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This chapter will provide an overview of Bachelor’s degrees into teaching in Scotland. It will consider how policy contexts shaped the original Bachelor degrees in Education (BEd) and more recently how policy discourse and texts have helped to shape the development of the new Bachelor's degrees in Education now on offer in Scotland.

Whilst the traditional Bachelor's degree in Education for many years remained the main undergraduate route for teacher education in Scotland, the publication of ‘Teaching Scotland's Future’ (Donaldson, 2011) recommended a gradual phasing out of the traditional undergraduate degree and the development of a new Bachelor's in Education ‘concurrent’ or ‘combined’ four-year undergraduate route. Donaldson's ‘vision’ of concurrency has been interpreted in many different ways across Scotland's universities resulting in a rich variety of new Bachelor's degrees in Education reflecting a range of structural, contextual, attitudinal and environmental constraints and opportunities which have influenced the nature of ‘concurrency’ at each institution.

The chapter traces how a number of influential policy texts from the 1960s onwards have influenced the repositioning of the new Bachelor degrees, which in turn aimed to broaden student teachers' understanding of teaching in the twenty-first century.

There seems to be some cognitive dissonance between the rapid growth of entrepreneurship education programs in higher education and the insignificant, if not negative, correlation to new venture creation, especially among the college-aged and recent graduate demographic (Fairlie, Reedy, Morelix, & Russell, 2016; National Chamber Foundation, 2012). Is a bachelor’s degree in entrepreneurship worth it? No, it is argued here that a bachelor’s degree in entrepreneurship is not worth it for a student whose goal is to be an entrepreneur by founding his or her own venture for two main reasons. First, the most important part of an entrepreneur is the set of the dispositional traits that enable them to acquire and operationalize any skill or knowledge quickly, and these cannot be learned through instruction in any degree program. Second, a major in entrepreneurship necessarily means concentrating the majority of study on the diverse, practically infinite, set of possible skills and knowledge needed, at the expense of a deep focus on an area of specialized knowledge from which high quality opportunities can be discovered. Almost any other bachelor’s degree program offers more in terms of opportunity discovery. Given these points, almost any other bachelor’s degree is worth more to a student whose goal is to found a new venture, as they ultimately allow for the discovery of higher quality opportunities for venture creation.

There has been much discussion, but little research about why African American males do not attend and or complete a college education. We examine the alternatives that might reduce or compete with the decision to complete a college education. We analyze the number of men incarcerated, trends in labor force participation, and occupation and wages by educational attainment. We find that even when the number of 18–24-year-old African American males incarcerated increased, the number of 18–24-year-old African American males enrolled in college had a larger increase suggesting that incarceration is not a plausible explanation for the growth rate in degree attainment for African American males. We find that the decrease in the overall percentage and in the percentage of 18–24-year-old African American males reporting employed as their labor force status and the increase in the percentage for these groups reporting not in the labor force and unemployed may have an impact on the college degree completion. Additionally, an increasing percentage of African American males have an associate's or bachelor's degree, but there was a larger percentage change in the percent of African American males with some college. African American males with some college earn significantly less than those with an associate's or bachelor's degree, but earn significantly more than African American women with some college or an associate's degree. This supports Dunn's (1988) finding that African American males do not invest in college because they desire “quick money.” The earnings differential between African American males and females may also explain the degree attainment gap, as it is the African American females with a bachelor's degree that earn significantly more than African American males with some college.

This chapter examines the types of institutions successful at replicating the diversity of the full-time undergraduate population in the diversity of the STEM-discipline degrees awarded. The sample is limited to full-time undergraduate students enrolled at or who are graduates from nonprofit private and public institutions. Relative to their share of the full-time undergraduate population and U.S. population, Asians and whites are overrepresented and blacks and Hispanics were underrepresented in the STEM – discipline bachelor's degree population. Private doctorate and public bachelor's and public master's comprehensive degrees–granting institutions were more successful than their counterparts at replicating the diversity of the full-time undergraduate population in the diversity of the STEM-discipline degrees awarded. Historically Black College and Universities (HBCUs) were the most successful at replicating this diversity. These findings were consistent over the time period analyzed.

