Perceptions of unionization: A study of female support staff at Harvard University and the HUCTW

Selmo, Barbara J Harvard University 2004 해외박사(DDOD)

Since the 1980's, many of the clerical and technical support staffs at research universities have unionized. These predominantly female support staff members did so in order to improve their pay and benefits and to gain a collective identity and voice; they chose, in many instances, to affiliate themselves with traditional industrial labor unions. The impetus to organize came from a variety of experiences---because the staff felt they had no control of their work lives; because they desired to work with their employers rather than for them; and because they wanted to improve their opportunities for advancement and pay. At Harvard University, the interest of the clerical and technical workers in unionization started in the late 1970's, when a group of female laboratory workers earnestly began a drive towards unionization. Although their efforts were unsuccessful, the need for voice, connection and representation remained. Despite the persistent resistance of Harvard's leadership, the steady work of employees-turned-union-organizers came to fruition in May 1988, when Harvard University employees voted to create the Harvard Union of Clerical and Technical Workers (HUCTW). This study examines the perspectives of 27 female HUCTW employees obtained through qualitative interviews and cross-case analysis. The findings from this study suggest that the HUCTW has been effective in some areas of employee work life, such as improving pay and benefits. The HUCTW was effective in fostering a community among those active in the HUCTW and, when approached by employees, effective in representing them in time of crisis or need. Respondents active in the HUCTW had more opportunity to build relationships with volunteers and permanent HUCTW staff than did those not active. The respondents perceived that HUCTW's was ineffective because of poor leadership and communication, inconsistent representation by the volunteer staff, and absence from the workplace. Despite steadily rising staff wages since the HUCTW's inception, some respondents felt that the HUCTW was not as effective as it could be in securing better pay. Respondents in this study also raised the issue that the HUCTW and Harvard University may have forged a mutually beneficial relationship that excludes the HUCTW members.

Professors' perceptions of institutional context and academic role in Paraguay: A study of the National and Catholic universities and the question of reform

Rivarola, Maria Magdalena Harvard University 2003 해외박사(DDOD)

This dissertation examines twenty-six social scientists' perceptions of their academic role in two Paraguayan universities—the National University and the Catholic University. The disciplines included in my study are Economics in the National University and Catholic University and Sociology and Political Science in the Catholic University. My interest is on the interplay between academic role and institutional context in professors' perceptions. The research questions addressed are: (1) <italic>How do Paraguayan social scientists define their role within the institutions where they teach and do research? That is, what meaning do Paraguayan social scientists attribute to the purposes and dimensions of their academic role?</italic> (2) <italic>How do Paraguayan social scientists understand institutional characteristics at the university where they work that may constrain or facilitate their role?</italic>. The academic role dimension examines perceptions of teaching and research roles as well as professional contributions to society. The institutional dimension examines perceptions of working conditions, the organization of knowledge, and academic leadership. The findings include academics' understanding of their teaching and research as shaped by disciplinary beliefs and institutional conditions. In addition, beliefs regarding professional and personal commitments contribute to their understanding of academic roles. Despite the absence of research and scholarship, professors' hold disciplinary values in their understanding of role. Perceptions of institutional conditions highlight the importance of institutional mechanisms that support reform in a context where such conditions are not in place. As mediators of change professors' perceptions of their context will influence their understanding and implementation of any reform. This research suggests that two academic identities stand poised to envision a new competitive university. These academic identities are the “cosmopolitans” and “locals”, which take on unique attributes within the Paraguayan context. These attributes includes unusual institutional, intellectual, and disciplinary affiliations allowing us to build new definitions which I termed, colloquially, “cosmos” and “critical locals” conveying a different set of dimensions arising in this context.

Controversial policy change in public systems of higher education: The cases of the University of Minnesota and the City University of New York

Thomas, Michael Keith Harvard University 2002 해외박사(DDOD)

