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- Creators: School of Politics and Global Studies
Description
Through collection of survey data on the characteristics of college debaters, disparities in participation and success for women and racial and ethnic minorities are measured. This study then uses econometric tools to assess whether there is an in-group judging bias in college debate that systematically disadvantages female and minority participants. Debate is used as a testing ground for competing economic theories of taste-based and statistical discrimination, applied to a higher education context. The study finds persistent disparities in participation and success for female participants. Judges are more likely to vote for debaters who share their gender. There is also a significant disparity in the participation of racial and ethnic minority debaters and judges, as well as female judges.
ContributorsVered, Michelle Nicole (Author) / Silverman, Daniel (Thesis director) / Symonds, Adam (Committee member) / Dillon, Eleanor (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / Economics Program in CLAS (Contributor) / School of Mathematical and Statistical Sciences (Contributor) / School of Politics and Global Studies (Contributor)
Created2014-12
Description
As the US and the rest of the world face a growing need for affordable and accessible higher education, we must more deeply examine the scalability of our universities: how do they change with size? How do different institutional types vary? What makes ASU number one in innovation? At least two of these questions have immediate relevance to not only higher education, but political economy and sustainability as well. We apply to institutions the exciting complex systems framework of scaling, which has led to deep theoretical insight into the structure of biological systems and cities (West, Brown and Enquist 1997, Bettencourt 2013). First we group universities into seven distinct sectors, from public research universities to professional schools. Then we examine the returns to scale of university revenues, expenditures, and graduation rates, by correlating these key variables versus total enrollment. We discover that the sectors exhibit some important similarities, but overall leverage different economies of scale to serve their own priorities. These results imply shared mechanisms and constraints among the entire class of institutions. Furthermore, the uniqueness of each sector reveals their "speciation" into diverse institutional models, offering a fresh (though limited) first look at their scale-dependent complementary roles and competitive advantages. Accordingly, we outline what additional data and analyses might sufficiently strengthen these results to make recommendations, at levels ranging from student and family decisions to individual university strategies to sector-wide and system-wide policies. Promising future directions include longitudinal analysis of university growth patterns, detailed outlier analysis, and deeper theoretical investigation of mechanisms that drive the observed scaling.
ContributorsTaylor, Ryan Chin (Author) / Laubichler, Manfred (Thesis director) / Kempes, Chris (Committee member) / LePore, Paul (Committee member) / School of Mathematical and Statistical Sciences (Contributor) / School of Politics and Global Studies (Contributor) / School of Sustainability (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2017-12
Description
Abstract What began in 1971 as a "War on Drugs," led to the political position of being "tough on crime" and has ultimately given birth to the mass incarceration crisis that we see in 2017. The United States composes 5% of the world's population, yet holds 25% of the world's incarcerated. At least 95% of those incarcerated in the United States will be released at some time and each year, 690,000 people are released from our prisons. These "criminals" become our neighbors, our colleagues, and our friends. However, the unfortunate reality is that they will go back to prison sooner than we can embrace them. In order to end this cycle of recidivism, higher education in prison must be made more available and encouraged. Those who participate in education programs while incarcerated have a 43% less chance of recidivating than those inmates who do not participate. This thesis dissects that statistic, focusing on higher education and the impact it has on incarcerated students, how it affects society as a whole, and the many reasons why we should be actively advocating for it. Additionally, I wish to demonstrate that students, educators, and volunteers, as a collective, have the power to potentially change the punitive function of the prison system. That power has been within education all along. While statistics and existing research will play heavily in the coming pages, so will anecdotes, first-hand experiences, assessments of established programs, and problems that still need to be overcome. By no means are the following pages a means to an end, but rather a new beginning in the effort to change the interpretation of being "tough on crime." Keywords: higher education, prison, recidivism
ContributorsGood, Hannah Rose (Author) / Wells, Cornelia (Thesis director) / Herrera, Richard (Committee member) / School of Politics and Global Studies (Contributor) / School of Criminology and Criminal Justice (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2016-12
Description
This thesis recalls a famous Greek comedy's critique of higher education and examines how it might apply to the modern university. In order to understand the application of such a critique, this thesis necessarily works to define the spirit of the university as it was formed in the cross-civilizational decedents of Plato's Academy. After the first universities, I examine the development of higher education in the United States. Ultimately I argue that the Aristophanic critique of Socrates and higher education is applicable in a very important way to the modern university. I offer two policy recommendations that might offer an important starting point for recalling the spirit of the university.
ContributorsMatter, Stephen (Author) / McNamara, Peter (Thesis director) / Zuckert, Michael (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / School of Politics and Global Studies (Contributor) / School of Civic & Economic Thought and Leadership (Contributor)
Created2023-05