scholarly journals Willingness to pay tuition and risk-taking proclivities among students: A fundamental conundrum for universities

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zafar Zafari ◽  
Lee Goldman ◽  
Katia Korvizhkin ◽  
Peter Muennig
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Willingness To Pay ◽  
Risk Tolerance ◽  
Columbia University ◽  
Online Classes ◽  
Risk Of Infection ◽  
Survey Tool ◽  
Social Events ◽  
Trade Offs ◽  
The University

Importance. As universities around the world decide whether to remain open or to close their campuses because of the COVID-19 pandemic, they often are doing so without objective information on the preferences and risk tolerance of their students. Objectives. To quantify: 1) risk tolerance for in-person instruction; 2) willingness to pay for in-person instruction versus online-only instruction; and 3) risk-tolerance for social activities held off campus among knowledgable students. Design, Setting, and Participants. We developed an automated survey tool that administered a standard gamble exercise grounded in game theory to 46 Columbia University public health graduate students who were knowledgeable about COVID-19 and who had experience with both online and offline coursework. Students were asked to trade between the risk of becoming infected with COVID-19 and: 1) attending classes in-person versus online and 2) attending parties in the greater New York City area. We also assessed their willingness to pay for online only tuition, and plans to travel off campus. Main Outcome Measures. The decision point in iterative trade-offs between risk of infection with COVID-19 and a desired goal (taking classes in-person or attending social events). Results. On average, students were willing to accept a 23% (standard error [SE]: 4%) risk of infection on campus over the semester in exchange for the opportunity to attend classes in-person. Students were willing-to-pay only 48% (SE: 3%) of typical in-person tuition were courses held exclusively online, and no students were willing to pay full price for online-only instruction. Students planned to leave campus an average of 3.6 times per week (SE: 0.54), and 15% of the students would be willing to attend a party in the community surrounding the university even if the prevalence of circulating COVID-19 were high. Conclusions and Relevance. Students with a strong knowledge of COVID-19 transmission and risks are an enigma: they are willing to pay only around 50% for online classes but likely to engage in activities that present significant barriers to holding in-person classes. This enigma underscores the conundrum facing universities.

scholarly journals Willingness to Pay Tuition and Risk-Taking Proclivities Among Students During the Covid-19 Pandemic: A Fundamental Conundrum for Universities

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zafar Zafari ◽  
Lee Goldman ◽  
Katia Kovrizhkin ◽  
Peter Muennig
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
New York City ◽  
Willingness To Pay ◽  
Risk Taking ◽  
Standard Gamble ◽  
Risk Tolerance ◽  
Columbia University ◽  
Online Classes ◽  
Survey Tool ◽  
The University

Abstract Background. As universities around the world decide whether to remain open or to close their campuses because of the COVID-19 pandemic, they often are doing so without objective information on the preferences and risk tolerance of their students. In this study, we aim to quantify students’: 1) risk tolerance for in-person instruction; 2) willingness to pay for in-person instruction versus online-only instruction; and 3) risk-tolerance for social activities held off campus.Methods. We developed an automated survey tool that administered a “standard gamble” exercise grounded in game theory to 46 Columbia University public health graduate students who were knowledgeable about COVID-19 and who had experience with both online and offline coursework. Students were asked to trade between the risk of becoming infected with COVID-19 and: 1) attending classes in-person versus online and 2) attending parties in the greater New York City area. We also assessed their willingness to pay for online only tuition and plans to travel off campus.Results. On average, students were willing to accept a 23% (standard error [SE]: 4%) risk of infection on campus over the semester in exchange for the opportunity to attend classes in-person. Students were willing-to-pay only 48% (SE: 3%) of typical in-person tuition were courses held exclusively online, and no students were willing to pay full price for online-only instruction. Students planned to leave campus an average of 3.6 times per week (SE: 0.54), and 15% of the students would be willing to attend a party in the community surrounding the university even if the prevalence of circulating COVID-19 were high.Conclusions. Students with a strong knowledge of COVID-19 transmission and risks are an enigma: they are willing to pay only around 50% for online classes but likely to engage in activities that present significant barriers to holding in-person classes. This enigma underscores the conundrum facing universities.Trial registration: NA.

