The legitimacy of experiential learning in research universities

Schmiede, Angela Elizabeth Stanford University 2003 해외박사(DDOD)

The goal of this historical and exploratory study was to describe and analyze the spread and legitimacy of experiential learning to and within Cornell University and Stanford University. Using an institutional and political framework, this analysis focused on understanding how elements of legitimacy from the academy, the experiential learning field and the external environment intersected to shape the diffusion, forms and purposes of experiential learning within Cornell and Stanford. The constructions of legitimacy within these three different contexts shifted over time, influencing the extent to which experiential learning was adopted; and once adopted, the extent to which it was adapted, co-opted or rejected. Using a case study design, data were collected at Stanford and Cornell covering the period of 1969–2002. Data included interviews with faculty, administrators, students and staff as well as extensive archival documentation. The study was guided by the following research questions: How and why did experiential learning come to be situated and operationalized within research universities? What are the purposes and legitimacy of different forms of experiential learning in research universities? How has that changed over time?. Primary findings from this study included the following: (1) From a macro perspective, Cornell and Stanford adopted similar initiatives at about the same time; however, the extent to which the initiatives were legitimized at each university differed. (2) President-initiated experiential learning programs received the most support and resources over time. Senior faculty were more important for initiating programs than sustaining them, whereas students were more important for sustaining programs than initiating them. (3) Locating an experiential learning program in Academic Affairs did not necessarily improve its chances for legitimacy and survival. (4) Bringing experiential learning programs closer to the academic core often resulted in co-optation or adaptation. (5) The quality of experiential learning was often loosely coupled with the legitimacy it received within the university. (6) The more closely aligned experiential learning was with traditional scholarship, the more legitimate it became.

Stress and coping among Latino freshmen during their transition to an elite university

Lopez, John Derek Stanford University 2002 해외박사(DDOD)

The dissertation is a nine month longitudinal study of psychosocial stress, coping behavior, and psychological adjustment among a group of incoming Latino students during their first year at Stanford University. The study used a stress and coping theoretical framework and sought to learn about the psychosocial stress Latino students experience during the transition into college and how they coped with stress. Both qualitative and quantitative methods were utilized. Quantitative survey data were collected in the Fall and Spring during the freshman year from 111 entering students. Qualitative data consisting of interviews were collected from 24 students during the Winter quarter. No significant differences were found for universal stresses. However, it was found that while intragroup minority status stresses decreased over the year, racism stresses increased. Qualitative data revealed that students with a darker skin complexion perceived more racism. Differences with regard to previous multicultural exposure were found for many universal and minority status stress indices. The cultural incongruity faced by Latino students who had less exposure to majority culture prior to college was associated with higher levels of both universal and minority status stress. However, by the end of the year levels of stress for students who were exposed primarily to other Latinos before entering college decreased. There were no significant differences by precollege multicultural exposure with regard to stress levels at the end of the year. Students were more likely to report an assimilated sociocultural orientation at the beginning of the year. However, as reports of racism increased over the academic year more students reported feeling racially alienated from the university environment. Students who experienced more psychological symptoms during the first few months of the college transition were from public high schools and had fewer contacts with white students prior to college. The results from this study suggest that stress related to racial issues becomes more salient over time. Moreover, students who have had less exposure to white students, come from the working class, and who have darker complexion are more likely to experience difficulty during the transition year to Stanford University. Efforts to integrate Latino students into the academic and social aspects of the university environment (e.g., participation in class discussions, clubs, organizations, and peer groups) can increase positive outcomes for students who are most at-risk for experiencing difficulty in an elite institution of higher education.

