TECHNOLOGY AND THE FUTURE OF THE UNIVERSITY: A SOBER VIEW

Technology has had considerable impact on education and the university, but the Internet - today's newest technology - will not lead to the death of the university. While there is clearly a role for virtual education over the Internet, the conventional university will survive since students are well served by a real, physical, educational experience.     

Urban forest cover of the Chicago region and its relation to household density and income

Urban forests and herbaceous open space play a vital role in the environmental and aesthetic health of cities, yet they are rarely identified in land-use inventories of urban areas. To provide information on urban forests and other vegetative land cover in Illinois cities, Landsat Thematic Mapper (TM) data from June 27, 1988, were classified for the Chicago metropolitan region (9,717 km²). Ten land-cover classes were identified, including two types of forestland (occupying 5.8% of the total area), residential land with trees (14.6%) or without trees (7.8%), cropland (37.5%), two types of grassland (7.7%), urban with impervious surfaces (23.1%), water (1.6%), and miscellaneous vegetation (2.1%). Correlation analyses indicated that household income and household density are strongly related to land covers in the region, particularly those with tree cover and urbanized land. Population changes for 1980–1985 and 1985–2010 (projected) show a pattern of increasing density in the urbanized zone concurrent with continued urban sprawl, primarily into current cropland.     

CHINA'S FUTURE WITH DISTANCE EDUCATION: Rhetoric and realities

China has a long history of distance education with one of the largest and longest standing television distance delivery systems in the world. However, with the advent of online learning environments, China must face a brave new world of innovation. This paper examines the political rhethoric surrounding the allocation of funds and energies to online learning and considers critical components of that rhetoric including democracy, market driven education, open access, as well as issues of power, customization, and globalization which affect the ways in which China adopts new online learning technologies.     

Forthcoming in Sociological Forum

Volume Contents

Forthcoming in Sociological Forum     

赵宋国号考说

赵匡胤的“宋”国号 ,本来源于其篡周前亲领的节度州“宋州” ;然而由于种种的机缘巧合 ,即在赵宋当代 ,文人们对于宋国号的诠释 ,也已越来越复杂与神秘。此复杂与神秘的诠释 ,又进而广泛影响了当时乃至后世的政治与文     

Museums, friends, and lovers in the New South: Laura's Web, 1909-1931

Laura Bragg, a member of the first graduating class at Simmons College, journeyed to Charleston as a New Woman in 1909. As the first woman director of a major scientific museum in the United States, Bragg transformed the Charleston Museum into a public education institution and became an innovative leader in museum education. This article documents Bragg's contributions within the context of antebellum culture where the Southern Belle was placed on a Victorian pedestal and Boston marriages were an unknown phenomenon. Using extensive and hitherto unpublished correspondence, the authors detail Bragg's lesbian relationships and describe her network within the homosexual male community during the era of the Charleston Renaissance.     

Conditioning factors for fertility decline in Bengal: history, language identity, and openness to innovations

This article argues that looking solely for the immediate causes of reproductive change may distort our understanding of policy options by failing to take into account the historical and cultural factors that affect not only the impact of policies and programs but their very nature and existence. The article examines the historical origins and spread of “modern” ideas in Bangladesh and the state of West Bengal in India. It concludes that a colonial history in which education and modernization processes took hold very early among the elites in the larger Bengal region was paradoxically accompanied by a strong allegiance to the Bengali language. This strong sense of language identity has facilitated and reinforced the diffusion of modern ideas both within and between the two Bengali‐speaking regions. Thus, to understand the fertility decline in Bangladesh, for example, one needs to look also at cultural boundaries. In this case, the cultural commonality through language facilitates the spread of new ideas across the two Bengals. In turn, the strong sense of language identity has facilitated mass mobilization more easily and intensely within the two Bengals. Shaped by these processes, Bangladesh and West Bengal today are more amenable to social change than many other parts of South Asia and the Middle East.     

Assessing the local need for family and child care services: a small area utilization analysis

This article reports the findings of a study to develop a new method for allocating resources to family and child care services within Northern Ireland. Downloads from financial and client databases, together with a survey of social worker case activity, were used to estimate utilization costs across 500 local areas. Regression techniques were then used to account for variations in these costs in terms of local socioeconomic conditions. The resultant needs index represents a fair and equitable means of allocating central family and child care budgets to local units of management and service delivery.