Is Higher Education on a Crash Course with State Budgets?

Credit-rating firm Moody’s Investor Service continued to keep the negative outlook for higher education into the next year (1). They cite slow job growth, an uncertain labor market, and slow revenue growth.  Such schools are fighting over revenue and have already cut greatly over the past few years leaving them little room to do more.  Personal income is not rising making it difficult with high student loan debt and interest rates to send more people to college.  According to Moody’s research spending is also expected to decline.

Some universities like Minnesota State University Moorland and University of District Columbia are pondering cutting core academic programs based upon needed budget cuts (2).  The trend is part of a need to reduce expenses in expense laden campuses. Decisions include the cutting of academic programs that once made up the core of university learning.  Some are concerned about what this trend means in the long run.

Indiana state universities are seeking to deal with a $141 million revenue shortfall and are pushing for a 2% cut in educational budgets (3).  It is hoped that the impact will be minimal and not damage students. There are some attempts to find new and creative ways around the budget crisis but no concrete concepts have come forward. Regardless, it appears that universities will suffer in the future from a lack of resources and constant questioning of their impact.

There appears to be a number of trends that are starting to be addressed and not all of them have to do with education itself. We know through the budget crisis government is under pressure to increase revenue and reduce waste. They are trying to spur economic development through trade and national development. Changes in spending are likely to impact multiple sectors of the economy in both positive and negative ways. Education will be impacted in this process.

The second major problem is the cost structure of universities themselves. They are large, have great sports teams, expensive facilities, and a limited ability to adjust to the new economic realities. Yet as state revenue squeezes, the costs rise, and their effectiveness becomes questioned in a higher technology and science oriented environment, greater pressure will come to bear upon traditional models.

Universities ability to adjust to this pressure while finding new ways of competing and pushing relevance will impact their viability. It must be remembered that changes in the university systems is not something new and has occurred throughout the life of the country.  Early education was informal and based on apprenticeship.  First colleges were religious and private but eventually moved into public universities. These public universities exploded in size and cost during the good years and may need to change again.

Change must come with quality. Recent educational reports have indicated that American students are falling behind in STEM as well as other areas. High Schools are not preparing students to become researchers, scientists, and technology workers at the same level as they did in the past. Efforts are underway to address this problem and push for changes in educational processes.

No matter what happens, we know that the current path is unsustainable. There will be change, and the decisions that are made today will impact whether this change is smooth or bumpy.  Pro-activity encourages decision-makers to think about what can be changed now and slowly adjust the system to ensure that it is keeping up with current environmental needs. Failure to be proactive means a sure bumpy ride in the near future. Perhaps an educational calamity.

Wine Review: Castello di Gabianno’s 2011 Chianti

Castello di Gabbiano’s Chianti 2011 can be described as a medium bodied tannin wine, a touch on the dry side, and lots of cherry flavor. There is a little taste of earthiness but it mixes well. It is an Italian red that is popular with pizza, beans and pasta. The wine is focused on the casual drinker and prices for under $10 per bottle. The value is inherent in the quality. 

According to Wine Searcher it is the 2837^th popular wine.  It is ranked at 80 out of 100 in quality.  Most websites have ranked the wine 4 out of 5 stars. Furthermore, Chianti is made of Sangiovese grapes which creates a very dark wine and is commonly used in wines made in Tuscany. It is considered an older variety grape with popular appeal both in Italy and other places of the world. 

The vineyards are created around the Castello di Gabbiano estates which hosts a 12^th century castle and grounds. It is possible to visit and stay within the Castile.  Wine tasting, dining, rooms, and tours appear to be the attraction.  You can look at the pictures on their website and notice the pristine history that seems to exist there.  It might be a nice place to spend a few days relaxing. 

