and $5,400 in 2012-13. Other savings from the subsidy cuts will be used to reduce the interest rate on new federal student loans from the current level of 6.8 percent to 3.4 percent. This reduction applies only to subsidized loans and will be phased in over four years after which time the interest rates will return to the current level unless new legislation is enacted to extend the reduction. In an effort to help students manage repayment, student loan payments will be limited to a reasonable percentage of income to assist borrowers who are unable to repay their loans. Overall, this bill makes the largest changes since legislation in the form of the Guaranteed Student Loan (GSL) program was established in 1965.
Research Funding Flattens As Health Costs Climb Total U.S. investment in health-related research grew by a modest 4.2% from 2005 to 2006, significantly slower than the 6.8% increase in U.S. health costs, according to a report released by Research!America. The nation spent approximately $116 billion last year on research to find new ways to treat, cure, and prevent disease and disability. This amount represents a decrease relative to total health costs. For every dollar spent on health overall, 5.5 cents went to research in 2006, the smallest portion since 2001.This decline continues a trend that started in 2005, following a flattening in federal research spending that began in 2004. The report can be accessed by clicking Mini-Digest Of Education Statistics A new publication from the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES is a pocket-sized compilation of statistical information covering the broad field of American education from kindergarten through graduate school. The statistical highlights are excerpts from the Digest of Education of Statistics, 2006 . The publication can be accessed by clicking http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2007/2007067.pdf . Importance Of Health Care To Voters Iraq continues to lead the list of issues the public most wants the government to address, with 42% naming it as one of the top two issues. Health care is once again the second most mentioned issue, and the top domestic issue, with 27% citing it. With the primary campaign heating up, the poll also asks a more immediate question -- what does the public want the presidential candidates to talk about in the campaign right now -- with slightly different results emerging. Health rises sharply for Democrats, with the same percentage mentioning Iraq (42%) and health care (42%) -- the first time the two issues have been tied. Health climbs to the number two issue for Republicans -- 32% cite Iraq as the most important issue, with health care at 21%, followed by terrorism at 16% and immigration and the economy, both at 15%. The August tracking poll also continues to examine individuals' thoughts about the presidential candidates' positions on, and commitment to, health care as an issue. The poll is part of a broader effort by the Kaiser Family Foundation to provide a central hub for resources and information about health policy issues in the 2008 election. The poll can be accessed by clicking http://www.kff.org/kaiserpolls/h08_pomr083007pkg.cfm . Rising Health Care Costs Continue to Pose A Challenge U.S. Obesity Policies Are Failing Adult obesity rates rose in 31 states last year, according to the fourth annual F as in Fat: How Obesity Policies are Failing in America, 2007 report from the Trust for America's Health (TFAH). Twenty-two states experienced an increase for the second year in a row; no states decreased. A new public opinion survey featured in the report finds 85 percent of Americans believe that obesity is an epidemic.Mississippi topped the list with the highest rate of adult obesity in the country for the third year in a row and is the first state to reach a rate of over 30 percent (at 30.6 percent). Colorado was the leanest state again this year, however, its adult obesity rate increased over the past year (from 16.9 to 17.6 percent). Ten of the 15 states with the highest rates of adult obesity are located in the South. Rates of adult obesity now exceed 25 percent in 19 states, an increase from 14 states last year and nine in 2005. In 1991, none of the states exceeded 20 percent. The report also finds that rates of overweight children (ages 10 to 17) ranged from a high of 22.8 percent in Washington, D.C. to a low of 8.5 percent in Utah. Eight of the ten states with the highest rates of overweight children were in the South. More Than 300 Counties Now “Majority-Minority” Nearly one in every 10 of the nation's 3,141 counties has a population that is more than 50 percent minority. In 2006, eight counties that had not previously been majority-minority pushed the national total to 303, the U.S. Census Bureau reported today. For more information, click http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/www/releases/archives/population/010482.html . Use Of Temporary Nurses Does Not Lower Quality Of Care Hospitals' use of temporary nurses does not lower quality of care for patients because the supplemental nurses have the same qualifications as permanent nurses and in some cases are more qualified, according to a recent study in the Journal of Nursing Administration . Lead author Linda Aiken, director of the University of Pennsylvania Center for Health Outcomes and Policy Research, and colleagues used data from the 2000 National Sample Survey of Registered Nurses to determine if qualifications differed between temporary and permanent nurses. The survey also was used to determine if nurse outcomes and adverse events varied according to the proportion of temporary nurses employed by a hospital. An abstract of the study can be accessed by clicking http://www.jonajournal.com/pt/re/jona/abstract.00005110-200707000-00005.htm;jsessionid=GG8W6tH5RT91JF5f05krLb74lJCQn8QpJncN7V3PFTTGtMSbj5ZN!-260396143!181195628!8091!-1 . Accountability And The Higher Education Act CHEA Update #40 by the Council for Higher Education Accreditation (CHEA) addresses the overall accountability footprint left by the Senate bill to reauthorize the Higher Education Act (S. 1642) as this affects both the federal standards for recognition of accrediting organizations and some of the other accountability-related areas for institutions and programs. While there are a limited number of changes to the language of the recognition standards (Part G, Program Integrity) in the bill, the net impact on accreditors and their role in accountability as compared to current law is nonetheless significant. Accreditors are to enlarge their scope of scrutiny in a number of areas that are currently part of accreditation review, take on new areas of scrutiny and alter accreditation practice as well. CHEA Update #40 can be accessed by clicking http://www.chea.org/Government/HEAUpdate/CHEA_HEA40.htm. Eleven percent of students who graduated with a bachelor's degree in 1992-93 chose a teaching career and remained in the teaching profession ten years later, according to a July 2007 report from the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES). Titled To Teach or Not to Teach? Teaching Experience and Preparation Among 1992-1993 Bachelor's Degree Recipients 10 Years After College, the report highlights the characteristics of college graduates who choose teaching careers, focusing on demographics, training, education levels, and retention of teachers who graduate