Since the first enslaved Africans arrived in America, there has been a dialogue about if, how and what “the Negro” should be taught. This discussion became more important with the emancipation of approximately 3 million slaves, more than 90 percent of whom are believed to have been illiterate. The general sentiment of Southerners about the education of blacks is evident in The Southern Planter and Farmer, where a Virginian named Bebbet Puryear, writing under the pseudonym “Civis,” wrote:I oppose [education for blacks] because it is a policy that is cruelty in the extreme to the Negro himself. It instills in his mind that he is competent to share in the higher walks of life, prompts him to despise those menial pursuits to which his race has been doomed, and invites him to enter into competition with the white man for those tempting prizes that can be won only by a higher order of administrative talent than the negro has ever developed. (Lucas p. 159)

We focus our study on children of immigrants in science, technology, math, and engineering (STEM) fields because children of immigrants represent a diverse pool of future talent in those fields. We posit that children of immigrants may have a higher propensity to prepare for entering STEM fields, and our analysis finds some evidence to support this conjecture. Using the National Education Longitudinal Study (NELS: 88-00) and its restricted postsecondary transcript data, we examine three key milestones in the STEM pipeline: (1) highest math course taken during high school, (2) initial college major in STEM, and (3) bachelor’s degree attainment in STEM. Using individual level NELS data and country-level information from UNESCO and NSF, we find that children of immigrants of various countries of origin, with the exception of Mexicans, are more likely than children of natives to take higher-level math courses during high school. Asian and white children of immigrants are more likely to complete STEM degrees than third-generation whites. Drawing on theories of immigrant incorporation and cultural capital, we discuss the rationales for these patterns and the policy implications of these findings.

Service-learning (SL) is an innovative methodology aiming to improve learning while providing students experiences in the community. Consequently, students also develop social and emotional skills many higher education institutions promise to foster. However, few academic enrichment opportunities are implemented to develop these social skills and university teaching staff are limited in their knowledge of SL to promote active citizenship and civic engagement (Belando-Montoro, Jover, Ruiz de Miguel, Blanco, & Carrasco, 2015). This chapter presents an analysis of the presence of direct and indirect indicators related to social responsibility and SL in the degree programs of the Social and Legal Sciences area of the Complutense University of Madrid. These indicators include questions related to the social environment needs diagnosis and the design of projects that meet these needs, the environmental care, among others. The results indicate the lack of presence of courses on the direct indicators in the degrees offered. However, the focus on indirect indicators is relatively common. In particular, those common indirect indicators are related to critical thinking about social reality, the environment needs diagnosis, and the development of social intervention. The findings suggest universities increase their focus on social responsibility and community service in the university curriculum, providing training oriented toward socio-community intervention.

Policy instruments are specific policies – policy content, which is associated not just with policy texts, but also with how they are negotiated and practised (Dolowitz & Marsh, 2000; Fimyar, 2008). In the context of Bologna, policy instruments are Bologna action lines (such as the credit system, the study cycles, etc.).

This Chapter explains the development of the Bologna instruments in Ukraine until 2014 through the interaction of the policy continuity and change. In particular, I review how the development of the Bologna instruments in Ukraine was triggered and guided by the Bologna action lines, as well as by the old national higher education policies. I look at the cases of four Bologna instruments. They are the system of credits, the study cycles, the diploma supplement and quality assurance. All of these instruments have been developed through the reconfiguration of the pre-Bologna policies, which were chosen by the Ministry to represent these instruments. Namely, the national module system became the basis for the Bologna system of credits. The pre-Bologna education-qualification and scientific cycles made a foundation for the Bologna study cycles. The old national diploma supplement was a reason for the delay in dealing with the Bologna diploma supplement, given that a diploma supplement existed. The national diploma supplement was taken as the Bologna instrument even though their structure and content differed. Apart from this, the pre-Bologna higher education quality assurance policies started representing the Bologna quality assurance instruments at the outset of the reform in Ukraine.

The examination of these four cases of policy instruments shows that their development began with a mere change of labels for the old policies and proceeded with building up innovations to gradually alter the old national higher education policies.

Changes in the public accounting labor market and accounting student demographics motivate updating our understanding of the student profile most attractive to CPA firm recruiters. In this exploratory study, public accounting assurance recruiters evaluated hypothetical job candidates with varying educational path, age and gender. We investigated whether accounting courses taken in a non-degree or post-baccalaureate certificate programs are valued differently than the same courses taken through a degree program. We also studied the effect of age and gender on recruiter decision-making. Our results indicate a recruiter preference for Master in Accounting and Management Information System degrees, and the post-baccalaureate certificate was not valued any differently from a bachelor's degree. Although gender appeared to have no effect on the recruiting decision, older students appeared to be assessed less favorably on some dimensions than their younger counterparts. These results are important to both accounting program administrators and students for the insights they provide into program design and counseling.

In Africa, the community college model, catered to nontraditional college aspirants, has been increasingly seen as an important alternative to respond to the growing demand for postsecondary education. By highlighting the case of Ethiopia, this chapter explores the implications of the community college model through the examination of the system, teacher training, and perspectives of students and employers. Some education and training can be more efficiently delivered at the community college level by means of focused and high-quality teaching, rather than through a long duration of bachelor's program.