Under the major educational reform movement in the Chinese Mainland, which began in 1985, higher education was considered the most important apparatus for national development. The Ministry of Education initiated "Project 985" to develop two top national universities into world-class universities. As part of this project to raise…

The nation seems to have suddenly awoken to the reality that for-profit academic institutions are a force to be reckoned with. For so long, they have been ignored as inconsequential, second-rate competition, and vilified for their greed and lack of quality. Two events have changed their image into something far more formidable: (1) the realization…

Many athletes display great sport skills in noncompetitive situations such as during practice, but fail to successfully execute these same skills in competition. Coaches often wonder (1) from a technical perspective, why is the good performance of athletes during practice sessions not transferred to actual competition; (2) what are the flaws of…

Throughout the 1990s, one state after another adopted prescriptive education standards enforced by frequent standardized testing, often of the high-stakes variety. A top-down, get-tough movement to impose "accountability" began to squeeze the life out of classrooms. Recently, politicians, corporate CEOs, and testing companies are trying to sell…

A small commercial building in a nearby industrial park has decided to install a rooftop garden for its employees to enjoy. The garden will be about 100 feet long and 75 feet wide. This article presents a design challenge for technology and engineering students wherein they will assist in the initial conceptual design of the rooftop garden. The…

Considering how bad the economy was in 2009, North America's 50 largest for profit child care chains fared pretty well. In fact, about half of these organizations actually expanded their capacity in 2009--although the expansion was not spectacular, averaging just under 3%. About one-fourth of the organizations maintained their capacity and a…

The aim of this article is to outline some major defining aspects of the Swedish controlled school market and to describe and analyze how a number of urban school leaders in the Swedish cities of Stockholm and Malmo define, understand, and respond to the competition they see. Based on interviews with school leaders and research on a wide range of…

The aim of the International Society for Technology, Education, and Science (iHSES) conference is to offer opportunities to share ideas, discuss theoretical and practical issues, and connect with the leaders in the fields of "humanities," "education" and "social sciences." It is organized for: (1) faculty members in…

Kenya's public procurement and disposal Act of 2005 sets out clear rules and procedures for public procurement entities to follow; however this does not seem to be the case. This study sought to examine determinants of Non-compliance to the Public Procurement Regulations in Kenyan Secondary Schools. The study adopted a descriptive survey research.…

This study was designed to examine whether the Olympic Games was a catalyst for changes to Beijing residents' quality of life based on social-economic perspectives and how these changes affected their continuous support for the Games. Residents who lived in Beijing 18 months or longer were invited to participate in this survey research (N = 412)…

The process of internationalisation of higher education can be seen as fluctuating between two main discourses: economic competition and academic internationalisation (Bolsman & Miller 2008). Within the former type of discourse, internationalisation is constructed as a means to generate income, in competition with other institutions, through…

Purpose: This article aims to provide an overview of Texas State University's Common Experience, an innovative initiative that engaged tens of thousands of people in shared consideration of sustainability as a single topic during academic year 2010-2011. Design/methodology/approach: The discourse begins with an overview of the Common Experience…

In this report the Brown Center on Education Policy at the Brookings Institution presents the results of a self-developed Education Choice and Competition Index (ECCI) along with an interactive application that grades large school districts according to the ECCI. The index is composed of 13 pro choice criteria. The authors present the ECCI as a…

Today, with states' near-universal adoption of the Common Core State Standards, the political system has achieved that which was not possible less than 2 decades ago. Just why this is so remains unanswered. Some observers have attributed states' embrace of the standards to the substantial financial incentives that the federal government embedded…

This article, the second of a two-part series, features 11 teaching innovations presented at the 2014 Association for Business Communication annual conference. These 11 assignments included leadership and other-focused communication--detecting communication style, adaptive communication, personality type, delivering feedback, problem solving, and…