The ‘just city’ or just a city? : evaluating social justice and equity in planning education.

Contemporary evaluations of accredited planning education performance have eschewed the principles and methodologies of formal program evaluation and performance management. This dissertation tests hypotheses that this contributes to the lack of social equity and justice commitment, content, and inquiry on the part of accredited graduate planning degree programs, their clients, and administrators. The organizations, resources, and processes involved in the purveyance of accredited graduate planning education were conceptualized as a singular, evaluable program and illustrated in a series of program logic models. These models revealed sources of the inattentiveness to normative issues that past evaluations have evidenced, and informed assertions of benefits likely to occur from adherence to formal program evaluation principles. An opinion survey was constructed and administered to mitigate the aforementioned praxis gaps whose identified a disjuncture between planning faculty and students’ interest in social equity and justice and those of practitioners and informed recommendations that each individual planning degree program administer identical surveys annually to their alumni, current students, and faculty. Reviews of, and analyses on, a sample of 21 accreditation self-study reports were conducted on their adherence to performance management principles and their content levels associated with, and their commitment to, issues of social equity and justice. Hypotheses test results concerning adherence to performance management principles were generally poor. Hypotheses test results concerning social equity and justice were somewhat inconclusive. Overall, the results of the dissertation research urge thorough adoption of program evaluation and performance management principles to operate and evaluate accredited graduate planning education

The mathematical model for estimating the probability of risk of incompetent specialist graduation

The article presents the results of research for the mathematical model for estimating the probability of risk of incompetent specialist graduation. The mechanisms and tools to determine the probability of risk of incompetent specialist graduation have been developed in the course of the research. The goal tree method has been used as a mechanism to determine the relationship between the structural components of the educational process and the educational program. Using this method, the structuring of 9 criteria by which the educational program quality is evaluated has been carried out. That is, its strengths and weaknesses have been identified. In turn, as a tool for estimating the probability of an educational process (educational program) risks and the graduation of an incompetent specialist, it has been proposed to use a regression mathematical model. To build a mathematical model, an active experiment, a qualimetric approach, a method of regression analysis, and 16 conditional educational programs that met the "Standards and Guidelines for Quality Assurance in the European Higher Education Area" (ESG) have been used. The construction of the model has been carried out according to a specially designed scheme, which included 5 stages. In the first stage, a group of experts was formed and their consistency was determined with the help of the "HEI Experts" software. In the second stage, six groups of indicators were identified, which further estimated the educational process (educational program) quality. For this purpose, the experts used the method of pairwise comparison to select 9 unit indicators, which further estimated the levels of compliance of 16 conditional educational programs. The estimation was conducted according to standardized quality indicators that are inherent in the real educational process (educational program). In the third stage, a robust plan of the experiment was constructed using the method of pseudo-random LP-τ numbers uniformly distributed in multidimensional space. According to the plan, a working matrix of the experiment was formed. Then, the group of experts formed in the first stage carried out the percentage estimation of the probability of risk of incompetent specialist graduation. In the fourth stage, a mathematical model was built using the PRIAM (planning, regression, and model analysis) software. This model allows us to assess nine factors that affect the probability of risk of incompetent specialist graduation. In the fifth stage, the statistical characteristics of the model were tested. According to the test results, it was proved that the model is informative, adequate, and stable, both in terms of structure and calculations. At the same stage, the marginal surfaces were constructed and the forces of influence of regressors (indicators) on the probability of risk of competent/incompetent specialist graduation were determined. According to the results of research, it has been proved that such indicators as compliance of the applicants (bachelors) level with the second Master's level and the level of considering labor market employers (stakeholders) requirements have the strongest impact on the competence of the future specialists. The proposed model allows us to estimate the factors influencing the efficiency (effectiveness) of the educational process and to determine the probability of the risk of competent/incompetent specialist graduation