The main purpose of the paper is to estimate the efficiency of a big public university in Italy using individual student-level data, modeling exogenous variables in human capital formation through a heteroscedastic stochastic frontier approach. Specifically, a production function for tertiary education has been estimated with emphasis on…

This study investigated the extent to which personal factors relate to the utilization of development information in the rural communities of South-South Geo-political Zone, Nigeria. The study adopted the descriptive survey design. The population comprised all adult male and female rural dwellers from the three out of the six states in the Zone…

In the quest to improve measured educational outcomes national governments across the The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and beyond have instituted large-scale assessment (LSA) policies in their public schools. Controversy almost universally follows the implementation of such testing, related to such topics as: a)…

If school choice programs are to provide any degree of equitable access to educational opportunities, then useful information about academic quality needs to be available to all participants, not just those who hob knob with the school board members or chat with the superintendent over the backyard fence. This study draws upon a unique data set to…

This study uses three cohorts of first-time, full-time undergraduate students (N = 8,652) at a large, metropolitan, public research university to examine the impact of student use of three library resources (workstations, study rooms, and research clinics) on academic performance. To deal with self-selection bias and estimate this impact more…

Three university ranking systems in vogue have been shown in the previous issue of "Higher Education Review" to be capable of modifications to make them more parsimonious by using only about half of the number of predictors currently in use. This makes some of the predictors "redundant" as they contributed little to the overall ranking. It is…

In this study, we examined relationships between the use of test results and US students' math, reading, and science performance in the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2009. Based on a literature review, we hypothesized that the 16 items in the PISA school questionnaire, which are related to the use of test results, can be…

The authors use data known at the time of initial enrollment to explore the first-year GPAs and second-year retention of first-generation (FGCS) and non-first-generation (non-FGCS) college students. The setting was a diverse, public, urban doctoral institution (approximately 50% FGCS and 30% minority). Multiple linear and logistic regressions run…

This article addresses an issue that has not been well explored in empirical research, namely whether local education agencies (districts) have an impact on student learning. We assumed that local district effects on learning would be largely indirect, mediated by how teachers work together in schools (in professional communities) and the quality…

A popular taxonomy for categorizing outcomes of training is the four-level model formulated by Kirkpatrick (1959). The first level in the model consists of reactions to training. Kirkpatrick recognized only affective reactions, but more recent reformulations of the model posit other types of reactions, including utility and perceptions of…

This study examined motivational strategies and utilisation of Internet resources as determinants of research productivity of lecturers in universities of agriculture in Nigeria. One thousand, one hundred and thirty two (1,132) copies of the questionnaire were administered on the lecturers in universities of agriculture in Nigeria. Eight hundred…

This article examined school counselor dispositions (e.g., general self-efficacy, counselor self-efficacy, openness to change, commitment to counseling improvement/professional development) that predict data usage among K-12 professional school counselors. For the study, 130 professional school counselors from Maryland and Virginia completed the…

Purpose: Purpose of this research was to investigate utilization of labor productivity standards and variables that affect productivity in Texas school foodservice operations. Methods: A questionnaire was developed, validated, and pilot tested, then mailed to 200 randomly selected Texas school foodservice directors. Descriptive statistics for…

Examined the degree to which salary satisfaction can be predicted using company-maintained information. Studying managerial, professional, and technical employees, results suggest that without inclusion of a variety of employee perceptions, only a small proportion of pay satisfaction could be accounted for, with salary and sex as primary objective…

Presents a study which attempts to link current theory to practical problems of applied communication. The power of coorientational variables is tested and compared with the power of commonly used individual characteristics in predicting the amounts and types of information sought by buyers of cosmetics. (JMF)