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The purpose of this study is to explore how three experiential factors – perceived social support from host-country nationals (HCNs), adaptation difficulties, and attitude towards assimilating into the host culture and society – influence the generation of worthwhile feelings and the intention to pursue expatriate career opportunities in the host country among short-term studying abroad (STSA) students.

This study used data from a survey of 297 Thai students who studied in Chinese universities between 2015 and 2019. A bivariate probit model was applied due to its ability to account for the potential correlation of errors between the two binary outcome variables: worthwhileness and aspiration for expatriate careers.

Adaptation difficulties reported by students negatively impacted their willingness to work in the host country, but did not diminish their perception of the sojourn as worthwhile. Satisfaction with social support from HCNs was found to not only enhance the worthwhileness of the sojourn but also inspire students' expatriate career intentions in the host country. The study also found that while willingness to assimilate into the host culture and society primarily enhanced the worthwhileness of the trip, its effect on students' willingness to consider working in the host country was relatively weak, compared with the effect of social support from HCNs.

The generalizability of the findings from this study may be limited to country pairs that are geographically and culturally similar.

Although it is commonly believed that STSA programs help inspire students to develop aspirations for international careers or lifestyles, the specific roles of various factors in their experiences abroad have not been sufficiently studied. This study aims to clarify the different effects between social support received, adaptation difficulties experienced, and inner acculturation attitudes on both the evaluation of the trip itself and the long-term life goals of students participating in STSA programs.

Explores the concept of quality in education, by means of a dialogue. Discusses different conceptions and dimensions of quality, and shows how they are largely contingent on different views of what education is all about. Attempts to transcend commonly encountered dichotomies by proposing an alternative approach, taking the notions of arête and phronesis as points of departure. Assessing educational quality implies high complexity if the approach is going to be comprehensive and holistic, and take both external and internal factors into account. The framework of the discussion is the political context, on the assumption that this is the right context for questions concerning the worthwhileness, values in and quality of education. The authors hope that this dialogue illustrates the irenic mode of communication briefly discussed in the paper.

IN THESE days, when all around us are cries of ‘woe! woe!’ because of the cuts in local government spending and the effects these are having on public libraries, it is as well to look back to another time of depression (and, indeed, earlier) to see what life in our libraries was like then. If it is difficult today, when establishments are cut by simply not filling vacant posts (like leaving drain covers off for people to fall down, it is so casual in effect), how much more difficult it was to keep one's chin up forty to fifty years ago! Yet chins were held high, beliefs in the worthwhileness of our job were maintained, and the service was kept going.

A human life seems to have infinite value, and morality appears to demand that no effort be spared to preserve or to maintain it. Yet health care costs could destroy the economy if all available knowledge was applied to every person on the globe. There is no guaranteed solution, but this paper argues that we must look closely at the concepts of life and the person and understand the distinctions between the person as he or she really is (the “ontological person” in philosophical terms), the social person (the person who appears in the lives of others), and the psychological person (ourselves as we appear in our inner lives). If we are clear we can make decisions about how to pay for health care and how to manage it which will tend to keep costs under control and still respond to the dignity and worth of individuals touched by infinity.

Discusses various definitions of quality and standards used within the college and university sector and highlights their advantages and disadvantages. Looks particularly at their implications for reflective practice. Argues that the various definitions of quality have implications for the ways in which professionalism is defined, and that some definitions may be inimical to the values encapsulated in the “reflective practitioner” model.

Decision as a First Cause Decision, in my theme, is the imagining of rival paths of affairs; the assigning of these paths to the respective actions, amongst those the decision maker can envisage, which seem to make them possible; and the resolving upon that action which, at best, offers a sequel more powerfully out‐weighing what it threatens at worst, than any rival action. We thus suppose the decision maker necessarily to originate the entities, each an action and its skein of rival imagined sequels deemed possible, amongst which he will choose. The business of inventing such entities will be stopped only by his reaching a deadline for decision.

Improving the flow of information from management to employees has become a matter of increasing concern in recent years. This has been partly motivated by a belief on the part of managements that improving communications will lead to better industrial relations, and hopefully also more commitment and effort from employees. There is also a growing view on all sides of industry, and reflected in legislation, that employees have a right to information about their employing organisation.

Applied physics and engineering are essentially experimental philosophies, and so an appreciation of techniques is fundamental to their understanding. However, academic tradition is biased so heavily in favour of pure thought that the experimentalist is usually regarded as intellectually inferior to, rather than complementary with, the theoretician. Even some engineering teachers contribute to this snobbery by pretending that they are pure scientists (so alleges Thring 1965). However, there is the converse opinion: frequently the required knowledge does not exist when the technologist has to make a decision, and so in some respects he feels superior to the pure scientist.

Peter Honey presents this article as a contribution to our management training project. Frequently, throughout the project and elsewhere, we have made the point that the intention of the trainer should be to engineer, for the trainee, effective job‐oriented learning experiences. The traditional way of carrying out all training above the manual level has been by organising courses and other forms of direct instruction. In our project we have shown how some go‐ahead firms and colleges have succeeded in escaping from the course obsession. Organising courses is the easy option. But to create effective learning situations which are meaningful in terms of the job calls for much more effort, imagination and innovation. Thus it has come about that formal courses, as the means of improving manager performance, are not merely suspect but are near to falling into disrepute. Peter Honey here states the case against formal, conventional courses, in the field of managing the human resource. Indeed, in this refreshingly‐light contribution, he might even be suspected of OVER‐STATING the case. If this is so, and provided his article drives home the point, we welcome his offering as a worthy contribution to our management training project. Editor

Not many weeks back, according to newspaper reports, three members of the library staff of the School of Slavonic and East European Studies in London were dismissed. All had refused to carry out issue desk duty. All, according to the newspaper account, were members of ASTMS. None, according to the Library Association yearbook, was a member of the appropriate professional organisation for librarians in Great Britain.