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Purpose – The purpose of this chapter is to explore the ways in which bachelor’s degree programs in library and information studies can support and enhance Master of Library Science (MLS) and Master of Library and Information Science (MLIS) programs.

Approach – The history of undergraduate library degrees is examined, followed by a brief discussion of the current landscape of library education. Finally, five ways in which library and information science (LIS) undergraduate programs can revitalize the MLS/MLIS are addressed and analyzed.

Findings – Bachelor of Science in Library Science degrees can impact the MLS/MLIS degree in five discrete ways. Undergraduate programs can interest student in future information work, allow for more specialization in graduate programs, allow paraprofessionals to advance their library education, support rural libraries, and can lead to more rigorous MLS/MLIS curricula.

Value – As libraries and library education are in transition, undergraduate LIS degree programs have the potential to transform LIS education as a whole.

The money management behavior of undergraduates determines their smooth transition into adulthood. Economic, social and psychological factors also affect undergraduates’ money management behavior. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to investigate how undergraduates manage and respond to economic, social and psychological factors affecting their money management behavior, and to examine whether this response changes as they make progress in their degree.

Adopting a qualitative exploratory approach, this study examined Australian undergraduates as they face many challenges to their money management behavior. The data were collected using six focus group discussions, held in three Australian universities, in which 47 undergraduates participated.

The findings have shown that their approach to manage spending, income, saving, peer relationships and stress changes as they make progress in their degree. However, they shared similar approaches to investment, followed parental money management advice and used technology for cost reduction, irrespective of the progress in their degree.

This study was conducted with the data collected from a relatively small sample of respondents and was limited only to undergraduates. Moreover, this study was conducted in Australia, indicating that some of the results might be specific to the Australian context.

The findings of this study can be utilized by governments, financial institutions, educational institutions and parents who are interested in inculcating prudent money management behavior in undergraduates.

This study extends the scope of the literature beyond financial literacy, and has shown how undergraduates respond to economic, social and psychological aspects relating to money management behavior and how these responses vary as they make progress in their degree. This study has applied a qualitative exploratory approach, in contrast to quantitative methods which have generally been applied for studies relating to undergraduates’ money management behavior.

This study empirically investigates whether graduate degrees (MBA, MSA and MST) earned by candidates affect their performance on the CPA exam. By examining more than half million first-time exam sittings taken during the period 2005–2013, the authors find that candidates with a graduate degree performed better on each section of the CPA exam than those who only have an undergraduate degree. In addition, the authors find that the type of graduate degree also has an effect on the CPA exam performance. While candidates with an MBA degree generally performed better on the BEC section than those with an MSA or MST degree, those with an MSA degree performed best on the AUD and FAR sections; and those with an MST degree exceled on the REG section. This study contributes to the existing literature on the determinants of CPA exam success. In addition, this investigation provides valuable insights to candidates, academics and regulators. The findings of this chapter should be useful for academic administrators as they revise their accounting curricula to prepare for the new CPA licensure model. Furthermore, the results of this study should benefit accounting regulators in determining education requirements for future CPAs.

The supply of accounting majors has not kept pace with the increasing demand for accounting graduates. One way of increasing the number of qualified accountants, while maintaining desired quality, is through a non-degree program such as the Post-Baccalaureate Certificate in Accountancy. A certificate program addresses the needs of students who already have a bachelor's degree in another discipline and want to gain accounting knowledge. The purpose of this chapter is to assist accounting administrators and faculty in deciding whether a similar program would be feasible and beneficial for their school. We describe the benefits of a certificate program, which include the potential for increased enrollments and an enhanced learning environment. We discuss design alternatives and implementation issues in terms of our program and other certificate programs in the United States. We also discuss the needs and characteristics of certificate students currently enrolled in our program.

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.