This study examines the processes by which policy change occurred in two public higher education systems. Using a comparative case study, it investigates the conflicts surrounding two controversial policy issues: (1) efforts by the Board of Trustees of the University of Minnesota to revise the university's academic tenure code, and (2) efforts by the Board of Trustees of the City University of New York to curtail remedial education within its four-year institutions. The study investigates two research questions: (1) How did highly controversial policy proposals emerge from the Boards of Trustees of the University of Minnesota and City University of New York? And (2) Why did they emerge as they did?. Based on focused interviews with individuals involved with the policy controversies and extensive documentary sources, this study discusses the challenges and conflicts of university governance and decision-making, focusing on the current context of “activist” board governance and the unique and change-resistant attributes of higher education institutions. It includes a comparative discussion of the three theoretical perspectives that describe the process of organizational change: the “rational” the “political” and the “loosely-coupled systems/organized anarchy” perspectives. The study then analyzes these controversial change processes by applying constructs from each of the three perspectives to the two case studies. It demonstrates the unique ways in which each theoretical perspective illuminates the elements of the policy change process, including: How problems arise and are framed; how issues advance and become part of an agenda for change; how policies or solutions are developed; and how decisions or choices get made. It then looks critically at the similarities and differences between the two cases and considers the implications of the findings for theories and models of organizational change, as well as for board governance and decision-making. The study concludes with observations about the implications of its findings for change, policy-making, and governance in public higher education.

The effect of the "Maclean's" university rankings on the demand- and supply-side outcomes of Canadian universities

Somers, Marie-Andree Harvard University 2007 해외박사(DDOD)

The two papers in this dissertation examine the effect of the Maclean's university rankings on the market for higher education in Ontario (Canada). The first paper investigates the demand-side impact of the rankings, by estimating the effect of a university's rank on the application decisions of prospective students. The second paper---which examines the supply-side impact of the rankings---looks at the effect of a university's rank on its behavior and characteristics. Specifically, I investigate the various means through which a university will attempt to improve its rank (i.e. resource allocation, financial aid, admissions policies, faculty salaries), and whether these strategies will achieve their intended result, namely to improve the university's score on the indicators used in the Maclean's methodology (i.e. student quality, faculty quality, donations, and reputation). To isolate the effect of a university's rank from that of the many unobserved factors that affect the decisions of administrators and stakeholders, both papers exploit a feature of the magazine's methodology that creates exogenous variation in rank. The dissertation's findings indicate that the Maclean's rankings have had a considerable impact on the market for higher education in Ontario. The first paper finds that a university's rank significantly affects the application decisions of prospective students. The second paper concludes that a university's actions and decisions are also affected by its rank, but that some of its behavioral responses may compromise important social policy objectives. These findings provide several lessons that are relevant to the use of post-secondary accountability systems such as performance reporting.

Debates over Third World Centers at Princeton, Brown and Harvard: Minority student activism and institutional responses in the 1960s and 1970s

Chen, Shu-Ling Harvard University 2000 해외박사(DDOD)

On predominantly white college campuses in the 1970s, Third World Centers represented a place that was specifically focused on addressing the needs and concerns of minority students. This study examines the history behind the establishment of Third World Centers at Princeton and Brown and the debate over a Third World Center at Harvard. It is primarily a history of minority students' efforts to change these institutions. Minority groups sought changes on many fronts, e.g. in admissions, curriculum, minority hiring, university investment policy and quality of life for minorities. This is also a history that seeks to understand minority students' experiences at these institutions during this period. The Third World Center discussions reflected what students defined as specifically their needs, their position in the institutions, and their understandings of the universities' commitment to minorities. This study also examines how the institutions responded to the diversification of its student body in the 1960s and 70s and how they responded to subsequent activism from minority students. Several forces worked to influence these institutions' responses—changing needs of new populations, new political and societal pressures with regard to the issue of race, and the institutions' histories, traditions, self-images and values. The Third World Center debates represented a point at which these universities officially institutionalized structures that manifested their understandings of the position of minorities in their institutions, their perceptions of race relations on campus and their commitments to a diverse student body. The Third World Center debates at Princeton, Brown and Harvard culminated periods of minority student activism at these institutions. The debates at these institutions came within five years of each other, Princeton in 1971, Brown in 1976 and Harvard in 1980. The institutions resolved the debate differently, and therefore, represented different perspectives on the issue. These institutions were often each other's reference points and there was evidence that events and decisions at one influenced those at another. Presented chronologically, these three case histories provide a way to study student activism, institutional responses, and the continuing debate about Third World Centers over the period of the 1970s.

