The professional doctorate and the 21st century university

This article argues that far from being the poor cousin of the PhD, the professional doctorate epitomises a model of higher education that is for the 21st century, based on professional formation and design thinking

The Comprehensive University: an alternative to social stratification by academic selection

This paper aims to promote a debate about whether academic selection in higher education has gone too far. By too far is meant beyond what students need to succeed on a course, with little demand on teaching expertise in the most selective institutions, and into a realm of prestige and discrimination that compounds Britain’s social class inequities. While the role of academic selection in secondary education has come under intense scrutiny and criticism for distracting from the need to improve both social mobility and skills, there is no such examination of academic selection in higher education. Instead, the less selective institutions are labelled ‘low status’ and social mobility measures are focused on small numbers of young people from low-income families gaining places in very selective ‘high status’ universities. While this situation raises many issues about equality and whether the focus of current policies is right, it is also likely to be impoverishing the learning environment in our higher education institutions and possibly leading to worse educational outcomes overall. This is because academic selection produces social stratification and by doing so reduces the diversity of abilities and identities that successive recent studies show are resources for successful complex learning. There is not just an equality dividend to be gained from desegregating Britain’s universities but also a possibility of educational and productivity dividends. The paper proposes mechanisms for achieving this change, based on introducing open access or basic matriculation quotas in all higher education institutions and, in England, replacing with a levy the access expenditure which is currently required if an institution chooses to charge its students more than the basic fee. The levy would be based on how imbalanced the social class intake of an institution is, and the funding raised would be allocated by formula to institutions according to their need either to increase recruitment from socially advantaged students or decrease recruitment from socially disadvantaged students. A small number of specially designated research universities would be excluded but still required to increase recruitment from non-selective schools.A variety of sources of evidence and precedents from secondary education and the United States are used to support the arguments. However, the main argument is a values-based one: that it is better for education to bring people together than to separate them

User Financing in a National Payments for Environmental Services Program: Costa Rican Hydropower

National government-funded payments for environmental services (PES) programs often lack sustainable financing and fail to target payments to providers of important environmental services. In principle, these problems can be mitigated by supplementing government financing with contributions from leading environmental service users. We use original survey data and official statistics to analyze user financing in Costa Rica’s renowned national PES program, focusing on the amounts and sources of user financing, the drivers of contributions, and contributors’ perceptions of the PES program. We find that user financing has supported less than three percent of the acres enrolled in the program and that hydroelectric plants are the largest private sector contributors. Large hydroelectric plants tend to contribute while small ones do not. The weight of evidence suggests that in addition to ensuring the provision of forest environmental services, hydroelectric plants’ motives for contributing to the PES program include improving relations with local communities and government regulators—common drivers of participation in all manner of voluntary environmental programs. These findings raise questions about the potential of user financing to improve the efficiency and financial sustainability of national PES programs.payments for environmental services, voluntary regulation, hydroelectricity, Costa Rica

GO-NW health support package final report

This report identifies factors associated with whether the 21 Local Strategic Partnerships in the North West funded by the Neighbourhood Renewal Fund have been closing their relative gaps in teenage conceptions and premature deaths from circulatory diseases and cancers. It describes how LSPs can learn from each other in the light of these findings and sets out a reporting framework for performance assessment of the NRF health targets. The report is a revised version of the earlier draft report, which it replaces

Two-temperature coronae in active galactic nuclei

We show that coronal magnetic dissipation in thin active sheets that sandwich standard thin accretion disks in active galactic nuclei may account for canonical electron temperatures of a few $\times 10^9$K if protons acquire most of the dissipated energy. Coulomb collisions transfer energy from the ions to the electrons, which subsequently cool rapidly by inverse-Compton scattering. In equilibrium, the proton energy density likely exceeds that of the magnetic field and both well exceed the electron and photon energy densities. The Coulomb energy transfer from protons to electrons is slow enough to maintain a high proton temperature, but fast enough to explain observed rapid X-ray variabilities in Seyferts. The $\sim 10^9$K electron temperature is insensitive to the proton temperature when the latter is $\ge 10^{12}$K.Comment: 5 pages LaTex, and 2 .ps figures, submitted to MNRAS, 4/9

Recruiting Male Volunteers: A Guide Based on Exploratory Research

The decision to recruit male volunteers is not one that you should make lightly. Adding men to your pool of volunteers could have a variety of implications for your program, not all of which are positive. Understanding the potential impacts of a greater number of male volunteers may add to your excitement about this cause. The same understanding, however, should also call attention to the possibility that recruitment of male volunteers may not suit your program, may generate additional work for you or your co-workers, or may harbor unforeseen consequences. Legal discrimination or organizational policy issues must also be taken into consideration