This study examines international brain race for world-class universities as measured by the QS World University Rankings (QS) and the Academic Ranking of World Universities, particularly in the context of Asian nations' institutional competition and benchmarking against American counterparts. Applying mixed methods with statistical analysis of…

This article describes the evolution of a faculty scholarship symposium within the school of education at a regional comprehensive university. The article outlines the initial structure and goals of the symposium as well as the development of the model over time. The influence of leadership, culture, and individual goals and backgrounds are…

This paper explores the epistemic dimension of neoliberalism in the context of higher education. Much critical commentary depicts neoliberalism negatively in terms of knowledge commodification, marketisation, productivity agendas, accountability regimes, bureaucratisation, economic rationalism and micro-managerialism. The paper offers a conceptual…

Committing to a tenure-track role by novice university faculty has been described as a difficult marriage, and higher educational organizations referred to as greedy, pointing to the need for research on the transition experiences of faculty themselves. The first year for faculty on the tenure-track is critical for academic faculty success in a…

Institutions of higher education are under pressure to be accountable for their expenditures while demonstrating their effectiveness. Through structural equation modeling, a relationship was found between expenditures and the efficiency and effectiveness of an institution, and an optimal expenditure level was found that maximized an institution's…

In this chapter, the author proposes a model for assessing institutional effectiveness. The Volkwein model for assessing institutional effectiveness consists of five parts that summarize the steps for assessing institutions, programs, faculty, and students. The first step in the model distinguishes the dual purposes of institutional effectiveness:…

Academic productivity is a generalized notion of measurement in terms of an output/input model. For this writer, this concept of academic productivity is a type of institutional-level theory concerned with monitoring one aspect of the university. Be it in financial indicators, the measurement of instructional effort, the calculation of FTE…

There is emerging consensus that the United States faces major higher education challenges, including: (1) America's fall from first to tenth place internationally in the percentage of the population with higher education degrees at a time when the country faces increased global economic competition in a knowledge-intensive economy; (2) Education…

Argues that even though flawed, value-added assessment of student achievement can revolutionize the way public schools hire, promote, and compensate teachers, and the way schools are governed and managed. Draws parallels with measuring productivity in private industry. Asserts that providing better education, not ensuring teacher justice, is the…

How do district policies, leadership, and support services influence the quality of teaching and learning in public schools? This article uses a rich longitudinal school-level database to estimate a model of student achievement and analyzes the residuals in the model to obtain estimates of the contributions of unobserved school and school district…

To measure returns on taxpayer investments, two distinct evaluation levels are needed: a publicly accessible system that provides data and analytical conclusions for a state's school districts and charter schools; and an indepth assessment of individual school districts or sites. Standard & Poor's School Evaluation Services framework looks…

Findings of a study that developed and applied a microfinancial model to track financial resources through the school systems are presented in this paper. The School Site Allocations Model (SSAM) shifts the current finance structure to the schools. First, the model was designed and tested in 30 school districts across the United States. Next, data…

This model is an attempt to create a measure of resources to reflect the value of persons, groups, villages, provinces, or nations in terms of education. It attempts to measure human assets and nonhuman material elements. To measure gross cumulative factors, this measure of wealth considers population, environmental learning, and formal learning.…

In an age of student accountability, public school systems must find procedures for identifying effective schools, classrooms, and teachers that help students continue to learn academically. As a result, researchers have been modeling schools and classrooms to calculate productivity indicators that will withstand not only statistical review but…

While concern for efficiency and productivity and the use of systems terminology are not new, the intensity with which the jargon is used is relatively new. Unfortunately, the technological terms have frequently become distorted and value-laden through attempts to apply them to compelling economic and political issues. As a result, administrative…