Analysis of Economic Motives in the Individual Choice of Educational Paths

The authors consider the economic motivations when individuals choose an educational path. This line of research is relevant from both, the point of view of science — research of economic behavior of an individual, and the point of view of practice — allows to increase efficiency of investments in a human capital. The authors have developed the economic and mathematical model of choice of optimum educational paths by individuals. The model is realized in the software and approved on real data on more than 5,5 thousand students. For the analysis of the importance of rational economic expectations when an educational path has to be chosen, the paths chosen by students is compared and the educational paths optimum from the point of view of economic rationality are calculated. The analysis of the results has showed that mainly, the choice of educational paths happens according to the economic motivations. On the considered selection, 66 % of prospective students have chosen an optimum path from the point of view of economic preferences. The most significant factor providing development of optimum educational paths is an expectation of higher income upon completion of education — 22 % of all educational paths, and a possibility of cost-cutting of educating or state-subsidized education — 12 %. In our opinion, one of the most important practical results of the research of optimum educational path is the need to consider expectations of students and prospective student when developing a state policy of investment in human capital

Perspectives on the educational market: universities between virtual campus and education brokers

Nowadays information and communication technologies are affecting many aspects of our daily life. Sitting at our home computer we can order products, book flights, transfer money, buy and sell stocks and take online classes of educational institutions at the other end of the world. Maybe one day we will be able to pick any graduate business course at any institution that we like and combine credits of several online universities. Major changes are happening on the educational market. How will the educational market look like in 10 or 20 years? Which path will the traditional universities go from now on and where will they end? And: what are the factors that influence this shift? These are the questions which are addressed in this paper. Some of the analysis presented in this paper is based on papers published by the German Bertelsmann Stiftung and the Heinz Nixdorf Stiftung (Encarnacao/Leidhold/Reuter 2000) and on some English authors (i.e. Daniel 1998) and it summarizes some of their ideas

Do Poor Students Benefit from China’s Merger Program? Transfer Path and Educational Performance.

Aiming to provide better education facilities and improve the educational attainment of poor rural students, China’s government has been merging remote rural primary schools to centralized village, town, or county schools since the late 1990s. To accompany the policy, boarding facilities have been constructed that allow (mandate) primary school-aged children to live at school rather than at home. More generally, there also have been efforts to improve rural schools, especially those in counties and towns. Unfortunately, little empirical work has been available to evaluate the impact of the new merger and investment programs on the educational performance of students. Drawing on a unique dataset that records both the path by which students navigate their primary school years (i.e., which different types of schools did students attend) as well as math test scores in three poverty-stricken counties, we use descriptive statistics and multivariate analysis (both OLS and covariate matching) to analyze the relationship between different transfer paths and student educational performance. This allows us to examine the costs and benefits of the school merger and investment programs. The results of the analysis show that students who attend county schools perform systematically better than those attend village or town schools. However, completing primary school in town schools seems to have no effect on students’ academic performance. Surprisingly, starting primary education in a teaching point does not hurt rural students; on the contrary, it increases their test scores in some cases. Finally, in terms of the boarding effect, the neutral estimate in OLS and the negative estimate in covariate matching results confirm that boarding at school does not help the students; in some cases it may even reduce their academic performance.

Young Children of Immigrants and the Path to Educational Success

Summarizes June 2010 discussions on the needs of immigrant children age 3 to 8 and policy opportunities. Examines access to high-quality early care and education and elementary education for English language learners, as well as parent-focused strategies

An educational path for the magnetic vector potential and its physical implications

We present an educational path on the magnetic vector potential A addressed to undergraduate students and to pre-service physics teachers. Starting from the generalized Ampere-Laplace law, in the framework of a slowly varying time-dependent field approximation, the magnetic vector potential is written in terms of its empirical referent, i. e. the conduction current. Therefore, once the currents are known, our approach allows a clear and univocal physical determination of A overcoming the mathematical indeterminacy due to the gauge transformations. We have no need to fix a gauge, since for slowly varying time-dependent electric and magnetic fields, the natural gauge for A is the Coulomb one. We stress the difference between our approach and those usually presented in the literature. Finally, a physical interpretation of the magnetic vector potential is discussed and some examples of calculation of A are analysed

Knowledge Mapping for Open Sensemaking Communities

By analogy to cartographic representations of spatial worlds, Knowledge Maps provide an ‘aerial view’ of a topic by highlighting key elements and connections. Moreover, just as spatial maps simplify the world and can fuel controversy, maps of conceptual worlds provide vehicles for summarising and negotiating meaning. In conjunction with the UK Open University’s Open Educational Resources OpenLearn project, we are investigating the role of such maps for both learners and educators to share – and debate – interpretations of OERs. In this brief update, we describe how a mapping tool (Compendium) has been integrated with OpenLearn’s elearning platform (Moodle) in order to support tasks such as concept analysis, problem-solving, literature review, learning path planning, argument analysis and OER design

Human Capital Accumulation: Education and Immigration

Education and immigration are examined and affirmed as drivers of sustainable productivity growth. In education, individuals see continuing benefits to educational investment, a view supported by individual rates of return from education. Private sector expenditure on education has increased substantially, Australia's public/private funding mix conforming to the OECD average. An expansion of migration is possible without unacceptable reduction in skill composition and may enhance Australian human resources development. The migration program should be set to underpin a 1.25 per cent population growth path and be focussed on 'smart' growth and not just growth in numbers.

Towards the integration of culture into the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology

Educational technology is increasingly used in multicultural contexts and across national cultures. Educational technology users with different national and professional backgrounds may, however, exhibit different attitudes towards technology. Previous research provides isolated evidence of the relationship between learning technology acceptance and culture, and so an overall picture is missing. Therefore, this study attempts to integrate culture (sensu Hofstede, 2001) into an established technology acceptance model (ie. the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology, UTAUT, Venkatesh, Morris, Davis & Davis, 2003). Examining a large sample (N = 2866) of learning technology users from Germany and Romania by means of questionnaire survey, we investigate the differences in culture and technology acceptance between sample subgroups. The collected data reveal the presence of cultural differences both between countries and between professions. In line with previous research, these differences are associated with dissimilar acceptance profiles, ie. different values of acceptance variables and of path coefficients between them. Based on the findings, this study makes headway in cross-cultural research by proposing an extended model of UTAUT – one which integrates three of Hofstede’s culture dimensions. As a practical implication, national and professional culture may shape computer-based learning environments