Private monies, public universities: Implications for access and university behavior. A study of Makerere University (Uganda)

Carrol, Bidemi Stanford University 2005 해외박사(DDOD)

In the early 1990s, Makerere University introduced the Private Entry Scheme (PES)---a scheme that allowed the university to raise revenues by admitting students who pay tuition and fees. This reform is part of a growing trend towards privatization in higher education. The dissertation explores two broad implications of the PES---the first is the implication for access and the second, the implication for university behavior. To do so it asks three questions. First, has the PES increased inequities in participation at Makerere? Using survey data of students at Makerere, I compare the socioeconomic status of students admitted under the PES to those admitted under the government scholarship scheme. The analyses suggest that the PES has entrenched, rather than increased, existing inequities in participation at the university. Second, how has the financial environment of the university changed as a result of the PES? Using financial records of the university and selected faculties within the university, the analyses shows that the PES has become an important source of revenue for the university. Furthermore, due to the success of the PES, international funding agencies have also increased their support to the university. On the other hand, government funding has stayed relatively constant throughout the last decade. The extent of privatization differs among faculties within the university as some faculties have been able to admit large numbers of fee-paying students. Furthermore, because new resource allocation procedures allow faculties to retain a portion of the revenues generated, some faculties have much higher revenues than others. Third, how has the PES shaped relations within the university? Using data from interviews of Makerere University staff, the analyses concludes that the PES has led to increased differentiation among faculties and has created conflict within the university. I show that there is conflict between high- and low-revenue faculties and between central administration and academics over the ownership and control of the revenues generated from the PES. I also find that major aspects of academic work such as decisions on the curriculum, quality of teaching, and research have been reshaped by the process of privatization.

The contest over affirmative action at the University of California: Theory and politics of contemporary higher education policy

Pusser, Brian Stanford University 1999 해외박사(DDOD)

This manuscript presents a case study of the contest over affirmative action policy at the University of California from 1994–1996, to address the question: what are the institutional, social, and political dynamics of contemporary public higher education policy making?. This study utilizes a theoretical framework based in contested State theory, positive theories of institutions, and elements of interest-articulation and institutional-cultural analytical frames. It presents the political, legal, social and institutional context and dynamics of the UC affirmative action contest through the collection and analysis of a broad range of data. These included data from semi-structured interviews with key participants, historical and contemporary institutional documents, legal briefs, personal correspondences of policymakers, and transcripts of legislative hearings. The analysis focuses on the effect of the University's institutional heritage, the creation and composition of the University governing board, internal institutional policy making dynamics, and the role of state political parties, the governor, the legislature, and a variety of interest groups, in shaping the policy contest. Attention is also turned to the tension engendered by the University's multiple missions, and shifts in demand for access to the University's most selective campuses. The historical role of affirmative action as a tool for redressing inequality is considered in light of contemporary political and legal challenges to its use in higher education admissions, hiring and contracting. The findings from this study suggest that prevailing understandings of public higher education policy making can be improved through conceptualizing the university as both actor and instrument in a broader arena of conflict for control of political institutions and State functions. From this perspective university policy making is seen not as an endogenous process of interest articulation controlled by university administrative leadership, but as a process of conflict and resistance in which a complex network of internal and external interests vie for control of institutional decision making structures and processes.

Essays in development economics

Salcedo, Alejandrina Stanford University 2009 해외박사(DDOD)

