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The purpose of this study is to investigate the value investors place on S&P index additions relative to uncertainty surrounding the firm and the market. Investors look for reassuring signals or tell-tale signs around uncertainty.

Variation in the market response to announcements of S&P additions to the 400, 500 and 600 indices is examined against measures of risk factors. Internal risk factors include firm size relative to the index, total firm risk and liquidity, and whether the firm is a brand new index entrant. External risk factors related to market uncertainty are measured by the Chicago Board of Exchange volatility index.

Firms with lower market capitalization relative to the index, higher total risk, lower trading volume and first-time entrants to any S&P index elicit a positive market reaction compared to firms with less pricing uncertainty. In times of increased market uncertainty, investors tend to place more value on signals from respected institutions such as S&P, and riskier firms benefit more from inclusion in the S&P index. Overall, this study finds that the market overreaction is explained by the degree of uncertainty surrounding the added firms, as well as by the degree of market uncertainty at the time of the announcement.

The findings of this study suggest that investors interpret the prospect of S&P index addition as an opportunity for firms to reduce uncertainty surrounding them, and thus partially hedge their exposure to market uncertainty by joining an index tracked by dozens of index funds. The value of such a hedging strategy rises for riskier firms during market turbulence.

Information on job openings by occupation is important for those looking for jobs, for those contemplating education and training options and for policy makers in education and training. Job openings in an occupation are a result of employment growth and the replacement of workers who leave the occupation. In this paper, three concepts of replacement demand are outlined and net replacement demand is estimated and projected for 81 occupational groups, covering the whole of employment in Australia. The results show the net replacement demand rate to vary substantially across occupations, with an average annual rate of 2 per cent.

Student dropout rates have been a source of contention throughout many Universities worldwide. Universities recognize this fact and many have acted to improve their induction process for students joining the University in the first year. However, student dropout rates continue to be higher than acceptable and it is in this context that this project has been undertaken. However, quite often there is no additional support provided to overseas students arriving on the campus. Frequently, these students are taken into final year and miss all the inductions aimed at year 1 students. The purpose of this research is to investigate the feasibility of designing an information portal in the Chinese language to assist new arrivals on campus.

The authors started with the premise that any additional information that can make life easier for these foreign language students is to be welcomed. Mobile communications is a continually growing sector in industry and a wide variety of visual services such as video‐on‐demand have been created which are limited by low‐bandwidth network infrastructures. The distinction between mobile phones and personal device assistants has already become blurred with pervasive computing being the term coined to describe the tendency to integrate computing and communication into everyday life.

The authors believe that placing location based campus information on a mobile device outlining key information concerning the University of Ulster at the Magee campus in the Chinese language will assist overseas students greatly in the crucial early days of arrival at the University.

This paper outlines the unique implementation of a multilingual Chinese–English Campus information portal for mobile devices which assists fresh arrivals in locating important information about the university. The research finds that students are assisted by mobile portals created in their native language directing them to important sources of information on campus.

The number of people engaging in higher education (HE) has increased considerably over the past decade. However, there is a need to achieve a balance between increasing access and bearing down on rates of non‐completion. It has been argued that poor attainment and failure within the first year are significant contributors to the overall statistics for non‐progression and that, although research has concentrated on factors causative of student withdrawal, less attention has focused on students who fail academically. This study investigated the effects of a number of factors on the academic attainment of first‐year undergraduates within the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of Glamorgan. Results showed that gender and age had only minor impacts upon educational achievement, while place of residence, prior educational attainment and attendance emerged as significant predictors of attainment. Further analysis showed these three factors to be interrelated, with attendance correlating strongly with both entry points and place of residence. In turn, prior attainment was strongly linked to place of residence. Findings may be used to identify and proactively target students at risk of poor academic performance and dropout in order to improve rates of performance and progression.

This paper aims to discuss a 2015-2016 University of Washington Libraries project focused on understanding the needs and challenges of transfer students on the Seattle campus and developing innovative ways to support transfer student success.

The study uses design thinking methods, including interviews and rapid iterative prototyping and feedback, to understand and emphasize the user experience.

Transfer students at the Seattle campus identify themselves as a unique group separate from other undergraduates because of their prior experience, shortened timeline at the university and their need to balance academic, work and family commitments. Because transfer students often have little time to learn about and effectively use campus resources, the authors found that working with campus partners to enrich transfer-specific student orientations and events with educational and practical content was the most effective means of supporting new students.

This pilot study was conducted over an 11-month period with a small number of participants, but the iterative nature of design thinking allowed the authors to gather new feedback from a variety of students and staff at each phase.

This study showcases how design thinking methods can increase understanding of transfer student and other user needs. The design thinking approach can also enable the rapid development of library and campus services, as well as outreach efforts, to meet user needs.

The purpose of this paper is to present a discussion of the value of early diversion schemes, underpinned by the principles of restorative justice (RJ), for First Time Entrants (FTEs) into the criminal justice system (CJS).

The paper focuses specifically on the findings of a 12-month study into the introduction of “Triage” by one Youth Offending Team (YOT) in the northeast of England.

Re-offending data suggested that Triage is more effective in reducing re-offending than conventional justice practices, due to the restorative nature of the scheme. However, the qualitative data raised a number of issues, particularly relating to problems of “net-widening” and the impact of recording processes on young people's desistance, as well as the role of victim engagement in the process. These issues could undermine the long-term effectiveness of Triage and its successful application within other youth justice contexts.

The paper aims to contribute further understanding regarding the impacts of RJ practices on reducing re-offending compared to traditional processes, and in particular, consider the role of implementation issues in the production of outcomes and impacts.

This paper seeks to examine the use of the cohort component method as a method of deriving replacement demand for manpower forecasting.

The paper explains the principal concepts of replacement demand and how replacement demand has been estimated in two alternative ways: the cohort component method and using longitudinal data on individuals. The paper focuses on one of these ways, the cohort component method, and illustrates how this method can fail to capture all the relevant flows driving replacement demand. It also compares the method to the alternative approach based on individual data and discusses US and Irish results using both methods.

The cohort component method is found to underestimate replacement demand significantly in many occupations.

Research estimates of replacement demand should be based on individual longitudinal data rather than the cohort component method.

Many countries undertake some form of occupational employment forecasting including, in many cases, making estimates of replacement demand. This paper should help to clarify the appropriate choice of methodology for estimating replacement demand.

This chapter focuses on the use of target-setting in Scottish higher education to boost participation by under-represented groups. The central question I address is whether the technology of New Public Management, such as performance indicators and targets, is likely to be useful in addressing the problem of social inequality in higher education. Traditionally, the Scottish Government has tended to adopt a light touch to university regulation and governance, using institutional carrots rather than sticks (Raffe, 2013, 2016). More recently, since the introduction of widening access outcomes agreements and the publication of the final report of the Commission on Fair Access (Scottish Government, 2015), universities have argued that the government’s interventions risk eroding university autonomy without achieving policy goals.