The Practical or the Purposeful: A Study of Academic Decision-Making among College Students in an Elite Institutional Context

Ting, Tiffanie Lui Harvard University 2014 해외박사(DDOD)

In this dissertation, I investigate how thirty-nine undergraduates at Harvard College make one of their first consequential, academic decisions in the context of a powerful cultural narrative about the economic purpose of college. By examining students' narratives about their academic decision-making, namely how they chose their concentrations, I seek to understand the underlying rationales behind their choices and relatedly, students' ideas about the purpose of their college education. I focus on sophomores considering Economics -- widely considered the most "practical" concentration and also the most popular, and those considering the arts, often considered among the "least useful" by students. I demonstrate that the dominant cultural view of the economic purpose of college also governs the academic decision-making of participants, reflecting the national norm. Despite their position as students in an elite liberal arts context, participants held this rationale as the basis for justifying and/or undermining their choice of major. Both the economics and arts students reference a shared narrative of "what Harvard students do" that is rooted in economic considerations and notions of achievement and legitimacy associated with their group identity as Harvard students. I argue that "what Harvard students do" is a shared cognition that has assumed a rule-like status in the context of Harvard. It draws upon a discourse of practicality that involves: 1) a separation between practicality and happiness; 2) a technical rational view of education that privileges quantitative skills and ways of knowing as more practical; 3) pay range expectations that will be "decent" enough to live on comfortably, to pursue hobbies and a certain lifestyle, and 4) a concern for prestige and elite status achieved through competition for particular work opportunities. I examine the ways in which this discourse informs students' conceptions of opportunity and risk and document their strategies for decision-making in relation to this institutional constraint. Finally, I discuss the implications of these findings for students' conceptions of the legitimacy of a liberal arts education, the impact of achievement culture and the elite admissions process on students' approach to their education, and the dilemma of a group identity based on brand versus community.

Student activism and the historically Black university: Hampton Institute and Howard University, 1960--1972 (Virginia, Washington, D.C.)

Roy, Jerrold Wimbish Harvard University 2000 해외박사(DDOD)

The late 1960s were a time of intense ferment on U.S. college campuses. During the early part of the decade, student protests were centered around segregation and voting rights in the southern states. By the late 1960s, the student protests had shifted to their own colleges and universities. Students at both HBCUs and at predominantly White campuses were protesting the involvement of the U.S. military in Vietnam, and the rules, leadership, and curriculum on their campuses. At HBCUs, students questioned the relevance of the curriculum, demanding changes in “the substance and character of their educational experiences.”<super> 1</super> Students also began to challenge the autocratic nature of their administrations. Although some Black college administrators had been generally supportive of student efforts during the sit-ins and marches of the early 1960s, these administrators took a different position when the protests were directed at their institutions and themselves colleges and universities, which generally had more resources at their disposal. In this study, I will examine student activism at two historically Black colleges, Howard University and Hampton Institute, between 1960 and 1972. I will ask: (1) What issues concerned activist students at Howard University and Hampton Institute? Why and how did they want to change the university? (2) How did administrators respond to student protests at their institutions? What factors influenced the institutions' response to student protest?. I have chosen these two institutions because of their rich histories dating back to just after the Civil War. Hampton and Howard have served as models that other HBCUs have tried to emulate. In addition, the archives at both these institutions have extensive material on the student protests of the 1960s. There are no in-depth historical studies of student activism at HBCUs. Their absence is particularly unfortunate because the 1960s was an important period in the development of historically Black colleges and universities. An examination of the protests on Hampton's and Howard's campuses can help to illuminate some of the issues that both HBCU students and administrators were wrestling with during the wave of student protests that swept the country in the 1960s. <super>1</super>Harry Edwards. <italic>Black Students </italic>. (New York: Free Press), 1970, 82.

Essays in Entrepreneurship and Public Economics

Hausman, Naomi Harvard University 2011 해외박사(DDOD)

This dissertation consists of three essays in entrepreneurship and public economics. Universities are believed to be important drivers of local economic growth. The first essay identifies the extent to which U.S. universities stimulate nearby economic activity using the interaction of a national shock to the spread of innovation from universities---the Bayh-Dole Act of 1980---with pre-determined variation both within a university in academic strengths and across universities in federal research funding. I find that long-run employment and payroll per worker around universities rise particularly rapidly after Bayh-Dole in industries more closely related to local university innovative strengths. The impact of university innovation increases with geographic proximity to the university. Entering establishments---in particular multi-unit firm expansions---over the period from 1977 to 1997 were especially important in generating long-run employment growth, while incumbents experienced modest declines, consistent with creative destruction. Suggestive of their complementarities with universities, large establishments contributed more substantially to the total 20 year growth effect than did small establishments. The second essay measures capital gains tax lock-in for household portfolios and estimates the deadweight cost of this behavioral response. Taxes inhibit about one-fourth of the rebalancing in which households would otherwise engage, resulting in a simulated excess burden of 10--25% of revenue for the median household. The third essay evaluates a common argument in the US health policy debate that rising health insurance costs, coupled with the tying of insurance to employers, inhibits the survival and growth of entrepreneurial firms. Economic theory suggests that these costs may indeed adversely affect small businesses: the firms may be unable to pass on to employees the full cost of benefits due to downward nominal wage rigidities or labor market competition with large firms. Instrumenting for premium growth in multiple ways, I can rule out large negative effects of rising health costs on firm survival and employment growth. I also find that firms facing higher growth in health costs are more likely to offer insurance, possibly due to the higher value of insurance when potential loss rises.