scholarly journals The University, Neighborhood Revitalization, and Civic Engagement: Toward Civic Engagement 3.0

Societies ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 8 (4) ◽  
pp. 106 ◽  
Author(s):  
Henry Taylor, Jr. ◽  
D. Luter ◽  
Camden Miller
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Civic Engagement ◽  
Neighborhood Effects ◽  
Social Transformation ◽  
New York Times ◽  
Neighborhood Revitalization ◽  
Columbia University ◽  
Black Liberation ◽  
Anchor Institutions ◽  
The University

This essay analyzes and syntheses key theories and concepts on neighborhood change from the literature on anchor institutions, university engagement, gentrification, neighborhood effects, Cold War, Black liberation studies, urban political economy, and city building. To deepen understanding of the Columbia University experience, we complemented the literature analysis with an examination of the New York Times and Amsterdam newspapers from 1950 to 1970. The study argues that higher education’s approach to neighborhood revitalization during the urban renewal age, as well as in the post-1990 period, produced undesirable results and failed to spawn either social transformation or build the neighborly community espoused by Lee Benson and Ira Harkavy. The essay explains the reasons why and concludes with a section on a more robust strategy higher education can pursue in the quest to bring about desirable change in the university neighborhood.

“An Old Order Is Passing”: The Rise of Applied Learning in University-Based Teacher Education during the Great Depression

2015 ◽  
Vol 55 (3) ◽  
pp. 319-345 ◽  
Author(s):  
Diana D'Amico
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Public Schools ◽  
Professional Education ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Columbia University ◽  
New York University ◽  
Teachers College ◽  
The Great Depression ◽  
Old Order ◽  
The University

From the late nineteenth century through the first decades of the twentieth century, New York City housed two contrasting models of professional education for teachers. In 1870, the Normal College of the City of New York opened in rented quarters. Founded to prepare women to teach in the city's public schools, in just ten weeks the tuition-free, all-female college “filled to overflowing” with about 1,100 enrolled students. Based upon a four-year high school course approved by the city's Board of Education, the “chief purpose” of the college was to “encourage young women… to engage in the work of teaching in elementary and secondary schools.” Vocationally oriented and focused on practical skills, the Normal College stood in contrast to the School of Pedagogy at New York University and Teachers College, Columbia University founded in 1890 and 1898, respectively. The Normal College's neighbors situated their work within the academic traditions of the university. According to a School of Pedagogy Bulletin from 1912, faculty sought to,meet the needs of students of superior academic training and of teachers of experience who are prepared to study educational problems in their more scientific aspects and their broader relations.

ERIC FONER'S “RECONSTRUCTION” AT TWENTY-FIVE

2014 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 13-27
Author(s):  
Eric Foner
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
San Francisco ◽  
University Of Pennsylvania ◽  
List Type ◽  
Columbia University ◽  
City College ◽  
Northwestern University ◽  
Duke University ◽  
The University ◽  
Oral Presentations

What follows is a written reproduction of a forum held at the annual meeting of the Organization of American Historians in San Francisco in April 2013. The forum commemorated the twenty-fifth anniversary of the publication of Eric Foner's Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution, 1863–1877. Kate Masur (Northwestern University) organized and introduced the discussion, and the commentators in order of speaking were the following: •Heather Andrea Williams, The University of Pennsylvania•Gregory P. Downs, City College of New York and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York•Thavolia Glymph, Duke University•Steven Hahn, The University of Pennsylvania•Eric Foner, Columbia University The written version on the following pages largely preserves the feel and tone of the original oral presentations by the contributors. However, given the opportunity for reflection inherent in the published word, the authors and editors have made some small changes to enhance readability.

scholarly journals Foreseeing the big scientific questions: a special gift of Wagley's

2014 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 631-636
Author(s):  
Emilio Moran
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Latin American ◽  
Columbia University ◽  
Latin American Studies ◽  
University Of Florida ◽  
Interdisciplinary Field ◽  
Title Vi ◽  
Emerging Issues ◽  
Human Costs ◽  
The University

