“Indicators to prevent university drop-out and delayed graduation. An Italian case”

International audiencePurposeResearch on the association between individual characteristics of undergraduate students, drop-out and delayed graduation is still evolving. Therefore, further evidence is required. The paper aims to discuss this issue.Design/methodology/approachThis paper reports on an empirical study examining the relationship between students' individual characteristics and delayed graduation. The analysis is based on a sample of 1,167 students who have registered on and have completed a full-time undergraduate programme in Italy. Using a Probit model, the findings document the individual, background and environmental indicators that play a role in explaining delayed graduation.FindingsThe study observes that students who commute to university perform better than those residing on campus. Other factors increasing the probability of completing the undergraduate programme on time include individual characteristics (e.g. gender and age), student background (family income, education), institutional environment (teaching and research quality) and student satisfaction. Finally, some policy implications are discussed.Social implications - A direct policy implication of these findings is that supporting academic staff in order to enhance their performance in both research and teaching has a positive effect on the performance of the students.Originality/valueThis paper contributes to the debate on the impact of institutional quality on students' performance, aiming to address the question of balance between teaching and research orientation

Alumni studies in the United Kingdom

This chapter examines the current uses of alumni studies in the United Kingdom and outlines their challenges and limitations to informing policy and curriculum reform

The Power to Change: High Schools that Help All Students Achieve

"The Power to Change: High Schools that Help All Students Achieve," chronicles the stories of three very different high schools that are getting strong results for minority students and students from low-income families. The report demonstrates clearly that some high schools are succeeding, even under challenging circumstances

Reflections on practice-centred curricula in teaching entrepreneurship in Malaysia

This paper discusses the challenges of entrepreneurship education in a regional Malaysian context and provides the design details of entrepreneurship modules providing a practical experience. It is argued that an active, experience-centred module delivery helps to revitalise student curiosity in entrepreneurial activities. The paper utilises the phenomenological approach to explore the contemporary challenges of entrepreneurship education and to gain a deeper insight into its contemporary complexity. The material for the phenomenological analysis is obtained by means of focus groups which are contrasted with the students’ written reflections and staff observations on teaching and learning activities in entrepreneurship modules. The findings indicate that two months timescale for studying entrepreneurship is too short because of competing priorities within the programme of study and an eclectic essence of entrepreneurship. It was also found that students believe that being supported by tutors having practical experience is motivating and reassures them about further learning. The concerns about the applicability of Western concepts of entrepreneurship education to the Malaysian context were not corroborated. It has been argued that practice-centred learning opportunities are often associated with off-campus education and take place in the ‘real world’. The suggested design for standalone entrepreneurship modules evidently ensures a rich experience for students and provides an effective springboard for developing entrepreneurial aspirations

Promoting College Match for Low-Income Students: Lessons for Practitioners

Most high school reform efforts understandably focus on boosting the success of low-income students who are underachieving academically, but in every school district where students struggle, there are academically capable low-income and minority students who do graduate prepared for college. Yet each year, many of these students choose to attend nonselective four-year colleges where graduation rates are distressingly low. Others enroll at two-year colleges, where degree completion and transfer rates are even lower. Many more do not attend college at all. In 2010, MDRC and its partners pilot-tested an innovative advising program, College Match, in three Chicago public high schools. This practitioner brief presents practical lessons from that program. It offers five strategies that show promise, that could be widely applicable, that counselors and advisers can integrate into their existing college guidance activities, and that can be implemented in college advising settings in and out of schools

The English degree and graduate careers

This report provides English departments with information about the employment patterns and prospects of their graduates and suggests ways in which these might be enhanced. The report uses data gathered on English graduates three to four years after graduating. It shows that English graduates do take about four years to ‘find their feet’ on the career ladder, and that they do well in finding a job relevant to their qualification level compared to graduates in English-related fields or History. The report also examines how the skills of the English graduate are profiled by departments, by the English Benchmarking Statement, and by graduates themselves. These are compared to other disciplines to give some indication of the ‘strengths’ and ‘weaknesses’ of the English graduate

Is undergraduate programme accreditation influenced by educational public policy quality indicators? An exploratory study of the Chilean Higher Education quality assurance system

In Chile, as well as in most of Latin America, public policies for higher education have recently adopted a focus on quality assurance and accreditation systems. Uncertainty, however, still exists in terms of the quality assurance consistency in the current Chilean accreditation system, especially in terms of the relation between public policy quality indicators for higher education and their relation to accreditation outcomes. Therefore, the aim of this study was to make a first explorative attempt to investigate the relationships between these indicators and the results of undergraduate programme accreditation. We hypothesised that the public policy quality indicators of first-year drop-out rate, employment at graduation and ratio of actual to expected time to graduation would be strongly correlated to undergraduate programme accreditation as well as largely explaining its accreditation-year variance. By means of correlation and multiple regression analyses, we found small-sized associations, being first-year drop-out the only significant predictor of programme accreditation, explaining a 9.4% of its variance. These results raise questions regarding the consistency between the aims of public policy for higher education and the current accreditation system. This study should be of value to policy makers, managers and curriculum developers in terms of this initial analysis of the consistency between quality indicators and the accreditation system. Further research is necessary to make a systematic and in-depth assessment of the impact of quality assurance mechanisms to provide better rationale for making important decisions such as when defining the characteristics of the accrediting institutions as well as for establishing effective ways to achieve the proposed public policy objectives

The Cost of Success: The Significance of Funding in the Academic Success of Charter Schools\u27 Minority Students

Since the state of Minnesota first began charter schools nearly three decades ago, they have slowly become a major part of public education throughout the United States. Often times strategically placed in communities of low socioeconomic status, charter schools have offered alternative options to at-risk, low-income students who would otherwise attend the traditional public school within their school zones. In New York City today, there are almost four times the number of charter schools than there were ten years ago. Across the city, at-risk students who have the opportunity to attend charter schools are reaching higher levels of educational achievement and succeeding in more varied fields than their public-school-attending counterparts. It is not possible to say that any single factor contributes to the success of charter schools; however, in my investigation I hypothesize that one major contributing factor to New York charter school success is funding. As such, I compared the annual state revenue brought in by charter schools versus that of traditional public schools. In analyzing both total funding for two specific charter networks and six individual public schools, as well as funding per-pupil, I found that funding discrepancies have most likely made a difference in the differing education systems