The New York State Board of Regents' 2004-05 State Aid Proposal put forward the idea of instituting Foundation Aid as a response to concerns about the sufficiency of state education funding then being provided to local school districts. In 2007, prompted by legal action, a call for reform by the Regents, and the election of a new governor with a…

Foundation programmes provide an alternate access route for prospective students whose prior academic results exclude direct entry to undergraduate studies. Bridging courses within foundation programmes address gaps in prior knowledge while developing content knowledge and requisite skills to equip students for the rigour of undergraduate degree…

Human resource development is one of the major goals of Brunei's current development plan to be achieved under Wawasan 2035 policy. The University of Brunei Darussalam's foundation program aims to increase students' access to higher education among disadvantaged and underrepresented groups. The present field survey investigated how the coping…

This paper addresses the problem of curriculum design in the Humanities and Social Sciences, and more specifically the challenge of designing foundation courses for first-generation or "disadvantaged" learners. Located in the social realist school of the sociology of education studies that builds on the legacy of Basil Bernstein, we…

Offerings of online courses continue to increase in higher education settings, as institutions attempt to meet students' (and faculty members') increasing demands for online access. How do pre-service teachers perceive online education? This paper reports the results of a questionnaire-based survey addressing this issue. The questionnaire focused…

The Foundation Programme of the Centre for Science Access at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa provides access to tertiary science studies to educationally disadvantaged students who do not meet formal faculty entrance requirements. The low number of students proceeding from the programme into mainstream is of concern, particularly…

The foundation degree is an intermediate-level qualification designed to widen participation in higher education while providing work-related skills and knowledge. It has a vocational focus and a pedagogic approach that integrates academic and work-based learning. Research into opportunities and the process of learning within foundation degrees is…

This paper considers the question: What constitutes an optimal learning environment for Maori learners in foundation programmes? Using Kaupapa Maori methodology, nearly 100 adult Maori (Indigenous) students in Aotearoa/New Zealand were interviewed from a range of tertiary providers of foundation programmes. State-funded foundation programmes that…

In this article we describe the experiences of Black women academics who participated in one or more of the following programs geared towards supporting the research and professional development of faculty: (a) the Sisters of the Academy's (SOTA) Research Boot Camp; (b) the National Center for Faculty Development and Diversity's Faculty Success…

Background: Critical thinking is one of the very highest orders of cognitive abilities and a key competency in higher education. Asking questions is an important component of rich learning experiences, structurally embedded in the operations of critical thinking. Our clear sense is that critical thinking and, within that, critical questioning, is…

Traditionally, the status of workers in early childhood services in England has been low. Foundation degrees and the Early Years Professional Status (EYPS, from September 2013 Early Years Teacher Status) were established with a view to improving the skills and standing of early years practitioners. There appears however to be an ongoing…

In the first study, using a randomized experiment to measure the impact of school vouchers on college enrollment, Matthew Chingos and Paul Peterson, professor of government at Harvard University, examine the college-going behavior through 2011 of students who participated in a voucher experiment as elementary school students in the late 1990s.…

In South Africa, foundation programmes are a well-established alternative access route to tertiary science study for educationally disadvantaged students. Student access to, and performance in, one such foundation programme has been researched by the authors seeking opportunities to improve student retention. The biology module in particular has…

This study describes the Math and Science Partnership Program Evaluation (MSP-PE) during the project's first two years and provides the evaluation framework being used to assess the National Science Foundation's MSP Program. The study conveys the MSP-PE's ongoing design and implementation. To show how they reflect the nature of the MSP Program,…

This report was commissioned in December 2006 to assess the capacity for trades training in the public post-secondary system with the key objectives to identify current levels of utilization for each of the top trades; identify methods of increasing capacity for top trades; and determine future levels of capacity that can be achieved without…