It is argued that colleges and universities can become more productive by enhancing the efficiency of student learning. This requires both acceleration of learning through individually paced mastery learning, better academic focus, year-round schooling, and an earlier start to graduate and professional education. Eight strategies for enhancing…

Describes an undergraduate economics course experiment designed to teach the concepts of comparative advantage and opportunity costs. Students have a limited number of labor hours and can chose to produce either wheat or steel. As the project progresses, the students trade commodities in an attempt to maximize use of their labor hours. (MJP)

A general equilibrium schooling model shows that greater school efficiency is complementary with more equal opportunity, increased overall learning, more integration, stable teacher salaries, and fewer course preparations per teacher. Transferring students to area schools with curricula suited to their abilities would secure these ends. (Contains…

The "Chinese College Stress Scale" was developed to ascertain stress in university students. Results suggested that the psychometric properties of the "Chinese College Stress Scale" were satisfactory. Overall, student stress was primarily related to academic, personal, and negative life events. Approximately 8% of Chinese…

During Fiscal Year 1994, the Ohio Department of Education's Division of Early Childhood Education implemented internal structural changes to improve efficiency and effectiveness. The division prioritized program interests and functional activities including: (1) collaboration; (2) curriculum and professional development; (3) standards and…

School buildings are expensive to construct and to maintain, yet many are used for only a few hours each day. There is also a growing demand for facilities for lifelong learning, leisure, and other community activities, while financial pressures on national and local authorities continue to grow. In 1995, the OECD Programme on Educational Building…

Thirteen studies were conducted that focused on whether preschool and elementary school students with mild and moderate disabilities learned target and non-target behaviors when two types of instructional manipulations were made to direct instructional trial sequences. In one type, the related, non-target behaviors were presented during…

Designed to be used by practicing teachers, students who are learning to become teachers, and faculty members who instruct such students, this manual describes an instructional manipulation for teaching children with mild disabilities that increases opportunities for learning through the addition of extra information. The technique described uses…

This study was commissioned to examine Minnesota's four public higher education systems to identify possible duplication and inefficiency in instructional programs. Study findings indicate that the two-year college systems offer a significant number of occupational programs with low student/teacher ratios, low graduate placement rates, or both.…

This paper examines the trend toward demanding increased accountability and efficiency by institutions of higher education in the United States and Europe and its implications for the relationship between government and the college or university. It notes that such factors as limited state resources, rising educational costs, and the growing…

The New Jersey State government could reduce pupil transportation aid payments to local school districts by between $35 million and $50 million by eliminating support for questionable expenditures and by using the funding formula adopted in the Quality Education Act of 1990. This report describes how these dollar savings can be achieved. The major…

Carl Jung, the Swiss psychologist, developed a way to systematically examine eight basic tendencies toward which different types of people tend to gravitate: introversion or extraversion, sensing or intuition, thinking or feeling, and judging or perceiving. This booklet examines what these tendencies mean and how people with different…

Precision teaching is a useful tool for individualizing drills on a wide variety of foreign language skills. In 5 to 10 minutes per day, students can systematically practice specific skills in need of improvement. The technique has four major components: (1) a precise means of measuring performance continuously, (2) detailed records on behavior…

A computerized management system to improve efficiency was implemented for one year in a fifth grade classroom in a large metropolitan city in the southwest. A variety of computer application software packages were reviewed and selections were made for use in grading and prescriptive analysis. The teacher also developed a database of student…

This study employs meta-analysis and cost-effectiveness instruments to evaluate and compare cross-age tutoring, computer assistance, class size reductions, and instructional time increases for their utility in improving elementary school reading and math scores. Using intervention effect studies as replication models, researchers first estimate…