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…

The Lancaster County (Pennsylvania) public library, which receives many school districts' interlibrary loan requests, experienced a 100% increase in periodical article requests. Working cooperatively, school and public librarians developed a LSCA Title II grant to study magazine usage to make cost-effective decisions about improving timely access…

A study measured the economic utility of language study for 84 graduate students in international management by comparing their reasons for language study with several major economic indicators, including corporate job opportunities. The study, though limited in scope, yields insights into the real and perceived costs and benefits of language…

The education problems in New York City (and a number of other jurisdictions that face court financing challenges) are real and important. Many people would indeed be willing to put more money into New York City schools (or any poorly performing school for that matter) if they had any reason to believe that students' achievement would improve…

In New Zealand the most important institutions that are responsible for the delivery of vocational education and training programs are the government owned and operated tertiary education institutions known as polytechnics. The New Zealand polytechnics deliver programs at the certificate, diploma and degree level. During the course of the 1990s,…

In this article, the author seeks to articulate a critical feminist psychology that recognizes the relation between the State, and the imaginations, identities, and souls of everyday people of privilege, of poverty, and those who witness both. This paper is organized around five propositions linking the broad social context, including but not…

Background: Disadvantaged communities are increasingly the target for interventions. Sure Start was launched in England in 1999 to tackle child poverty and improve child and family services, with Sure Start Local Programmes (SSLPs) targeted at relatively small areas of marked deprivation. However, they are located in a range of different types of…

Government expansion of child care services is based on the assumption that both parents are employed (the adult worker model) and make cost-benefit calculations in choosing child care (the rational economic choice model). This paper addresses this assumption, based on research examining mothers' assessments of appropriate child care. These…

Serving as a case study of a photographic digitization project in a midsize repository, this article describes a project at the Weill Cornell Medical Center Archives. The author examines six components that the archivist needs to contemplate when planning a digitization project: selecting the images to be digitized, understanding the needs of the…

This article considers a hypothetical decision by a hypothetical learner about whether or not to participate in an online "discussion", viewed through the lens of risk analysis. It begins with the premise that participation online is desirable but that it involves the participant in risk, a fact that needs to be acknowledged and taken into account…

Heckman et al. discuss how cost-benefit analysis of prekindergarten education programs demonstrates that the highest per child benefits stem from programs that focus on economically disadvantaged children. Indeed, studies have shown that these children make significant gains in cognition, social-emotional development, and educational performance…

Despite the central role of risk assessment in analyzing and making decisions about many environmental issues, most people are poorly equipped to understand key concepts about risk or apply them successfully. I present three class activities in which students develop a better appreciation for the magnitude of a one in a million increased risk of…

This paper presents guidelines for establishing a QuestionPoint collaborative virtual reference partnership between academic libraries in Australia/New Zealand and the US. These guidelines reflect the practices of the state-of-the-art collaborative QuestionPoint partnership, "AskASERL" as well as the unofficial standards and guidelines…

Lockheed Space Operations Company's Technical Training Department provides certification classes to personnel at other National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Centers. Courses are delivered over the Kennedy Space Center's Video Teleconferencing System (ViTS). The ViTS system uses two-way compressed video and two-way audio between…

This chapter focuses on the substantial gaps in school enrollments and cognitive achievement between boys and girls in rural Pakistan and between a relatively prosperous district (Faisalabad, Punjab) and a poor district (Badin, Sind). An important policy question is whether the allocation of educational expenditures to target disadvantaged groups…