Browsing by Subject "university"

Now showing 1 - 6 of 6
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    2005 Minnesota State Survey--Part II: Results and Technical Report.
    (Minnesota Center for Survey Research (MCSR), 2005) Minnesota Center for Survey Research
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    The ‘Coloured Question’ and the University of Pretoria: Separate Development, Trusteeship and Self Reliance, 1933-2012
    (2018-12) Thumbran, Janeke
    This dissertation is about a historically white university’s engagement with what is called the ‘coloured question.’ It explores how the University of Pretoria (UP) grappled with the question of where ‘coloureds’ belonged politically, socially and economically in apartheid South Africa – specifically through the disciplines of sociology and social work. In doing so, this institution produced knowledge that would shape and inform this racial category – not only through writing, teaching and curriculum development – but also by appropriating the segregated and local township of Eersterust as a site of disciplinary intervention, from the time of this coloured community’s creation during apartheid in 1962, to the post-apartheid and neoliberal present. In the post-apartheid period, these forms of knowledge have re-emerged through the university’s recently established mandate of community engagement, which was accompanied by a disciplinary shift away from the social sciences, towards the material discipline of architecture. The purpose of this dissertation is to demonstrate the various ways in which the disciplinary reason of the university informed, shaped and converged with the instrumental reason of the apartheid state to produce forms of racialized subjection, using the University of Pretoria’s appropriation of Eersterust as a particular example. In addition, the purpose is to problematize and historicize the persistence of apartheid’s racial categories – like the ‘coloured’ category – and forms of knowledge production in post-apartheid universities. This project’s purpose not only ties in with widespread calls to decolonize the university made through recent student protests in South Africa, but asks how we might begin to envision a university ‘after’ apartheid, by calling attention to a form of subjection that lies at the heart of apartheid’s racial premises: that of the ‘coloured’ subject and its instrumentalization in the practices of university disciplines
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    Elements of an Engaged University: Minnesota Youth Community Learning (MYCL) Initiative of the Konopka Institute for Best Practices in Adolescent Health at the University of MInnesota (Final Evaluation Report)
    (Center for Applied Research and Educational Improvement, 2007) Sheldon, Timothy
    There is a threefold purpose to this final evaluation report: to describe the evaluation activities that have taken place during the grant period, to summarize the key findings of the evaluation, and to offer some conclusions based on the perspective of an outside evaluator. The report and is organized around the evaluation questions (below) that were posed by the W. K. Kellogg Foundation. To what extent have MYCL Initiative activities been successful? What are the perceived benefits (and challenges) of community/University partnerships? How might MYCL activities become the building blocks for long-term community engagement? What are some distinguishing features and essential elements of an engaged institution? How can engagement be sustained as central to the university mission and system?
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    Exploring the Academic and Social Integration of Students who are Blind and Visually Impaired Attending a Saudi Arabian University
    (2022-08) Ajaj, Roqayah
    There is a dearth of evaluation and research on academic and social integration for college students who are blind and visually impaired (BVI), not only in Saudi Arabia, but around the globe. Failure to integrate students academically and socially at the university could affect the student's self-esteem, self-determination, and sense of belonging, which may ultimately lead to attrition. This exploratory study sought to understand the academic and social experiences of college students who are BVI in a public university in Saudi Arabia, from their perspective. A qualitative method was used to collect the data for this study. 18 semi-structured interviews were conducted. 14 students who were BVI and four administrators were interviewed. The interviews were conducted in Arabic and translated to English for the analysis. The results of the study revealed that the university, through the male and female disability centers, provided a number of academic and social services to support students who are BVI. The male and female students reported different experiences at the university, with the male students experiencing greater barriers than female students. Both male and female students reported academic and social barriers that prevented them from being fully included at the university. Some of these barriers included inaccessible course materials, inaccessible lectures, inaccessible physical environment, and inaccessible social events/activities. The administrators were aware of these barriers and were working towards remedying them. The findings revealed a need to 1) raise more awareness about blindness and how it affects the individual at the university through trainings and workshops for both students and faculty, and 2) conduct more research and evaluation about blindness and how blindness affects students academically and socially. The results can be used to develop disability awareness and assessment tools for the services and accommodations provided to students who are BVI.
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    Switchmen of Reform: Competing Conceptions of Public Higher Education Governance in Poland
    (2014-05) Shaw, Marta
    This study examined the extent to which academic leaders and government officials in Poland differ in their notions of good university governance, and sought to uncover how these notions intersect with global trends in higher education governance. The research objective was to identify the criteria that determine what reforms of university governance in Poland are likely be perceived as acceptable by the two groups of most powerful higher education stakeholders. The dissertation is set against the background of a crisis of public confidence in Polish higher education. After two decades of rapid and uneven system growth, there is broad agreement that the governance framework adopted by public universities in the post-communist transition is hampering higher education institutions' effectiveness and relevance. Path dependence theory suggests that institutional trajectories reinforce social and institutional arrangements selected in the past, constraining the range of future options. In Poland, key stakeholders' conceptions of governance are hypothesized to involve elements of three distinct models of higher education that played a significant role in shaping the nation's universities: the "Humboldtian" model of academic self-rule, the state-centered Soviet model, and the market-based or Anglo-Saxon model. It is also hypothesized that the path of higher education institutions in Poland is influenced by the legacy of hostile foreign rule reinforced in the period of real socialism in Polish social architecture. This legacy affects higher education by virtue of a strong public-private dichotomy, displayed in a distrust of public processes, dual norms of achievement, hostility between the governing and the governed, and populist notions of equality. The implications of these models for institutional governance are operationalized for the purposed of the analytic framework. The author adopted a qualitative approach with elements of ethnography, and the technique of elite interviewing. Study participants included representatives of the Polish government and leaders of four academic institutions in a large academic center. Study findings show that policy actors and academic leaders included in the sample hold distinct views related to the institutional structure of higher education institution, their mission, and the logic of their relationship to the state. Policy actors see higher education institutions as instruments of national development that are at their best when managed by professionals and held accountable by external stakeholders. In contrast, academics see them as autonomous social institutions engaged in the preservation of culture and the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake, best governed by academic insiders on the basis of social trust. Both visions emerging within the study are recognized by respondents as problematic in Poland's social environment. The notion of external accountability is complicated by the weakness of civil society and a perceived lack of readiness to assume responsibility for the public good in higher education. Meanwhile, the current model of academic self-rule renders academic leaders hostage to their constituencies while setting them at odds with the dominant academic ethos. Likewise, treating higher education institutions as instruments of the state does not achieve desired ends due to regulative mandates and output measures stalling innovation. The alternative, an institutional logic of trust-based accountability preferred by academic leaders, is proving as difficult due to strong norms of in-group loyalty that hamper merit-based evaluation. Divergent views identified in the findings are interpreted as a conflict of two "rationalized myths" - accepted narratives of formal structures rationally fostering desirable ends. They are blueprints whose main attraction is not predicted viability or effectiveness, but symbolic association with a set of deeply held values. The two myths clash within the Polish system in such a way that both sets of goals are compromised. Suggested avenues to escape the impasse are values shared by both myths and therefore potential as sites of path-dependent transformation. These values include merit-based funding for research innovation, elite education, the development of "soft skills," and the empowerment of middle management. Whether path-dependent transformation occurs will be affected by three considerations emerging from the data: the insufficiency of system-wide solutions introduced from the top down by means of regulation alone, the need of new structures for new aims, and the dangers of unreflexive borrowing of foreign organizational forms.