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A vast literature has documented the inverse association between educational attainment and U.S. adult mortality risk but given little attention to identifying the optimal functional form of the association. A theoretical explanation of the association hinges on our ability to describe it empirically. Using the 1979-1998 National Longitudinal Mortality Study for non-Hispanic white and black adults aged 25-100 years during the mortality follow-up period ( N = 1,008,215), we evaluated 13 functional forms across race-gender-age subgroups to determine which form(s) best captured the association. Results revealed that the preferred functional form includes a linear decline in mortality risk from 0 to 11 years of education, followed by a step-change reduction in mortality risk upon attainment of a high school diploma, at which point mortality risk resumes a linear decline but with a steeper slope than that prior to a high school diploma. The findings provide important clues for theoretical development of explanatory mechanisms: an explanation for the selected functional form may require integrating a credentialist perspective to explain the step-change reduction in mortality risk upon attainment of a high school diploma, with a human capital perspective to explain the linear declines before and after a high school diploma. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Schooling generally is positively associated with better health-related outcomes-for example, less hospitalization and later mortality-but these associations do not measure whether schooling causes better health-related outcomes. Schooling may in part be a proxy for unobserved endowments-including family background and genetics-that both are correlated with schooling and have direct causal effects on these outcomes. This study addresses the schooling-health-gradient issue with twins methodology, using rich data from the Danish Twin Registry linked to population-based registries to minimize random and systematic measurement error biases. We find strong, significantly negative associations between schooling and hospitalization and mortality, but generally no causal effects of schooling. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Growing accountability pressures, accompanied by a lack of readily accessible measures of institutional performance, have led to an increasing focus on graduation rates. Although previous research has illuminated myriad factors influencing students’ likelihood of educational success, it has not paid adequate attention to how state contexts may shape student outcomes. I build on the small but growing body of research exploring the role of state characteristics in facilitating student success in higher education. Controlling for a range of state and individual attributes, I examine how one aspect of the state context––the distribution of enrollments in 2 vs. 4-year public institutions––is related to bachelor’s degree attainment of students attending public 4-year colleges and universities. The results suggest that the larger the proportion of students attending community colleges in a state, the higher the probability of bachelor’s degree attainment at public 4-year institutions. This appears to be a product of student sorting: the presence of community colleges facilitates sorting of students into higher education in a way that is associated with higher degree completion at public 4-year institutions. These findings have important implications for research on student outcomes and policies aimed at evaluating the performance of public 4-year institutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The expansion and diversification of higher education are twin phenomena that have been associated with the development of higher education in many countries around the world. This study attempts to use enrolment expansion as a lens to examine the effects of governmental intervention and market forces on diversification of the Chinese system, which has gone through the most profound changes of institutional patterns and the largest expansion ever seen in the world higher education community. Forming an analytical framework from the population ecology perspective, the resource dependency perspective and the institutional isomorphism perspective, this study investigates programmatic as well as institutional diversification of a population of 594 Chinese universities at the end of 2001. A result of these changes is the impulse towards more comprehensive patterns of knowledge, with the universities seeking to broaden their curricular coverage. Paralleling this pattern of programmatic convergence, Chinese universities are being structured in a hierarchical way according to functions and goals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The need for culturally appropriate health education materials for Hispanic populations has been widely recognized, and Spanish-language materials are available through a number of private and governmental organizations. We convened two focus groups to elucidate preferences regarding how health-related messages are obtained and to identify which educational materials available in Spanish were preferred by 26 recently immigrated Hispanic homemakers who had received 15 different bimonthly written documents as part of a community-based clinical trial to prevent household transmission of colds and influenza. Participants gave three primary reasons for volunteering to participate in the study: to provide better care for their children (96.2%, 25/26), to get information (96.2%, 25/26), and to get free products (47.1%, 8/17). Their primary sources of health-related information were relatives and friends (42.9%, 6/14), clinicians (35.7%, 5/14), mass media (14.3%, 2/14) or the emergency room (7.1%, 1/14); none mentioned the internet. Materials using either a question and answer or true/false format were clearly preferred, even when other options were more colorful or had lower reading levels. Printed educational materials may be ineffective unless they include a more systematic assessment of the user’s perceived needs for the information as well as consideration of format. In this population, a question and answer or true/false format and materials that could be shared with their children were greatly preferred. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For nearly a century, black immigrants from the West Indies have enjoyed greater economic success than African Americans. Several explanations have been proposed for this trend, but until now, none of these explanations have been subjected to systematic scrutiny. Recent efforts to adjudicate among them indicate that West Indian success can be attributed entirely to the “selectivity of migration”. This phrase refers to the tendency of people who migrate to be more talented and determined than the compatriots they leave behind. One implication of this discovery is that sympathetic observers should stop exhorting African Americans to behave more like West Indians. Such pleas are inappropriate because West Indian success is a consequence of choosing to move, not a consequence of Caribbean birth. A second implication is that persons of West Indian background remain vulnerable to racism. The new findings provide no evidence that positive selection protects West Indians from the negative stereotypes that Americans associate with black skin. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study seeks to explain why and how international graduate students from East Asia choose to come to Canada to pursue advanced education. A synthesis model is developed to explain their decision-making process, while a push–pull model is used to understand the strengths of and relationships among various factors that influence the choice of a country, institution, program, and city. The research sample comprised 140 students from China, Hong Kong, Japan, Korea, and Taiwan who enrolled in graduate programs at two large Ontario universities. The research findings reveal the influence of Institutional Academic Pulling Factors, Institutional Administrative Pulling Factors, the Canadian Environment, the Economics of Canadian Education, and the ease of Visa/Immigration. The research shows a three-stage process, guided first by the focus of the program (i.e., research-oriented vs. professional programs). Other factors—country, institution, and city—interplay simultaneously at the later two stages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the goal of international community to support the quality universal primary education (UPE) and the challenges facing education systems in Africa. The international community pledged to support for the achievement of UPE in the country due to low student achievement and high drop out rates that resulting in system inefficiency. To improve the education system in Africa, the so-called community faced with challenges because universal enrollment entails broadening access and quality learning opportunities is hard to reach such as the remote rural populations and nomadic populations.

