A Profile of the Jewish Freshman

The preparation of this research report was funded by the American Jewish Committee, a human relations agency with a commitment to objective scientific research, particularly with respect to educational and social issues.The focus of this report is a normative profile of Jewish freshmen entering college in the fall of 1969.The data presented in this research report are a direct product of the Cooperative Institutional Research Program being conducted by the Office of Research of the American Council on Education

A Study of the NSF College Science Improvement Program

The College Science Improvement Program was launched in 1966 and has as its stated goal ... to accelerate the development of the science capabilities of predominantly undergraduate institutions and to enhance their capacity for continuing self-renewal (National Science Foundation, 1969, p. 90). Between the program\u27s inception and the end of fiscal year 1969, COSIP made 105 grants representing a total amount of over $18,000,000 to such institution

Rethink the Aptitude Excuse

The achievement problems in U.S. schools can be seen clearly at our border. Juarez, Mexico and El Paso, Texas, are about a mile apart, separated by the Rio Grande. For years, one of my former doctoral students was on the faculty of the University of Texas at El Paso and directed the remedial center. Students who were having trouble in a variety of subjects, including mathematics, came to the center for tutoring by undergraduates and graduate students. In reviewing who was hired by the center over a number of years, she observed that Americans were rarely hired to tutor in math. Rather, most math tutors came from Mexico, Malaysia and India. Most of the Mexican tutors came from Juarez. While it\u27s possible that those Mexican tutors were from the more affluent sector of Juarez, it appeared that a young person who went through the Juarez school system emerged with a much better knowledge of mathematics than the same young person would if he or she attended school a mile away in the U.S. In fact, teachers from Juarez were training teachers from El Paso about mathematics instruction

Review of John G. Kemeny\u27s Man and the Computer

Set against this formidable background, Man and the Computer will be a disappointment to those who expect a detailed, highly technical presentation. Rather, this book is a popular description of man-machine interaction via time-sharing systems, with particular emphasis on the Dartmouth experience, combined with a futuristic sketch of the ways in which such systems can benefit society

The Limits of Data Science

Data science can contribute valuable predictions in diverse fields. But I write to express some concerns and red flags. I suggest that data science is being oversold. This article contains three questions that I believe data science must address as this new discipline matures. Is data science significantly different from statistics? This is a question that has haunted the field since the term first was introduced. By creating algorithms based on current societal decision rules that may be biased, even bigoted, does data science lock in and exacerbate inequality? Scholars have identified a continuum from data to information to knowledge to wisdom, with the ultimate goal being wisdom. Data scientists seem to be acting as though data alone are enough. The big data systems are mathematically complex and have predictive power, but can data science contribute significantly to our body of knowledge

Five Things Most People Believe About American Education that are Wrong

Will Rogers said, People\u27s ignorance isn\u27t the problem; it\u27s what they know for sure that isn\u27t true. One reason that reform of our educational system often fails is that every politician and voter holds strong opinions about American schools. After all, they all went through the school system. Some of those opinions are simply wrong

Journal Self-Citation XXII: On the Journal Impact Factor – A Historical Perspective

This paper puts a historical perspective on the use of Impact Factors. It describes how Impact Factors were used in a U.S. National Research Council project 35 years ago to evaluate the improvements that resulted from a billion dollar University Science Development program funded by the National Science Foundation. Impact Factor rankings proved to have a remarkably high correlation to science departments ranking obtained from a different source. The paper considers additional policy aspects of impact factors

Finest Science Not Always Found in the Fanciest American Universities

Recent controversies about federal science funds for university research have become highly visible-and acrimonious. Debate about who should get support and why, long the province of a carefully developed system of peer, or merit, review, have been the subject of special task-force reports, congressional hearings and cover stories

Too Many Options Dilute Shared Experience

Despite the red carpet glitter of the Oscars, it is no secret that Hollywood has had a far from perfect year at the box office. And unfortunately for Tinsel Town, its problems go beyond the obvious need for more successful films. The way we experience both movies and television has evolved. We don\u27t do things together the way we once did. We rent movies and watch them at home rather than going to a local movie theater with family and friends. Box office returns suffer and the centrality of film in our lives is weakened. The same fragmentation is true in television. Sadly, the kind of cultural reference points provided by the likes of Johnny Carson, Lucille Ball, Jackie Gleason, and more - including the superstar network news anchors in their prime - are fading. They provided a snug sense of intimacy that comes from a shared common experience. The result? Significant social change brought on by audience fragmentation. The root cause? A proliferation of entertainment options impelled by niche-driven marketing

Getting Grounded in the Post Hometown World

Remember when Americans had hometowns? Where are you from? we\u27d ask one another. And the answer would come back: New York City. St. Joseph, Mo. Atlanta. Santa Barbara, Calif. Chattanooga, Tenn. But odds are that now we\u27d get a more complicated response. It\u27d go something like this: Well, I was born in Atlanta but we moved to Baltimore when I was 11 and in my junior year of high school, we went out to L.A. I\u27ve been in Chicago for a year. And even this might not be quite accurate. The speaker may have been born in an Atlanta exurb and have moved with her parents to a Baltimore suburb and subsequently to a town some miles outside Los Angeles before migrating to a community close to but not in Chicago. So where should one consider her from? All over, maybe? Which raises the question: does this erosion of a sense of place matter? Yes, it does. For throughout history, people have derived their identity in part from where they lived. Now, every year an estimated 45 million Americans move