This dissertation is composed of three chapters. The first two study topics related to higher education. Chapter one analyzes the relative advantages of different entry systems to university, and chapter two investigates the effects on academic outcomes of attending a higher quality campus at the college level. The third chapter examines household size choice. In the first chapter, "Entry Systems to University: Evidence on the Trade-offs of Early Selection versus Open Admission", I analyze the relative advantages between the two main entry systems to university in the world. In one, only those students who attended specific high schools are eligible to apply to college (early selection). In the second, all high school graduates can apply (open admission). I use the case of UNAM, a large public university in Mexico, where the two systems exist simultaneously to study the advantages of each of the two channels. UNAM runs a system of high schools (early selection), but it also admits students from other schools (open admission). I estimate whether attending a UNAM high school increases the probability of being a successful student in university. I identify this causal effect using a student strike that displaced students from one channel into the other. Results indicate that attending a UNAM high school reduces the probability of dropping out between the first and second year of college from 9 to 7 percent. Additionally, I show that some students from non-UNAM high schools have higher expected graduation probabilities than some students from UNAM high schools. Thus, the University benefits from admitting students who were not tracked into their schools. Finally, I use an analytical framework to test whether UNAM is selecting students from the two channels in a way that maximizes expected graduation rates. Results suggest that selection is optimal, given the particular constraints of the admissions process. The second chapter, "The Effect of College Quality on Academic Performance. Evidence from Mexico", is a joint project with Rodrigo Barros. We estimate the effects of attending a higher quality campus at the college level on academic outcomes using the case of UNAM. Incoming students from high schools run by the University are allocated to majors and campuses in UNAM using a mechanism that is based on a score. The score depends on the student's academic performance in high school, and the mechanism gives priority to students with higher scores. The allocation process generates a series of discontinuities where students with similar transition scores are assigned to different campuses due to capacity constraints. This allows us to use a regression discontinuity methodology. We find that attending the main campus rather than a secondary one significantly improves peer characteristics. That is, classmates of students in the main campus come from a better socioeconomic environment and have a better academic background. However, attending a higher quality campus does not significantly affect graduation probabilities or GPA, it increases the number of failed and dropped courses, and deteriorates the ranking by GPA of a student in her class. A possible interpretation is that other variables, like the student's ranking in the class, counteract the positive peer characteristics. Finally, the third chapter, "Families as Roommates: Changes in U.S. Household Size", is a joint project with Todd Schoellman and Michele Tertilt. This study is motivated by the empirical fact that the average American today lives in a household of three people, compared to six in 1850. We propose a mechanism based on the demand for privacy as an explanation for part of this reduction in household size. We hypothesize that as people get richer, they consume a lower proportion of public goods, which can be shared among all household members, relative to private goods, which cannot be shared. This reduces the economies of scale of living with other people, and endogenously decreases the optimal household size. We present a model that formalizes this idea and calibrate it to fit facts about the relationship between household size, consumption patterns, and income in a cross-section at the end of the 20th Century. We project the model back to 1850 by modifying income to its actual level at that point it time. The results indicate that our proposed mechanism can account for 37% of the difference in the number of adults in the household between 1850 and 2000, and for 16% of the decline in children.

Institutional convergence and the diffusion of university- versus firm-origin technologies

Nelson, Andrew Joel Stanford University 2007 해외박사(DDOD)

Building on inter-organizational networks of innovation, scholars have begun to examine various types of organizations within these networks and have offered special attention to the role of universities. Typically, these studies link the university as an organizational type with the institution of "public science," which emphasizes the open disclosure of knowledge, and the firm with the institution of "private science," which emphasizes the commercial exploitation of knowledge. In light of dramatic shifts in the commercial orientation of universities, I argue that the distinction between organizations on the presumption that they subscribe to different institutional norms of disclosure no longer holds. To investigate this possibility, I compare diffusion patterns for paired technologies---one with a university origin and one with a firm origin---in both biotechnology and digital audio. Each invention was both published and patented, reflecting the dual emphasis on public science and private science. I draw upon downstream patent and publication citations to assess potential differences in the speed of diffusion, the geographic locations of follow-on organizations and the breadth of applications as indicated by patent classes and subclasses. I also exploit interviews with 112 different researchers and business managers to identify diffusion mechanisms and the considerations that affect their use. Confirming the eroding association of organizational and institutional arrangements, I find that a technology's organizational origin alone offers little insight into diffusion processes. Instead, I highlight diffusion mechanisms that hold across organizational contexts and I describe how these mechanisms build upon interpersonal networks. Ultimately, these interpersonal networks, which feature rampant crossing of organizational boundaries, are the critical structures that enable the diffusion of knowledge. Moreover, these connections shape how individual researchers in each organizational context respond to the competing demands of public science and private science. These results highlight institutional diffusion processes responsible for the movement of knowledge between organizations---both from the university to the firm and from the firm to the university. In so doing, they develop a richer understanding of university-firm interactions, encourage further study of the personal networks of researchers, and question the adequacy of accounts that are focused on organizational distinctions alone.