Catholic identity at Jesuit universities: How do the presidents of Jesuit universities promote the schools' Catholic identity?

Lannon, Timothy Ryan Harvard University 2000 해외박사(DDOD)

<italic>Catholic Identity at Jesuit Universities: How Do the Presidents of Jesuit Universities Promote the Schools' Catholic Identity</italic>? is a study of presidential leadership at Jesuit universities that examines how three presidents have promoted Catholic identity at their universities in the midst of the changing meaning of being a Catholic in the United States and the competing values of American higher education. This qualitative study investigated the president's role at Fordham University, Santa Clara University, and the University of Scranton by considering two research questions: (1) What is the president's vision of the school's Catholic identity and how does he promote that vision? (2) When there is disagreement between the president's vision of the school's Catholic identity and constituents' views how does the president respond?. The three presidents in this study led institutions with significant contextual differences, even though they are located within a larger common genre of Jesuit institutions. These differences gave rise to dissimilar responses with respect to Catholic identity. All three presidents attempted to make the Catholic identity of their institution more prominent, while also being sensitive and alert to the values of academic life in the United States. Although the particulars of the presidents' decisions differed across institutions, ultimately all three presidents found themselves in the same position, They tried to locate a balance point for their institution between the values of American higher education and Catholic identity. Each president found himself in a unique context in which he had to find the political equilibrium, the degree of Catholic identity that was right for his institution in order to keep the ideological see-saw in balance. The context dictated where the fulcrum was to be set and each president sought to find that balance point, whether through persuasion, ambiguity, and/or compromise. Presidents of Jesuit universities and colleges face the struggle of balancing institutional autonomy, academic freedom, and Catholic identity while in pursuit to become even more recognizable both as outstanding academic institutions and Catholic universities. This study suggests that their role is essential in promoting Catholic identity in the midst of these other competing values.

Regularized Regression in High Dimensions: Asymptotics, Optimality and Universality

Hu, Hong Harvard University ProQuest Dissertations & Theses 2021 해외박사(DDOD)

Regularized regression is a classical method for statistical estimation and learning. It has now been successfully used in many applications including communications, biology, astronomy, where the sizes and amounts of available data have increased substantially over the recent years. However, the theoretical understanding of this method in the high dimensional setting is still incomplete, although many remarkable findings have been made. This dissertation presents some recent results on analyzing regularized regression in high dimensions, organized in three main strands:(1) Exact asymptotic characterizations: We study two regularized regression algorithms. The first one is the sorted ℓ1 norm penalized estimator (SLOPE) for sparse regression. We establish an asymptotic separability property of the SLOPE estimator. This yields a precise characterization of SLOPE in high dimensions via a one-dimensional representation. The second one is the box-relaxation decoder for binary signal recovery. We show that under certain regime, the asymptotic distribution of the number of wrong bits converges to a Poisson law. A distinctive feature of the above results is that they are exact and free of unknown constants.(2) Optimal design: The exact performance characterizations enable a principled way of optimally designing the regularized regression algorithms to reach the fundamental performance limits. Based on our exact characterizations of SLOPE, we address the question about its optimal regularization. Our results reveal that finding the optimal regularization in high dimensions is equivalent to solving an optimal denoising problem in one dimension. This turns out to be an infinite-dimensional convex problem, which can be solved efficiently.(3) Universality: It has long been observed that diverse high-dimensional probabilistic systems can share universal macroscopic behavior irrespective of their distinct detailed distributions. This universality phenomenon allows us to analyze some complicated models by establishing their equivalence to other simpler models. We prove a universality conjecture that has been utilized to study the learning performance of regularized regression in random feature model.More broadly speaking, these three strands are interwoven: universality makes the precise characterization, usually obtained in ideal theoretical models (e.g., i.i.d. Gaussian ensemble), be applicable to broader realistic models (e.g., tight frames) and eventually, the exact and universal characterizations enable the systematic way of optimally design the algorithms for various large-scale systems.