Higher Education and Membership of Voluntary Groups

This research uses the British National Child Development Study to examine the effect of higher education on individual membership of voluntary groups and organizations. Gender differences in the education effects are given emphasis. We apply parametric and nonparametric econometric methods to isolate the influence of confounding variables. There is strong evidence of education endogeneity in the female sample and we observe a negative education effect on women's group membership. Education endogeneity does not cause serious estimation bias in the male sample. Higher education is a significantly positive determinant of men's group membership. Further investigations from a mid-life perspective reveal that the boost of female participation in the workforce and their attitudes towards employment are key factors in the negative association between higher education and women's group membership. Our research provides clues for the divergence in the enrolment in higher education and social participation behavior in Western countries.

A Meta-Analysis of the Effect of Education on Social Capital

To assess the empirical estimates of the effect of education on social trust and social participation - the basic dimensions of individual social capital - a meta-analysis is applied, synthesizing 154 evaluations on social trust, and 286 evaluations on social participation. The publication bias problem is given special emphasis in the meta-analysis. Our statistical synthesis confirms that education is a strong and robust correlate of individual social capital. The meta-analysis provides support for the existence of a relative effect of education on social participation, and of a reciprocity mechanism between the dimensions of social capital. The analysis also suggests that the erosion of social participation during the past decades has coincided with a decrease of the marginal return to education on social capital. Finally, we find differences in the return to education between genders, between US and other nations, and variations for different education attainments.

College Education and social trust. An Evidence-based Study on the Causal Mechanisms

This paper examines the influence of college education on social trust at the individual level. Based on the literature of trust and social trust, we hypothesize that life experience/development since adulthood and perceptions of cultural/social structures are two primary channels in the causal linkage between college education and social trust. In the first part of the empirical study econometric techniques are employed to tackle the omitted-variable problem and substantial evidence is found to confirm the positive effect of college education. In the second part contemporary information is used to examine the hypothetical mechanisms in the causal inference. That life experience is a primary channel via which college education promotes social trust fails to find support in our examination, while individual perceptions of cultural and social structures explain up to 77 percent of the causal effect.

The efficiency of education in generating literacy: a stochastic frontier approach

The growing importance attached to education as a key factor to improve economic performance coupled with the persistent scarcity of resources for education makes it important that skills and literacy are produced efficiently. This paper provides an international comparison of the efficiency of literacy production. We find substantial differences between countries in levels of literacy, differences in literacy between education levels and differences in the efficiency of literacy production. There are some notable differences between more Anglo-Saxon countries and the Continental European countries. The findings suggest that in almost all countries the scope for efficiency improvements in education is large. So even without major increases in (public) funding, improvements in educational outcomes are achievable. We can get better value for the money we spend on education.

Hamiltonian for coupled flux qubits

An effective Hamiltonian is derived for two coupled three-Josephson-junction (3JJ) qubits. This is not quite trivial, for the customary "free" 3JJ Hamiltonian is written in the limit of zero inductance L. Neglecting the self-flux is already dubious for one qubit when it comes to readout, and becomes untenable when discussing inductive coupling. First, inductance effects are analyzed for a single qubit. For small L, the self-flux is a "fast variable" which can be eliminated adiabatically. However, the commonly used junction phases are_not_ appropriate "slow variables", and instead one introduces degrees of freedom which are decoupled from the loop current to leading order. In the quantum case, the zero-point fluctuations (LC oscillations) in the loop current diverge as L->0. Fortunately, they merely renormalize the Josephson couplings of the effective (two-phase) theory. In the coupled case, the strong zero-point fluctuations render the full (six-phase) wave function significantly entangled in leading order. However, in going to the four-phase theory, this uncontrollable entanglement is integrated out completely, leaving a computationally usable mutual-inductance term of the expected form as the effective interaction.Comment: REVTeX4, 16pp., one figure. N.B.: "Alec" is my first, and "Maassen van den Brink" my family name. Informal note. v2: completely rewritten; correction of final result and major expansion. v3: added numerical verification plus a discussion of Ref. [2

Community Schools Unfolded: A review of the literature.

Community schools are quickly increasing in number, but there is no evidence whether they are more effective than traditional schools. No study has empirically compared community schools to other schools. This study reviews the literature on the effectiveness of community schools. We focus on their three main components: cooperation with external organizations, parental involvement, and extracurricular activities. This review indicates that involving external organizations seems valuable in terms of social cohesion in neighborhoods. Parental involvement is particularly important for the educational development of lower socio-economic status families. Extracurricular activities positively relate to students? development in academic and social terms.

The effects of ability tracking of future primary school teachers on student performance

Because of the Dutch tracking system, primary school teachers in the Netherlands can have a vocational or a higher secondary background. Policymakers and school principles worry that teachers with vocational backgrounds are less capable to teach math and reading. This study therefore examines the effects of ability tracking of future primary school teachers on the students' math and reading performance. We exploit data of 91 schools for all primary school children in grades 3, 4 and 5 and identify the tracking effect by exploiting unique information on how teachers are assigned to classes based on their teaching abilities. The estimation results for math (reading) indicate that test scores are .2 (.12) of a standard deviation lower if their teacher had a vocational background. The results for reading are, however, not signicant at the 10% condence level and the tracking estimates appear to be less stable and precise