with bachelor's degrees. The report can be accessed by clicking http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2007/2007163.pdf . Differential Characteristics Of Two-Year Postsecondary Institutions 2007 Status Report On The Pell Grant Program A new publication from the Center for Policy Analysis at the American Council on Education (ACE) provides a comprehensive look at the history and current state of the nation's largest single source of need-based grant assistance—the Pell Grant. The 2007 Status Report on the Pell Grant Program is the third status report produced by ACE since 2000. It updates the 2003 Status Report. The publication tracks key indicators of the growth and distribution of Pell Grants over the program's history and describes how these grants fit into the overall college financing options for low-income students. The report can be accessed by clicking http://www.acenet.edu/AM/Template.cfm?Section=InfoCenter&TEMPLATE=/CM/ContentDisplay.cfm&CONTENTID=23271 . Official Discusses Department Of Education's Efforts To Change Higher Education Sara Martinez Tucker remains confident that Secretary Margaret Spellings's campaign to change higher education has changed the public policy conversation in Washington and, more importantly, captured the imagination of the public. In a new interview, she says that Spellings has “hit a home run” in stimulating the “national dialogue” she set out to create. She defends the department's much-maligned work overseeing the federal student loan programs. And she urges Congress, in the budget and student aid legislation it is now considering, to focus the new funds it would provide on the low-income students who need it most. Her views can be accessed by clicking http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2007/08/09/tucker. Attitudes Of Employees Currently In And Students About To Enter The Workforce Conducted in partnership with AfterCollege, the largest career network specializing in recruitment at the college level, the Student and Alumni Survey by the Bernard Hodes Group offers insight into how two distinct groups, employees currently in the workforce and students about to enter it, seek employment. Particularly, how recruiters may need to shift their strategy when reaching out to these unique markets. The study surveyed more than 2,500 Baby Boomers, Generation Xers, and Millennials and revealed how employers can best reach student and alumni talent pools:
The report can be downloaded by clicking http://www.hodes.com/industries/healthcare/resources/AfterCollege.asp?utm_source=hu_aug07&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=aftercollege . Allied Health Tutorial Site Online A new interactive tutorial based in the U.K. teaches Internet research and information literacy skills and is aimed at students and staff in universities and colleges. It is free to use and takes around an hour to complete. The tutorial recommends key Internet resources for allied health studies, offers advice on Internet searching and website evaluation, and has a new section called "Success" to illustrate how the Internet can be used to support education and research in a variety of subject-related scenarios. This resource can be accessed at http://www.vts.intute.ac.uk/he/tutorial/allied. Every two years, thousands of older Americans answer questions about how they are feeling, how they are faring financially, and how they are interacting with their families and with others. They are participants in the U.S Health and Retirement Study (HRS) to understand the nature of health and well-being in later life. Now in its second decade, the HRS is the leading resource for data on the combined health and economic circumstances of Americans over age 50. The most recent HRS report can be accessed by clicking Tenure Track Faculty Job Satisfaction Survey Results A new report by the Collaborative on Academic Careers in Higher Education (COACHE), a research project based at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, has revealed that junior faculty place a high degree of importance on institutional policies and practices from the perspective of how they affect career success. However, junior faculty expressed less satisfaction with the effectiveness of those policies and practices. The comprehensive report highlights trends across the 77 colleges and universities that participated in the Tenure-Track Faculty Job Satisfaction Survey in either 2005-06 or 2006-07. Overall, the survey of 6,773 tenure-track faculty discovered that policies such as: an upper limit on teaching obligations; travel funds to present papers or conduct research; informal mentoring; and an upper limit on committee assignments are considered most important by early-career faculty to their success. This finding held true for males, females, white faculty, and faculty of color. Junior faculty of all groups rated financial assistance with housing as the least important policy. However, as compared to male faculty and white faculty, female faculty and faculty of color, respectively, found institutional policies significantly more important for their success. Female faculty and faculty of color expressing significantly less satisfaction in regards to how well they fit. Issues of inequity, in regards to how junior faculty members are treated within each department and how immediate supervisors evaluate their work, seem to be contributing to this problem. Without changes aimed at correcting these feelings of dissatisfaction, it is likely that colleges will continue to struggle to retain men and women of color in all disciplines and white women in fields in which they have been historically under-represented, like science and engineering." Cell Phones As An Impediment To Conducting Survey Research New technologies mean new ways of communicating, but it also creates unforeseen roadblocks. No one is more aware of this than those who maintain the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS) , the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's (CDC) largest, on-going telephone health survey system, tracking health conditions and risk behaviors in the United States yearly since 1984. Since its inception, BRFSS has used landline telephone sampling as a cost-efficient strategy for conducting health risk surveys of the US household population. However, in 2006, approximately 12 percent of US adults reported living in cell phone–only households. More than half of all adults living with unrelated roommates and one-in-four adults aged 18 to 34 years lived in cell phone–only households. As a result, population coverage provided by landline telephones has been eroded to pre-1970s levels, raising concerns about the representativeness of landline telephone surveys. With the growing popularity of cell phones, this trend is expected to continue. Whether surveys are conducted by landline or cellular, each presents its own set of challenges. Because the sample frame of cell phone numbers is not currently screened for known business or out-of-service numbers, it requires a lot more interviewer time to screen these numbers, thereby increasing the costs. From the respondents' side, many are still charged for the minutes they use—although this varies significantly from plan to plan. As a result, most researchers calling cell phone numbers are offering a remuneration to help offset the real costs incurred by respondents.
|
 |
|||
 |
|||||||
