In this article I consider David Olson's account of how literacy produces a new kind of consciousness, one in which a process of metacognition makes possible both knowledge and an understanding of language itself. This, he argues, enables readers and writers to reflect upon language, understand what constitutes reasoning, and recognize any logical…

This paper involves an experiment in how to engage in an informal and open-ended discussion, in a normally expository context, that is customarily guided by the norms for scholarly exposition. In attempting this experiment, I avoid using the scholarly apparatus of footnotes, endnotes, and references. I leave it open to those interested to use…

With, "The Mind on Paper," Olson hopes to amass the strongest empirical evidence needed, in his view, to support a more promising version of Goody's insights on literacy's impact on social and psychological change (Goody, "The domestication of the savage mind," Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1977). The book is also the…

Guided by two perspectives, one theoretical, and the other, methodological, we assume that social interactions provide organizing principles for transforming natural human growth into cultural development. From birth onward, the healthy child is primed to be "in transaction" with their caregivers, their surroundings, co-constructing the…

In psychological assessment, there is a tension between oral and written language. This tension is rarely troubled or even noted in clinical practice. For report writing purposes, psychologists routinely transform oral, socially embedded material into written texts. In this paper, I highlight three points in the psychological assessment process…

Writing and narrative are commonly taken to be two separate fields of research and scholarly reflection. In this paper, I offer some thoughts on how they are related, using David Olson's work on literacy and the development of metalinguistic awareness as a frame of reasoning. As Olson has shown, language is not only a form and practice of…

University ranking systems influence a wide range of educational stakeholders, including students, faculty members, and campus administrators. Of these ranking systems, the "U.S. News & World Report" ranking of colleges and universities has been the subject of much research. However, little research has examined specific "U.S.…

Academic institutions invest significant sums of money to serve their students and to influence their decisions to stay. This study sheds light on the challenge for academic institutions to allocate their investments to keep students and enhance their retention rates. This study aims to investigate whether or not providing academic services has…

The main objective of this research is to measure the longitudinal evaluation of Brazilian stricto sensu graduate programs from 1995 to 2017. A historical review about the development of Brazilian graduate programs is also included in the introduction section. The variables used were (i) distribution of graduate programs; (ii) distribution of…

'Public health' investigates the determinants of health, born during the Enlightenment in the seventeenth/eighteenth century. But 'public health' is also policies, aiming at the improvement of a population's health. There is a mutual interchange between public health as science and as politics. A brief historical background is followed by an…

In this article, I use the University of Saskatchewan (U of S) as a case study exemplifying some of the ways in which academic freedom and collegial governance are being undermined at a Canadian public university. Beginning with a brief narrative about how the actions of the senior administration have threatened both of these key concepts, I then…

The present study contributes to the existing literature on higher education in post-conflict contexts. It seeks to investigate the extent to which the University of Rwanda (UR) undergraduate students at National Police College (NPC) are conversant with major components of study skills mainly time management, note taking, reading, writing, test…

Neoliberal capitalism has faced severe criticism both in principle and in practice since the Lehman Shock in 2008. The purpose of the paper is to identify and explain how the current mode of neoliberal capitalism redefines and reshapes the societal roles of the university sector in neoliberal capitalist societies, notably the UK and the US in the…

As part of the prisoner reentry process, many formerly incarcerated individuals are choosing to enroll in universities to earn bachelor's, master's, and doctoral degrees. Some cannot immediately begin their studies and must take remedial classes. Others, because of preparations they have done before release, can start classes on the first day of…

This paper investigates how an introductory philosophy course influences the moral and political development of undergraduate students in a Liberal Arts university in Central Asia. Within a context of rapid changes characteristic of transitional societies--reflected in the organization of higher education--philosophy provides students with the…