Website

Call for Papers: Special issue of Journal of International Business Studies

Internationalization in the Information Age

In particular, we aim to encourage a multidisciplinary understanding of these issues by integrating IB more closely with research in progress in organization studies, and approaches from economic sociology, international economics, strategy, management and others. The objective of the special issue is to develop a finer-grained analysis of how the nature, boundaries and organizational forms of the MNE have adapted to more recent technological and institutional changes. We hope that this collection of papers will contribute to the ongoing yet still inconclusive dialogue among scholars in these disciplines, with the aim of constructing a more unified body of theory and a common epistemology for thinking about the continuing processes of transformation of IB activity. Hence, we welcome both theoretical and empirical contributions, and papers adopting either a single or multi-level analysis.

All manuscripts will be reviewed as a cohort for this special issue. Manuscripts must be submitted in the window between December 17, 2013, and December 31, 2013, at http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/jibs. All submissions will go through the JIBS regular double-blind review process and follow the standard norms and processes.

More Information

Gifted Moral Development in Youth Far above College Students

Derryberry, et. al. (2005), works to understand the early moral development in gifted populations. When comparing gifted youth to adult college students they found that such youth were more advanced than their adult peers. The research is designed to help understand the nature of giftedness, how to foster further development, and to encourage possible transfers to other members of the population.

Moral development has a number of stages. At the lowest stage such development is associated with a personal interest schema, then norm maintenance, and then the post-conventional schema (Rest. et.al, 1999). Each stage indicates a level of personal development that grows overtime. A large percentage of society never advances beyond the first or second stage.

At the lowest stage of personal interest schema people naturally interpret morality through what is best for them. This means that people are involved in self-serving interests and associations. In the maintaining norms schema morality is based with conventions, rules, and standards. At the highest level of post-conventional schema people base their moral judgments on universal principles of justice and fairness.

There are factors associated with development that include education, intelligence, complexity of thought, personality, and open to experience. People who are likely able to develop morally seek higher levels of education, can reflect on their thinking processes, have positive personality traits, and are open to trying and understanding new things. These are the people who love to experience and learn. They are capable of seeing themselves in a larger social context of history and institutions while able to see broad cultural trends.

The study indicates that age has only a small association with moral development. Gifted people are capable of taking in a wider context of information to come to their own moral conclusions and start doing so at a young age. These differences make them inherently unique compared to both their peers as well as older members of the population. The authors encourage greater study of this population as they are widely outside the bell curve of the norm and often fight against such identification.

Derryberry, et. al. (2005). Moral judgment developmental differences between gifted youth and college students. Journal of secondary gifted education, 17 (1).

Rest, et. al (1999). Postconventional moral thinking: a neo-Kohlbergian approach. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Sign Up to Travel to Mars! A new type of May Flower.

Would you like to go to Mars? Launching in 2025 the non-profit Mars One seeks to send the first 4 individuals on a one way trip to Mars. They will be living in a colony and conducting research on the red planet. The Mars One Foundation has support from Lockheed Martin and Surry Satellite Technology.  It will be the new frontier of world exploration.  You can now sign up to take a new type of May Flower to lands unknown.

Using the designs of NASA’s 2007 Phoenix lander they believe this new mission is entirely possible.  The mission will have an arm to scoop dirt to check for water, solar panels and live streaming.  The initial mission will cost about $6 billion and will go down to about $4 billion on subsequent trips. The goal is to colonize a piece of the planet. 

Mixed with a reality TV show people will be selected and trained as astronauts until launch date where STEM and university challenge winners will be sent into space. If you are over the age of 18 and would like to participate in the program you can.  You should be good at STEM which is currently suffering as a skill set in our country. 

This is not your traditional top-down program but includes interested parties from varying sources. People can become participants in the program and help foster national development. As people become more interested in national growth and hedging development risks through government-business partnerships it provides a new way of viewing citizenship responsibilities.  Most importantly, our leadership’s mindset is changing to open new paths. 

Nearly 3,000 people have submitted their applications to go to Mars despite the risks of possible demise and never seeing their planet again. Over 200,000 indicated interests with Americans being the most inspired. Perhaps through a miracle we may have the very first human baby alien born on another planet. We will see! (Sign up Here)

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