The Relevance of Higher Education Outcomes to the Needs of the Palestinian Labor Market

The Relevance of Higher Education Outcomes to the Needs of the Palestinian Labor Market Bader Hamdana Tahani Jaffalb a Faculty of Business and Management, University of Palestine, Palestine b Sustainable Development Institute, Al-Quds University, Palestine Abstract: The study aimed to find out the relevance of higher education outcomes to the needs of the Palestinian labor market. The study used the descriptive analytical approach through describing and analyzing data on higher education and the Palestinian labor market during the period (2010-2018). The study found a number of results: a high unemployment rate among university graduates in Palestine, weak absorptive capacity of the Palestinian labor market, and the failure of Palestinian universities to adopt productive investment through undertaking productive projects. Based on the results of the study, the study recommended coordinating between the responsible authorities and studying the labor market and identifying its needs in order to accept students in the required majors in appropriate numbers. In addition, the study recommended coordinating with the private sector in order to provide job opportunities for university graduates according to the needs of the labor market. Keywords: Relevance, higher education, labor market, unemployment

Understanding the Nexus between Alcohol Consumption, Social and Emotional Wellbeing, and higher Education Outcomes among Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Males in Australia

Education is a critical social determinant of health, particularly in the context of Aboriginal and Torres StraitIslander health and well-being. There is also a broad array of other health risk factors that intersect with these social and cultural determinants of health. Overall, an in-depth examination of the complex health–education nexus is needed. This paper provides a commentary on interrelationships between health risk factors, their impact on education trajectories, and their implications for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander males.

The Impact of Ideological Diversity on Educational Performance: A Pilot Study

What is known about the real-world educational effects of ideological diversity in the classroom? Surprisingly, given the amount of attention paid to the role of ideological diversity on higher education outcomes such as critical thinking and academic performance, scant causal evidence exists. We use a lab-in-the-field experiment to test whether the presence of ideologically more conservative students in academic discussion groups, as compared to groups of students who all slanted ideologically liberal, would improve academic outcomes in terms of the quality of each student’s individual academic work. The complete population of an incoming cohort of policy graduate students (N = 78) took part in the experiment. Results demonstrate that students assigned to the ideologically heterogeneous discussion groups subsequently wrote individual assignments that received significantly more negative grades by a professional grader blind to experimental condition and to student identity. Survey results from participating students also suggest that students in the ideologically heterogeneous discussion groups were also significantly more likely to perceive interpersonal conflict and to dislike their group dynamics—a result that was not driven by students of a particular ideological slant. As a small pilot, this study provides questions to resolve with future research, including the role of pedagogy in managing ideological diversity, and provides a template for future experimental designs.

Meritocracy or Reputation? How University Rankings Matter

University rankings have gained prominence in tandem with the global race towards excellence and as part of the growing expectation of rational, scientific evaluation of performance across a range of institutional sectors and human activity. While their omnipresence is acknowledged, empirically we know less about whether and how rankings matter in higher education outcomes. Do university rankings, predicated on universalistic standards and shared metrics of quality, function meritocratically to level the impact of long-established reputations? We address this question by analyzing the extent to which changes in the position of UK universities in ranking tables, beyond existing reputations, impact on their strategic goal of international student recruitment. We draw upon an ad hoc dataset merging aggregate (university) level indicators of ranking performance and reputation with indicators of other institutional characteristics and international student numbers. Our findings show that recruitment of international students is primarily determined by perceptions of university reputation, socially mediated and sedimented over the long term, rather than universities’ yearly updated ranking positions. We conclude that while improving rankings does not necessarily change universities’ recruitment outcomes, they are nevertheless consequential for universities and students as strategic actors investing in rankings as purpose and identity.

Well-Placed: The Geography of Opportunity and High School Effects on College Attendance

Recent work has broadened the scope of school effectiveness research to consider not only academic achievement but also other outcomes, especially college attendance. This literature has argued that high schools are an important determinant of college attendance, with some contending that high schools matter more for college attendance than for academic achievement. A separate branch of research has illustrated how place-based opportunities facilitate college attendance. We merge these two literatures by asking if schools’ geographic context can explain apparent variation in effectiveness among Wisconsin high schools. We find that geographic context explains nearly a third of the variance in traditional estimates of school effectiveness on college attendance, because factors like proximity to colleges are strongly associated with college attendance. Accounting for geography is therefore important in order not to overstate high schools’ role in higher education outcomes. In contrast, geographic context explains little of the variance in academic achievement growth. Thus, if high schools seem to matter more for college attendance than for academic achievement under traditional estimates, schools’ apparent importance for the two outcomes converge upon adjusting for differences in geographic context. Results are based on multilevel models applied to rich administrative data on every Wisconsin public high school entrant between 2006 and 2011.