Essays in the Economics of Education

Light, Jacob Stanford University ProQuest Dissertations & These 2024 해외박사(DDOD)

Colleges and universities play an important role in training a skilled workforce and generating knowledge for society, but we know little about exactly how universities choose the skills and knowledge they provide to students. In my dissertation, I introduce novel data that allow me to document new facts about the supply of courses at a large sample of US universities. The analysis in these papers highlights a tension between students, who appear relatively responsive to changing conditions in the labor market, and to social and political issues more broadly, and universities, which respond gradually to shifts in student demand.The first chapter of this dissertation examines how universities adjust the supply of courses to meet students' changing demand for skills and knowledge. I consider two forms of supply adjustments: universities can meet student demand by adjusting the number of courses they offer (the extensive margin) and by adjusting the content of existing courses (the intensive margin). I show that while students' preferences for courses are relatively dynamic, course supply adjusts gradually along both of these margins. On the extensive margin, I estimate the elasticity of the number of courses a field offers with respect to students' demand for courses in that field. I show that universities are inelastic on this margin; a department the size of Stanford's Economics department is able to offer a new course when demand for Economics courses grows by approximately 235 seats. On the intensive margin, I show that course offerings are highly stable over time. The content of college courses has shifted modestly over the last 20 years, with newly added courses increasingly emphasizing topics related to social justice and job relevance.The second chapter of this dissertation studies the mechanisms that contribute to inelasticity in course supply. I outline a stylized model of the university that highlights some of the distinguishing features of universities relative to the standard firms whose behavior economists study. I use the insights from this framework to develop hypotheses for the sources of inelasticity within the university. The empirical analysis lends support to what I call the "institutional rigidities" hypothesis, which highlights the potential for institutional stakeholders (e.g., tenured faculty or boards of governors) to slow the university's adjustment to changing demand. In particular, I find that course supply is more inelastic at public universities compared to private universities. Universities with a high share of tenured faculty are more inelastic when demand for a field is decreasing but are actually more elastic when demand for a field is increasing, possibly because job security reduces the risk that an instructor's investment in creating a new course will have only limited scope for return.Central to the first two chapters of this dissertation, and one of the primary contributions of my research, is the construction of a novel "course catalog" dataset that contains detailed information on course offerings, enrollment, and content at a large and nationally representative sample of US colleges and universities. This dataset provides a unique look inside the black box of higher education instruction. The data allow me to look beyond major completions to observe how students and universities adjust the specific skills that are demanded/supplied and how fields of study evolve with changing social, economic, and technological conditions.

Power, politics, and change in higher education: The case of the National Autonomous University of Mexico

Ordorika, Imanol Stanford University 1999 해외박사(DDOD)

The study of politics, power, and conflict in higher education is the object of this work. It analyzes the connection between political processes and change in higher education in a historical perspective by drawing from the case of the <italic>Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México </italic>. This work attempts to contribute to the study of the relation between political processes and change in higher education. It constitutes an effort to explain why increasing demands have not produced rapid responses from the university. It tries to understand why this lack of response has generated internal and external tensions and conflictive dynamics. In addressing these issues I draw from a revealing case study and an alternative theoretical construct in order to generalize some patterns that will enable our understanding of other cases and institutions. This dissertation examines the process of change at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) in the presence of new internal and societal exigencies, from a historical perspective. It looks at power relations, political processes, and conflicts at the largest and most important single institution of higher education in the country. The study of this process at UNAM is enlightening because of the massive nature of this university, its centrality in Mexican higher education, and the opportunity to gather data on the nature of these conflicts and tensions. In building this explanation, three issues of major relevance are addressed in this dissertation. The first issue is the construction of a conceptual model that will focus on change, a consequence of politics and conflict in higher education. An outcome of this is the exposition of the political nature of the UNAM and higher education organizations in general. The second issue is an effort to reassess the limits of University autonomy and the relation between the UNAM and the Federal Government in Mexico. The third issue is study of the process of change at the UNAM.

