Pricing the Flagships - Essay Example

Summaries In a paper by Michael McLendon, James Hearn and Robert Hammond (2006) d Pricing the Flagships: The Political Economy of Tuition Setting at Public Research Universities, the authors attempt to examine the drivers behind the differences in the tuition rises across public research universities across the various states in the US. The authors attempt to offer this explanation by using a theory and research based approach based on the descriptive representation framework. The descriptive representation refers to the similarity in background between the officials elected and their constituents.

The central hypothesis of the study is that since blacks have traditionally benefited from lower tuition fees, universities located in regions with higher percentages of blacks are likely to charge lower tuition. The study involved 163 public research universities across 49 states. The results show that there are a number of political factors that influence tuition setting. Minority representation in state legislatures affects university policy. Secondly, the results show that tuition charges are linked to unemployment rates (high unemployment, higher tuition), tax revenue (higher revenue, lower tuition) and share of the population aged between 18 and 24 (higher share lower tuition).

Te authors conclude that there is a link between political representation and postsecondary policy outcomes. The article titled The influence of Active Learning on the College Student Departure Process: Toward a Revision of Tinto’s Theory by John Braxton, Jeffrey Milem and Anna Sullivan (2000) focuses on how active learning affects college student departure rates. The authors argue that unlike the idea of academic integration proposed by Tinto which focuses on the experiences of a student with the academic system and communities, active learning involves the activities that help in academic integration.

Therefore, active learning and academic integration are not interchangeable. According to the authors, active learning helps to enhance the students’ understanding of course content, and students who encounter active learning see themselves gaining knowledge. In this study, the authors used a sample of 718 first year students from a private research university to study the influence of active learning on departure/persistence decisions. The authors observed that two major behaviors of active learning greatly influenced social integration: class discussions and higher order thinking.

Based on the findings, the authors conclude that faculty classroom behaviors significantly influence the student departure process. Works CitedBraxton, John., Milem, Jeffrey and Sullivan, Anna. “The influence of Active Learning on the College Student Departure Process: Toward a Revision of Tinto’s Theory.” The Journal of Higher Education, Vol. 71 No. 5 (2000): 569-590McLendo, Michael., Hearn, James and Hammond, Robert. “Pricing the Flagships: The Political Economy of Tuition Setting at Public Research Universities.

” Presented at the annual meeting of the Association for the Study of Higher education, November 2006. Pp. 1-23.