34,020 research outputs found
The impact of higher education finance on university participation in the UK (BIS research paper no.11)
In this paper we estimate the separate impacts of upfront fees, grants and maintenance loans on UK higher education participation. We use the panel data element of Labour Force Survey data on the university participation decisions of 18 year olds, covering the period 1992-2007, which saw great variation in HE finance, most importantly the introduction of up-front tuition fees and the abolition of student maintenance grants in 1998 and major reforms of 2004 in which maintenance grants were re-instated and up-front fees were replaced with deferred fees of ÂŁ3000. To test the robustness of the results, and to help deal with potential measurement error, we create a pseudo-panel of participation by UK region over time and test a number of specifications. Our findings show that the impact of upfront tuition fees in 1998 had a small negative impact on participation among high income groups, while the package of reforms introduced in 2006 had no impact on participation, largely because tuition fees were accompanied by large increases in loans and grants
Cloud Migration: A Case Study of Migrating an Enterprise IT System to IaaS
This case study illustrates the potential benefits and risks associated with
the migration of an IT system in the oil & gas industry from an in-house data
center to Amazon EC2 from a broad variety of stakeholder perspectives across
the enterprise, thus transcending the typical, yet narrow, financial and
technical analysis offered by providers. Our results show that the system
infrastructure in the case study would have cost 37% less over 5 years on EC2,
and using cloud computing could have potentially eliminated 21% of the support
calls for this system. These findings seem significant enough to call for a
migration of the system to the cloud but our stakeholder impact analysis
revealed that there are significant risks associated with this. Whilst the
benefits of using the cloud are attractive, we argue that it is important that
enterprise decision-makers consider the overall organizational implications of
the changes brought about with cloud computing to avoid implementing local
optimizations at the cost of organization-wide performance.Comment: Submitted to IEEE CLOUD 201
Structuring International Financial Support for Climate Change Mitigation in Developing Countries
In the Copenhagen Accord of December 2009, developed countries agreed to provide start-up finance for adaptation in developing countries and expressed the ambition to scale this up to $100 billion per year by 2020. The financial mechanisms to deliver this support have to be tailored to country and sector specific needs so as to enable domestic policy processes and self sustaining business models, and to limit policy risk exposure for investors while complying with budgetary constraints in OECD countries. This paper structures the available financial mechanisms according to the needs they can address, and reports on experience with their application in bilateral and multilateral settings.Financial mechanism, risk guarantee, development, climate policy
Decision Support Tools for Cloud Migration in the Enterprise
This paper describes two tools that aim to support decision making during the
migration of IT systems to the cloud. The first is a modeling tool that
produces cost estimates of using public IaaS clouds. The tool enables IT
architects to model their applications, data and infrastructure requirements in
addition to their computational resource usage patterns. The tool can be used
to compare the cost of different cloud providers, deployment options and usage
scenarios. The second tool is a spreadsheet that outlines the benefits and
risks of using IaaS clouds from an enterprise perspective; this tool provides a
starting point for risk assessment. Two case studies were used to evaluate the
tools. The tools were useful as they informed decision makers about the costs,
benefits and risks of using the cloud.Comment: To appear in IEEE CLOUD 201
Online korean skincare decision support system
Despite the explosive growth of electronic commerce and the rapidly increasing number of consumers who use interactive media for pre-purchase information search and online shopping, very little is known about how consumers make purchase decisions in such settings. One desirable form of interactivity from a consumer perspective is the implementation of sophisticated tools to assist shoppers in their purchase decisions by customizing the electronic shopping environment to their individual preferences
Too Good to be True?: The Opportunity and Cost of the $1 Building
A study commissioned by The Kresge Foundation's Arts & Culture Program finds that arts organizations have experienced a wide range of outcomes when acquiring low-cost or free buildings, also known as "$1 buildings." In many cases, the actual costs of acquiring such buildings were much higher than organizations anticipated, according to the study, conducted by Boston-based Technical Development Corp
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