Our common understandings of the public/private distinction in higher education are drawn from neo-classical economics and/or statist political philosophy. However, the development of competition and markets at the national level, and the new potentials for private and public goods created by globalisation in higher education, have exposed weaknesses in the traditional notions of public/private. For example, (1) the statist notion that higher education is always/already a public good blinds us to its role in producing scarce positional private goods, even in free systems; (2) because there is no global state, both statists and neo-liberals model the global higher education environment simply as a trading environment without grasping the potential for global public goods in education – goods that are subject to non-rivalry or non-excludability, and broadly available across populations, on a global scale. Yet higher education in one nation has the potential to create positive and negative externalities in another; and all higher education systems and institutions can benefit from collective systems e.g. that facilitate cross-border recognition and mobility. The paper sets out to revise public/private in higher education. Rather than defining public/private in terms of legal ownership, it focuses on the social character of the goods. It argues that public/private goods are not always zero sum and under certain conditions provide conditions of possibility for each other. It proposes (a) units in national government that focus specifically on cross-border effects; (b) global policy spaces – taking in state agencies, individual universities, NGOs and commercial agents – to consider the augmentation, distribution of and payment for global public goods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article details one university’s efforts to develop graduate courses and programs to better serve the needs of the increasing non-traditional student population in underserved rural areas. A detailed overview is presented, along with the strategic planning outcomes achieved. We hope this article will initiate dialogue among higher education professionals on ways to better meet the academic needs of non-traditional students in underserved rural areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Baron-Cohen’s [(2002) Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 6, 248–255] ‘extreme male brain’ theory of autism is investigated by examining the relationships between theory of mind, central coherence, empathising, systemising and autistic-like symptomatology in typical undergraduates. There were sex differences in the expected directions on all tasks. Differences according to discipline were found only in central coherence. There was no evidence of an association between empathising and systemising. In the second study, performance on the Mechanical Reasoning task was compared with Systemising quotient and the Social Skills Inventory was compared with the Empathising Quotient. Moderate, but not high correlations were found. Findings are broadly consistent with the distinction between empathising and systemising but cast some doubt on the tasks used to measure these abilities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper analysed the trend and pattern of gender enrolment in Nigerian Universities between 1989 and 1997. It critically examined the gender disparity in university enrolment generally, as well as among some selected disciplines and the country's geo-political zones. The analysis revealed that gap existed between female and male in the university enrolment with lower female enrolment in all aspects of the Universities. Specifically there was a wide gap in the sciences and science-based disciplines and also between the Northern and Southern zones with higher female enrolment in the south than the north. The paper made useful suggestions to narrow the gender gap in the university enrolment in the nearest future, which included sustained enlightenment programmes, fine-tuning labour laws and accommodating female under the ``educationally disadvantaged'' admission policy being enjoyed by some citizens of the country. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examine the impact of orphanhood on children's school enrollment in 10 sub-Saharan African countries. Although poorer children in Africa are less likely to attend school, the lower enrollment of orphans is not accounted for solely by their poverty. We find that orphans are less likely to be enrolled than are nonorphans with whom they live. Consistent with Hamilton's rule, the theory that the closeness of biological ties governs altruistic behavior, outcomes for orphans depend on the relatedness of orphans to their household heads. The lower enrollment of orphans is largely explained by the greater tendency of orphans to live with distant relatives or unrelated caregivers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we present the way in which language issues have become a relevant factor in research which aims to study the socio-cultural aspects of mathematics education in classrooms with a high percentage of immigrant students. Our research on language issues focuses on two aspects, namely the language as a social tool within the mathematics classroom and the language as a vehicle in the construction of mathematical knowledge. We introduce our problem within this area and provide a rationale for our research methodology, not avoiding its drawbacks, but rather giving examples of the kinds of difficulties we encountered. The paper highlights the integrated nature of the social, cultural and linguistic aspects of mathematics teaching and learning, and illustrates the fact that, even if the mathematical language can be considered universal, the language of `doing mathematics within the classroom' is far from being universal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]