20 years of Bologna - a story of success,a story of failure

The Bologna Process is a unique harmonisation process taking place outside the policy-making framework of the European Union. It aims at enhancing the comparability and compatibility of higher education structures and degrees across Europe, as well as to institutionalise quality assurance mechanisms. The aim of this article is to provide a condensed, up-to-date overview of the Bologna Process with regard to structural characteristics, before embedding it into a discussion on processes on voluntary policy convergence and to which extent we should be able to find this kind of policy harmonisation in the realm of the Bologna Process. Related to this are questions why this, in principle, completely voluntary process of policy harmonisation, has appealed to so many countries and why they might or might not feel committed to the implementation of its policies and tools.     

Economic Conditions of Young Adults Before and After the Great Recession

Transition to adulthood has undoubtedly changed in the last few decades. For youth today, an important marker of adulthood is self-actualization in their professional career, and, consequently, also the achievement of stable financial conditions. Economic conditions of youth are greatly subject to fluctuations in the economy, and the subsequent governmental response. Using the Luxembourg Income Study, this work investigates the trends in income from work of young adults before and after the Great Recession of 2008 in five countries—US, UK, Norway, Germany, and Spain. The findings showed deterioration in economic conditions of young men, but with differences across countries. Young women suffered less from the crisis, and in some countries, their economic situation improved. The general negative trend was especially pronounced for those with high education, which is primarily because they stayed in education longer.     

How Reliable are Students’ Evaluations of Teaching (SETs)? A Study to Test Student’s Reproducibility and Repeatability

Social Indicators Research - Students’ Evaluations of Teaching (SETs) are widely used as measures of teaching quality in Higher Education. A review of specialized literature evidences that...     

Lessons from Nigeria for improved thinking and working politically in the extractives sector

Despite the wealth that comes from being the biggest oil producer in Africa, Nigeria has some of the worst development indicators in the world. From 2011 to mid‐2016, the DFID‐funded Facility for Oil Sector Transparency and Reform (FOSTER) programme's unique design aimed to reduce incentives for the capture of oil revenue by elites and international oil companies, restoring the potential of those revenues to accelerate economic and social development. This article asks what lessons FOSTER's successes and failures offer for improved “thinking and working politically” (TWP). It examines the outcomes from five “clusters” of interventions: three viewed by the FOSTER team as successes and two as failures. The article identifies factors for successful TWP‐based programming, including the need for local ownership rooted in staff with a combination of technical expertise, a deep knowledge of the local political context and excellent networking abilities. The research used a qualitative and inductive approach. Field research was undertaken with 44 semi‐structured qualitative interviews during one month of fieldwork in Abuja and Lagos. The research also included reviews of FOSTER's internal documentation and evaluation frameworks, as well as analysis of newspaper articles and grey literature on the oil sector in Nigeria. The project offers important lessons for politically informed programming about how interventions were implemented (process), what was actually done (content) and how the project responded to changes in context that created or blocked opportunities for reform (responsiveness). The article identifies factors for successful TWP‐based programming, including the need for local ownership rooted in staff with a combination of technical expertise, a deep knowledge of the local political context and excellent networking abilities. The findings have important implications for programme design. They demonstrate the value of built‐in flexibility that allows staff to choose and switch the partners they work with and the channels they work through. They also show that a key aspect of TWP‐based programming is implicit acceptance that some failure may be unavoidable, since this permits staff to balance risk against opportunities. Finally, a better understanding of FOSTER's failures reveals the challenges of a TWP‐based approach and the trade‐offs it demands.     

Stressful Life Events and Physical and Psychological Health: Mediating Effects of Differentiation of Self in a Spanish Sample

The pathways between differentiation of self and health remain only partly elucidated. This cross‐cultural study sought to test Bowen's hypothesis about the associations between differentiation, stressful life events, and physical and psychological health, in a sample of 466 Spanish adults. Results show that people with higher levels of differentiation were less prone to physical ailments (e.g., heart disease, cancer, or blood disorders) and psychological symptoms (e.g., depression or anxiety). Further, differentiation mediated the association between stress (i.e., perceived negativity of stress in the past year and number of stressful events across the lifetime) and physical and psychological health. The current research provides cross‐cultural empirical evidence for the links between differentiation and mind and body health in a Mediterranean culture.     

An Ecological Model for Quantitative Risk Assessment for Schistosomiasis: The Case of a Patchy Environment in the Coastal Tropical Area of Northeastern Brazil

We developed a stochastic model for quantitative risk assessment for the Schistosoma mansoni (SM) parasite, which causes an endemic disease of public concern. The model provides answers in a useful format for public health decisions, uses data and expert opinion, and can be applied to any landscape where the snail Biomphalaria glabrata is the main intermediate host (South and Central America, the Caribbean, and Africa). It incorporates several realistic and case‐specific features: stage‐structured parasite populations, periodic praziquantel (PZQ) drug treatment for humans, density dependence, extreme events (prolonged rainfall), site‐specific sanitation quality, environmental stochasticity, monthly rainfall variation, uncertainty in parameters, and spatial dynamics. We parameterize the model through a real‐world application in the district of Porto de Galinhas (PG), one of the main touristic destinations in Brazil, where previous studies identified four parasite populations within the metapopulation. The results provide a good approximation of the dynamics of the system and are in agreement with our field observations, i.e., the lack of basic infrastructure (sanitation level and health programs) makes PG a suitable habitat for the persistence and growth of a parasite metapopulation. We quantify the risk of SM metapopulation explosion and quasi‐extinction and the time to metapopulation explosion and quasi‐extinction. We evaluate the sensitivity of the results under varying scenarios of future periodic PZQ treatment (based on the Brazilian Ministry of Health's plan) and sanitation quality. We conclude that the plan might be useful to slow SM metapopulation growth but not to control it. Additional investments in better sanitation are necessary.     

Heterogeneity,school-effects and the North/South achievement gap in Italian secondary education: evidence from a three-level mixed model

With the aim of assessing the extent of the differences in the context of Italian educational system, the paper applies multilevel modeling to a new administrative dataset, containing detailed information for more than 500,000 students at grade 6 in the year 2011/2012, provided by the Italian Institute for the Evaluation of Educational System. Data are grouped by classes, schools and geographical areas. Different models for each area are fitted, in order to properly address the heteroscedasticity of the phenomenon. The results show that it is possible to estimate statistically significant “school effects”, i.e., the positive/negative association of attending a specific school and the student’s test score, after a case-mix adjustment. Therefore, the paper’s most important message is that school effects are different in terms of magnitude and types in the three geographical macro areas (Northern, Central and Southern Italy) and are dependent on specific students’ and schools’ characteristics.     

Who Gets Custody Now? Dramatic Changes in Children’s Living Arrangements After Divorce

This article reexamines the living arrangements of children following their parents’ divorce, using Wisconsin Court Records, updating an analysis that showed relatively small but significant increases in shared custody in the late 1980s and early 1990s. These changes have accelerated markedly in the intervening years: between 1988 and 2008, the proportion of mothers granted sole physical custody fell substantially, the proportion of parents sharing custody increased dramatically, and father–sole custody remained relatively stable. We explore changes in the correlates of alternative custody outcomes, showing that some results from the earlier analysis still hold (for example, cases with higher total family income are more likely to have shared custody), but other differences have lessened (shared-custody cases have become less distinctive as they have become more common). Despite the considerable changes in marriage and divorce patterns over this period, we do not find strong evidence that the changes in custody are related to changes in the characteristics of families experiencing a divorce; rather, changes in custody may be the result of changes in social norms and the process by which custody is determined.