The stratification of universities: Structural inequality in Canada and the United States

This paper conceives national systems of higher education as stratified populations of organizations. This stratification is a structural component of ‘horizontal inequality’ in higher education, and may be exacerbated by current pressures for colleges and universities to compete for resources and status. To explore this structural inequality, we compare the level of stratification in financial resources across four-year institutions in Canada and the United States over a 35-year period (1971–2006). Our analyses provide a first-look at this form of stratification, employing Gini coefficients, Lorenz curves, and boxplots. Our results provide new and compelling evidence of increasing structural stratification, even in Canada's predominantly publicly funded postsecondary system. Findings indicate that the distribution of resources is far more stratified in the American system, and that both systems have become more stratified over time. We conclude by situating structural inequality within more general processes of stratification in education.     

The ‘digital glimpse’ as imagining home

This paper proposes the concept of the ‘digital glimpse’, which develops the existing framing of imaginative travel. Here it articulates the experiences of mobile workers digitally connecting into family life and everyday rituals when physically absent with work. The recent embedding of digital communication technologies into personal relationships and family life is reconfiguring how absence is experienced and practiced by workers on the move, and through this, new digital paradigms for life on-the-move are emerging. This paper explores how such social relationships are maintained at-a-distance through digital technology – using evidence from qualitative interviews with mobile workers and their families. Digital technology now enables expressive forms of ‘virtual travel’, including video calling, picture sharing, and instant messaging. This has implications for the ways in which families can manage the social and relational pressures of being apart. Experiences of imaginative travel created through novel media can enrich the experience and give a greater sense of connection for both those who are at home and those who are away. While technology is limited in its ability to replicate a sense of co-presence, ‘digital glimpses’ are an emergent set of sociotechnical practices that can reduce the negative impact of absence on family relationships.     

Books received

A Wider Perspective Needed Avraham Greenbaum (ed.), Minority Problems in Eastern Europe Between the World Wars, with Emphasis on the Jewish Minority, introduced by Edward Allworth, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Institute of Advanced Studies. Jerusalem, 1988. pp.viii, 163.

The Jokes of Oppression David A. Harris and Izrail Rabinovich, The Jokes of Oppression: The Humour of Soviet Jews. Northvale, NJ and London: Jason Aronson, 1988. 275pp. $22.50.

A Pleasant Surprise Franti?ek Mi?eje, Revolu?nou Cestou. Spomienky na roky 1938–1948 (On the Path of Revolution: Reminiscences of the Years 1938–1948.) Bratislava: Pravda publishers on behalf of the Institute of Marxism‐Leninism of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Slovakia, 1988. 232 pp. Illus. Bibl. Index. Kcs 19.00.     

The potential of the SSI program to reduce poverty among the elderly

Is it more effective to reduce poverty among the elderly by increasing the benefits paid by the Supplemental Security Income (SSI) program or by increasing eligibility for the program? This paper answers that question from a policymaker's perspective. At given program cost levels, we compare the potential reduction in poverty from increasing benefit levels to the potential reduction associated with a variety of policy proposals that would increase eligibility for the program. This paper employs a microsimulation model containing an eligibility and benefits calculator, a participation model, and an optimization algorithm. The data are from the Survey of Income and Program Participation supplemented by the administrative records of the SSI program. The results show that increasing eligibility by relaxing the restrictions of the means tests can be more effective in reducing poverty than raising benefit levels.     

Opportunity theory and adolescent school-based victimization

While school-based adolescent victimization has received a great deal of public attention, there exist relatively few theoretically driven studies aimed at explaining this phenomenon. We address this paucity by providing a test of a criminal-opportunity model of school-based victimization using data on over 3,000 students from 40 different Kentucky middle and high schools. The effects of opportunity-related concepts are estimated for both violent and property victimization, and comparisons are made for each victimization type across middle- and high-school student subsamples. Findings suggest that criminal opportunity theory is relevant to the understanding of school-based victimization. In particular, indicators of exposure to crime and target antagonism appear to be robust predictors. Further, there appears to be substantial generalizability in the effects of opportunity-related variables across violent versus property victimization as well as across middle-school versus high-school contexts.     

The wireless network jamming problem

In adversarial environments, disabling the communication capabilities of the enemy is a high priority. We introduce the problem of determining the optimal number and locations for a set of jamming devices in order to neutralize a wireless communication network. This problem is known as the wireless network jamming problem. We develop several mathematical programming formulations based on covering the communication nodes and limiting the connectivity index of the nodes. Two case studies are presented comparing the formulations with the addition of various percentile constraints. Finally, directions of further research are addressed.