Detailed and GlobalAnalysis of a Remedial Course's Impact on Incoming Students' Marks

Engineering incoming students are facing great difficulties to overcome first course subjects. To tackle that situation and increase the students’ success a Remedial course in Mathematics was offered to Informatics Engineering freshmen. This study presents a statistical analysis of their results comparing the marks obtained by those joining the course (studio group) versus those who did not participate (control group). ANOVA tests are performed over the students’ marks averages as well as over each subject students marks. These tests show statistically significant differences between both groups, with the studio group consistently outperforming the control group at 99% confidence level in most cases and at more than 92% confidence level in every case

Fixed-term Contracts, Transitions and Wage Growth: Evidence from Spain

Employment instability is considered one of the main problems of the Spanish labour market. Thus, the proportion of temporary workers in Spain is around 30 per cent that is the highest rate of the European Union countries. The persistence of this situation could increase the risk of labour market segmentation. This paper presents new evidence of the factors affecting workers' transition from temporary work to permanent one and analyses whether this transition has a positive effect on wage growth. The former objective is obtained by estimating discrete choice models and the latter by estimating a wage growth equation correcting for selectivity bias through the two-step method developed by Trost and Lee (1984). The data are obtained from the second and third waves of the Spanish Household Panel Survey (INE 1996) conducted over the period 1995–1996. The main results are, on the one hand, that personal and job characteristics have a significant influence on the probability of becoming a permanent worker and, on the other hand, that this transition has an important positive effect on wage growth.labour force transitions, temporary and permanent workers, wage growth

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University choice, research quality and graduates' employability: Evidence from Italian national survey data

Universities have come under increasing pressure to become key drivers of economic development in the age of the knowledge economy. Yet we know very little about the impact of university quality and scientific excellence on the probability of graduates finding jobs. This paper investigates the determinants of Italian graduates’ employability 3-years after graduation, with special reference to university quality measured in terms of research performance and teaching quality. The empirical evidence sheds light on the pivotal role of academic institutions in economic systems, proving that their contribution to employment growth could be substantial. Our analysis supports the promotion of policy initiatives to improve the quality of academic institutions, and the accountability of research results. As we also observe wide regional differences, we argue that university quality emerges as a supply tool for policy makers aiming at boosting young and skilled labour demand in less developed regions.

Investing in People

Foundations have long created programs to provide grants to individuals—most often in the form of fellowships, scholarships, and prizes. Several of these programs have become so prominent that they are now institutions in and of themselves. Consider just a few examples: the Pulitzer Prize, Fulbright Program, and MacArthur "genius" awards. Governments, as well as foundations large and small, fund individual support programs.The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation has generously allowed the authors of this report to examine its portfolio of individual support programs to explore what the authors believe are some of the strategic fundamentals underlying this type of programming that could be applied to future individual support grantmaking. The purpose of this study is to inform those interested in individual support programs about not only some of the strategy considerations underlying this type of grantmaking but what these programs can be expected to achieve—and under what circumstances.

Central Banks' Involvement in Encouraging Economic Education and Literacy

Currently, economic education plays a vital role in the future health of world economy and enables citizens to efficiently participate in the society in which they live. The economic literacy of citizens is not only the problem of state authorities, but it is also a common challenge and responsibility for many public institutions and non-profit organizations. Key players among these institutions are central banks that invest significant resources in educating the public to achieve economic efficiency, a good conduct of monetary policy and welfare. The aim of the paper is to emphasize the involvement of more-and-more central banks in fostering economic education and literacy, not before clarifying some key concepts and highlighting the importance of the subject in our society.economic education, economic literacy, educational product, knowledge based society, central banks

Empowering Rural Citizen Journalism Via Web 2.0 Technologies

Once acquainted with the modern information and communication tools made available with the advent of the Internet, five Brazilian rural communities participating in a pilot project to develop a self-sustaining telecenter model, engaged in citizen journalism using inexpensive digital video cameras. Community members used Web 2.0 collaborative tools to post short videos on the telecenter portal. The 95 video blogs published between September 2006 and May 2008 recorded various aspects of community life,including religious celebrations,oral history arts and crafts traditions,folklore,and envirnmental concerns. This study evaluates the impact of video blogging in these communities

University 4.4 – A Development Strategy for Education and Research Centers

Due to increased demand for qualified human resources, for 'new & rare skills', for software solutions, reliable products and services in the field of applied informatics, there are large available financial funds that can be accessed by Informatics and Cybernetics schools. Edu-cational and research departments must capitalize funds provided by the Europe-an/international institutions and private companies, by supporting the creation of spin-off en-tities that will conduct technology transfer projects. These funds must be used to increase the quality of teaching and to improve research results by assuring the financial needs and tech-nical resources of teachers (project based payments), students (scholarships projects) and the community (public available projects). The presented strategy, University 4.4 describes four development directions for a four years period. It has been developed by Catalin Boja, Razvan Bologa, Marius Popa and Cristian Toma and since November 2011 it represents the assumed development strategy of The Department of Economic Informatics and Cybernetics (DICE) from The Bucharest University of Economic Studies.University, Research, Strategy, Education, Informatics, Cybernetics, Department, DICE