In this paper I review my experience as Charles Wagley's Ph.D. student and later as a faculty colleague at the University of Indiana. In addition to his deep humanism and personal warmth, Wagley also had an uncanny ability to foresee important emerging issues in social sciences, especially within Latin American and Brazilian Studies. With his flexible, personable style he found ways to direct students and colleagues towards the issues he considered important, and which later became truly major issues for these fields. For example, he helped to create the interdisciplinary field of Latin American Studies while in New York, focused on Latin American race relations while at Columbia University, and created the Amazonian Studies program at University of Florida with its focus on impacts of development and infrastructure projects. He helped create scholarship programs for such studies through the Title VI mechanism. Through all of his scholarly contributions, Wagley led by inspiring with a rare social consciousness and a deep concern for the human costs of social and economic change

Historiography and PostmodernismTelling the Truth about History, by Joyce Appleby, Lynn Hunt and Margaret Jacob. New York, W.W. Norton, 1994. xiv, 322 pp. $25.00.Modern Historiography: an Introduction, by Michael Bentley. London and New York, Routledge, 1999. xii, 182 pp. $16.99 (paper).Beyond the Great Story: History as Text and Discourse, by Robert F. Berkhofer, Jr. Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard University Press, 1995. xii, 381 pp. $43.00 (cloth), $18.95 (paper).Real History: Reflections on Historical Practice, by Martin Bunzl. London and New York, Routledge, 1997. viii, 152 pp. $22.99 (paper).Acton and History, by Owen Chadwick. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1998. xiv, 270 pp. $49.95.Encounters: Philosophy of History after Postmodernism, by Ewa Domańska. Charlottesville and London, University Press of Virginia, 1998. xii, 293 pp. Distributed in Canada by Scholarly Book Services Inc., $96.25 (cloth), $31.25 (paper).In Defence of History, by Richard J. Evans. London, Granta Books, 1997. ix, 307 pp. £8.99 (paper).The Footnote: a Curious History, by Anthony Grafton. Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard University Press, 1997. xi, 241 pp. $22.95.Objectivity is not Neutrality: Explanatory Schemes in History, by Thomas L. Haskell. Baltimore and London, The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998. viii, 426 pp. $35.95.The Degradation of American History, by David C. Harlan. Chicago and London, The University of Chicago Press, 1997. xii, 289 pp. $41.00 (cloth), $15.95 (paper).On "What is History?" From Carr and Elton to Rorty and White, by Keith Jenkins. London and New York, Routledge, 1996. viii, 200 pp. $49.95 (cloth), $14.95 (paper).Faces of History: Historical Inquiry from Herodotus to Herder, by Donald R Kelley. New Haven and London, Yale University Press, 1998. xii, 340 pp. $17.00 (paper).The Truth of History, by C. Behan McCullagh. London and New York, Routledge 1998. viii, 327 pp. $25.99 (paper).Deconstructing History, by Alun Munslow. London and New York, Routledge 1997. vi, 226 pp. $24.99 (paper).History on Trial: Culture Wars and the Teaching of the Past, by Gary B. Nash Charlotte Crabtree, and Ross E. Dunn. New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 1997. xiv, 318 pp. $26.00.Cultural History and Postmodernity: Disciplinary Readings and Challenges, by Mark Poster. New York, Columbia University Press, 1997. ix, 173 pp. $47.50 (cloth), $16.50 (paper).The Gender of History: Men, Women, and Historical Practice, by Bonnie G. Smith Cambridge, Massachusetts and London, Harvard University Press, 1998. viii, 306 pp. $35.00.History: What and Why? Ancient, Modern, and Postmodern Perspectives, by Beverley C. Southgate. London and New York, Routledge, 1996. xii, 167 pp. $18.99 (paper).The Killing of History: How Literary Critics and Social Theories are Murdering our Past, by Keith Windschuttle. New York, The Free Press, 1997. 298 pp. $26.00A Global Encyclopaedia of Historical Writing, edited by Daniel R. Woolf. New York and London, Garland Publishing, Inc., 1998. 2 volumes, xxxiv, 1047 pp. $175.00.

1999 ◽  
Vol 34 (3) ◽  
pp. 385-416 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher Kent
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Cultural History ◽  
Culture Wars ◽  
Harvard University ◽  
Columbia University ◽  
Historical Inquiry ◽  
Scholarly Book ◽  
Johns Hopkins University ◽  
The University ◽  
Historical Practice
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