Strategies to improve retention of postgraduate business students in distance education courses: an Australian case

In spite of the clear value of postgraduate business students to many providers of distance education courses, the factors affecting the retention of these students have received limited attention in the literature. In addressing this gap, this paper presents the findings of a qualitative study into the factors affecting the retention of postgraduate business students at a major Australian distance education university. The findings of this study suggest that a range of situational, dispositional and attitudinal factors impact upon student retention on this context, both as enablers of and obstacles to ongoing participation. In many cases, these factors differ to those identified in the existing literature on student retention. Based on these findings, we present a range of strategies designed to improve the retention of postgraduate business students by maximising enabling factors and minimising the impact of any identified obstacles. Limitations of the study and suggestions for further research are also presented

Catholic books : catholic minds

Graham Greene is perhaps one of the first novelists that springs to a contemporary mind when Catholic writing and literature is mentioned. A convert to Catholicism, he, like many converts before him including John Henry Cardinal Newman (one of the most famous converts of them all) discovered that writing as a Catholic attracted attentions they had never received before conversion. For years Newman was under a Vatican cloud for some of his writing, and Greene was at the height of his international fame when his highly acclaimed novel The Power and the Glory received a &lsquo;negative judgement&rsquo; from the Holy Office (despite Cardinal Montini, later Pope Paul VI, as the Vatican&rsquo;s pro-Secretary of State for Ordinary Affairs intervening on Greene&rsquo;s behalf at the time). <br /

No smoke without fire : Benedict XVI and true liturgical reform

I read the recent comments on Pope Paul VI and the \u27smoke of Satan\u27 (July AD2000) with interest not long after I had finished re-reading the massive work by the late Archbishop Annibale Bugnini, generally considered to be the main architect of the liturgical reforms prior to, during, and after Vatican II.<br /

What does it mean to be a Catholic? Has this changed since Vatican II?

What constitutes a Catholic sensibility? Is this unchanging, or are there differing definitions pre- and post-Vatican II? Is the Catholicism expressed in the writings of Gerard Manley Hopkins, John Henry Newman, Hilaire Belloc, and others before Vatican II, the Catholicism of today?<br /

Working and fighting for progress, for prosperity, for society : brave new business worlds before and beyond corporate citizenship

One of the things that many of us working in corporate citizenship tend to do is to assume that we are actually creating new agendas. Sometimes we do but, more often than not, other thinkers have been there before us. One such man worth revisiting in his extensive writings of over 60 years ago is Aldous Huxley, probably most famous to many for his novel Brave New World. This paper looks briefly at some of the things Huxley had to say that are relevant to our current thinking about the \u27soul\u27 of business and its relations to CSR and corporate citizenship.<br /