Class beyond class: Archaeologies of the knowledge economy

Simpson, Richard Fredrick Stanford University 2010 해외박사(DDOD)

Class Beyond Class: Archaeologies of the Knowledge Economy traces the emergence of the campus in the United States from the late 1800s through the twentieth century, and seeks to show how the geography of education was neither incidental nor marginal in the development of the contemporary geo-economic formation of multinational capital. The project focuses on Stanford University (founded 1891) not strictly because it marks an inaugural modernist attempt to compose a completely autonomous educational space that we today understand as a campus, but because of its principal role in the formation of the transnational urban space named Silicon Valley. Through its various manifestations as a city in microcosm, post-war industrial park, and corporate headquarters, the campus plays a definitive role in the history of Western modernity, as well as develops a profound reflection on the relationship between knowledge, economy, collective identity, built space, and pedagogy. Chapter one provides a comparison of various nineteenth century American "pedagogic landscapes," demonstrating that the transformation in meaning of the term campus in the 1890's owes much less to changes in education practices, than to the narrative structural logic and public reception of three earlier spatial forms which arose within the context of the social contradiction between human welfare and rapid industrialization. Chapter two focuses on how the modern university provided, not only a space that could function outside of politics in which concepts of the social could be developed, but on how this precise spatial form became a symbolic act in which both earlier moralistic forms of education and contemporary class and racial antagonisms crippling the industrial metropolis could be dramatically swept away. I argue that Leland Stanford's late advocacy of "direct worker ownership"---a 'third way' between corporate and state ownership of labor---required and produced, above all, a new space. The stylistic features integral to the campus scheme, aiming to balance universal social technologies with local, historical, and natural givens in order to resolve the central class conflicts and challenges of its time, offer rich possibilities for excavating new conceptions of cosmopolitanism in the present. The desire for a classless society articulated in the technology of the original campus echoes within the aesthetic iterations of 'capitalist realism' employed by several influential corporate campuses of Silicon Valley such as, Apple, Oracle, and Yahoo!. Chapter three focuses on how space uniquely depoliticizes pedagogic labor and knowledge production, while at the same time elicits a crucial geographic project for recruiting developing countries into a global knowledge economy. As an archaeology of the cultural, material, and economic practices that have directly contributed to the creation of Silicon Valley, this project ultimately provides a case study of the cultures of finance capital, the emergence of the multinational city, and the political valences of the continuously evolving vocation of the modern intellectual.

Culture, commerce, and the city: Aby Warburg, Ernst Cassirer, and Erwin Panofsky in Hamburg, 1919--1933

Levine, Emily Jane Stanford University 2008 해외박사(DDOD)

This dissertation examines the intimate relationship between place and culture in Weimar-era Hamburg through the lives and works of its three most prominent intellectuals: the historian of art and civilization, Aby Warburg (1866-1929), the philosopher Ernst Cassirer (1874-1945), and the art historian Erwin Panofsky (1892-1968). Cassirer, Panofsky, and Warburg shared an intellectual interest in the historical development of what they called "symbolic forms" in art history and philosophy from the classical through the modern periods. Rather than offer an exegesis of their works, I use their lives and works to investigate three historical themes: Weimar culture and politics; the relationship between Germans and Jews; and Hamburg's particular history in relation to Germany. I argue that this circle's unconventional methodology, bridging contextualism and formalism, as well as metaphysics and epistemology, reflected the cultural, political, and economic institutions of its host city. Hamburg enjoyed a longtime reputation as a mercantilist city, but it was not an intellectual center. Yet Hamburg's cosmopolitanism resulting from its international trade, its tradition of cultural philanthropy, and its loose institutional structure ultimately granted its scholars a unique degree of cultural autonomy. This dissertation shows how and why the unlikely port city of Hamburg---and not Berlin with its century-old university---produced one of the most important interdisciplinary contributions to the humanities in the twentieth century. The first chapter describes Warburg's role in the debate leading up to the University of Hamburg's founding in 1919 that pitted scholarly and economic interests against one another. The second presents Cassirer's appointment at the university as a testament to Warburg's vision of an open and liberal Hamburg, and Cassirer's potential departure as a threat to that vision. The third completes the triumvirate of the Hamburg School by placing Panofsky's groundbreaking work in the nascent field of art history in the context of Hamburg. The fourth focuses on the scholars' wives---Mary Warburg, Toni Cassirer, and Dora Panofsky---and views the circle through historical questions concerning gender and masculinity. The fifth chapter uses Cassirer's tenure as rector of the young university to describe the rise and fall of the "Republican moment" in German politics and ideas.