Search results for "academic"
showing 10 items of 1054 documents
Child vaccination policies in Europe: a report from the Summits of Independent European Vaccination Experts.
2003
Despite the proven safety and efficacy of vaccines, common vaccine-preventable diseases such as measles are not yet controlled in all European countries. This is largely due to three factors. First, vaccination systems differ widely throughout Europe and they vary between highly centralised and totally decentralised systems. Both have advantages and disadvantages, but without doubt they can all work locally. "Harmonisation" in this field is neither a prerequisite nor a guarantee for success. Second, perception of vaccination--and this includes education of the public--is most crucial. In this field the media play an important part, but their ability or will to communicate complicated scient…
Managing Academic Internationalization: A Culture-Based Approach
2014
Abstract The goal of the present paper is apply the blue-ocean strategy to the current status of the higher education system, with a major focus on managing cultural diversity in a global world. Universities nowadays represent poles of excellence in terms of cultural innovation, knowledge creation and transfer to the industry, an interface between home and host country as regards academic mobility (teaching and research mobility); they have a significant role in promoting cultural values and informed intercultural communication, creating academic consortia as well as interacting with the local and business communities. The paper shall also redefine: the role of university managers in the co…
Social Inequalities in the French Education System : The Joint Effect of Individual and Contextual Factors
2000
This paper presents a synthetic picture of social inequalities in pupils' scholastic careers in France. Individual factors such as socio-economic backgroun remain important for both academic results from the beginning of schooling on and option and streaming choices at the secondary level. Moreover, families have unequal resources to manage their children's schooling careers in a system which is becoming more complex and decentralized. This means that contextual factors are also very important. Decentralization has in fact increased the importance of choice of schooling context : the class or the school attented does make a difference and this has the effect of widening social gaps in acade…
Repercussions of Economic and Social Factors on Pension Systems
2013
Abstract Economic and social developments in recent years have left serious marks on pension systems. As forecasts for the following period are bleak, the need for uniting the efforts of public authorities with those of the business environment, research institutes and the academic community in order to identify viable solutions for both the present and the future, becomes increasingly obvious. Together they can identify remedies and contribute to the popularization of a problem whose consequences, once known, can be counteracted. The paper drafted, by studying the literature, confronts a number of common issues faced by pension systems in the current period and emphasizes the possibility o…
Educational systems efficiency in European Union countries
2011
Abstract We use the PISA 2006 results to analyse students’ proficiency in EU countries with regard to two indexes that represent the home background, viz the educational resources available at home and the family background of students. However, many factors affect proficiency and therefore, using a DEA-bootstrap, we intend to measure the efficiency of the European educational systems as capability to ensure high students’ competencies despite adverse conditions about the educational resources available at home and the family background. Results show an unexpected differentiation among EU countries. In particular, the most developed countries often show disappointing students’ proficiency d…
The Rise in Inequality after Pandemics: Can Fiscal Support Play a Mitigating Role?
2021
Abstract Major epidemics of the last two decades (SARS, H1N1, MERS, Ebola, and Zika) have been followed by increases in inequality [Furceri et al. (2020), COVID Economics, 12, 138–157]. In this article, we show that the extent of fiscal consolidation in the years following the onset of these pandemics has played an important role in determining the extent of the increase in inequality. Episodes marked by extreme austerity—measured using either the government’s fiscal balance, health expenditures, or redistribution—have been associated with an increase in the Gini measure of inequality three times as large as in episodes where fiscal policy has been more supportive. We survey the evidence th…
School grading and institutional contexts
2011
We study how the relationship between students' cognitive ability and their school grades depends on institutional contexts. In a simple abstract model, we show that unless competence standards are set at above-school level or the variation of competence across schools is low, students' competence valuation will be heterogeneous, with weaker schools inflating grades or flattening their dependence on competence, therefore reducing the information content and comparability of school grades. Using data from the OECD-PISA 2003 Survey, the model is applied to a sample of four countries, namely Australia, Germany, Italy, and the Netherlands. We find that in Australia, schools' heterogeneity does …
An analysis of economic learning among undergraduates in introductory economics courses in Germany
2016
In this article, the authors present the findings of a pretest-posttest measurement of the economic knowledge of students in introductory economics courses in undergraduate study programs in Germany. The responses of 403 students to 14 items selected from the Test of Economic Literacy (Soper and Walstad 1987) were analyzed to identify four types of economic learning: positive, retained, negative, and zero learning. In addition, a survey was conducted to gather data on the students' personal characteristics to determine their effect on the learning process. Retained learning prevailed for most items, followed by zero learning and positive learning. To determine which factors influence beginn…
Is traditional teaching really all that bad? A within-student between-subject approach
2011
Abstract Recent studies conclude that teachers are important for student learning but it remains uncertain what actually determines effective teaching. This study directly peers into the black box of educational production by investigating the relationship between lecture style teaching and student achievement. Based on matched student–teacher data for the US, the estimation strategy exploits between-subject variation to control for unobserved student traits. Results indicate that traditional lecture style teaching is associated with significantly higher student achievement. No support for detrimental effects of lecture style teaching can be found even when evaluating possible selection bia…
Relationship between students' perception of a rubric for oral presentations and their academic characteristics
2022
The use of rubrics in the evaluation of oral presentations has been associated with several benefits for students. However, it is unknown whether students with better academic marks and greater self-regulation find the use of rubrics more useful or not. This paper aims to assess the relationship between how students perceive the use of a rubric and their academic characteristics, and to analyze the congruence between the professor’s and students’ evaluations when using the rubric. Eighty-five students studying for a Degree in Sport Sciences participated in this study. A rubric for oral presentations was used to assess the students’ performance. The students then filled out…