As students increasingly incur debt to finance their undergraduate education, there is heightened concern about the long-term implications of loans on borrowers, especially borrowers from low socioeconomic backgrounds. Drawing upon the concepts of cultural capital and habitus (Bourdieu & Passeron, 1977), this research explores how student debt and social class intersect and affect individuals’ trajectory into adulthood. Based on 50 interviews with young adults who incurred $30,000–180,000 in undergraduate debt and who were from varying social classes, the findings are presented in terms of a categorization schema (income level by level of cultural capital) and a conceptual model of borrowing. The results illustrate the inequitable payoff that college and debt can have for borrowers with varying levels of cultural resources, with borrowers from low-income, low cultural capital backgrounds more likely to struggle throughout and after college with their loans.

This paper examines the changes that have taken place in the extent and nature of management education programmes for international business activity offered by Australian universities, i.e. the extent to which Australian universities have provided educational support in the recent major expansion of international business activity by Australia’s corporate sector. With the increase in overseas activity by the Australian corporate sector there has been a statistically significant increase in the offering of international business degrees at both the undergraduate and postgraduate level. Furthermore, consistent with the literature on managerial knowledge requirements for global operation, there has also been a shift towards more appropriately balanced degree structures consisting of business or technical knowledge courses and cultural knowledge courses.

Purpose – Drawing on a survey of over 1,000 Library and Information Science (LIS) professionals and over a dozen interviews, this chapter explores the student loan crisis from an LIS perspective and offers practical solutions for the field to decrease debt from LIS graduate programs, which has ballooned in recent years.

Design/Methodology/Approach – In April 2016, I sent a survey via email to approximately 10 library-affiliated listservs ranging from Code4Lib to the UMD iSchool discussion list. While I attempted to keep the reach small and controlled to only library-affiliated listservs, the survey link quickly spread to Twitter and other social media. The survey attracted 1,630 qualified responses and ran for two weeks in total. Using skip logic, all potential respondents who did not attend a library school (26 in total) were automatically disqualified. Email addresses were provided by 497 participants for interview post-survey. I received 215 partial responses. In September 2016, I conducted qualitative interviews with participants. Thirty-two telephone interviews were conducted extending for 15–20 minutes and I received 38 written questionnaires in response to my questions.

Findings – The findings are outlined in sub-chapter headings, including increased tuition does not equal increased aid, older students borrow less and take longer in programs tailored to their needs, new graduates unlikely to pay off their loans soon, and students with high undergraduate debt: a divided loan burden. Other findings include interview results, which are embedded within the chapter.

The final section offers recommendations for LIS programs to lessen the burden for students. These recommendations include better financing information and counseling for students; shorter, more flexible degree programs; apprenticeship model, more pathways for a paraprofessional to professional track; and expand public service loan forgiveness programs.

Originality/Value – This is the first comprehensive qualitative/quantitative study of the cost of library school as well as the debt burden for students. It provides actionable outcomes as well as an analytic framework through which to view the academic debt crisis. It features the voices of librarians from around the country as they struggle through a changing job market and increased monetary burden.

With the job market as it is for many college graduates, it is more important than ever that students choose those professional and graduate schools which will best meet their individual needs and help them achieve their goals. The process of graduate school selection is often difficult, but libraries can facilitate the process with a good collection of specialized guides to graduate schools, frequently obtainable at little cost.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the factors affecting the academic outcome of real estate students in a specialized Federal University in Nigeria. Furthermore, this paper investigates the phenomenon of publication bias in the extant literature as such evidence poses severe threats to the validity of empirical findings on factors affecting the degree outcome of undergraduate students.

The standard statistical approach adopted was to examine whether the reported coefficient estimates from ten empirical studies (105 observations) are independent of their standard errors by employing both ordinary least squares (OLS) and weighted least squares (WLS). In this paper, this approach enabled evidence of publication bias in the cited literature to be refuted. In addition, data were also collected on the academic measure and demographic information of 449 students who graduated between 2005 and 2011. For the purpose of analysis, the study utilized a stepwise logistic regression technique to examine the factors impacting on the degree outcome of real estate students.

The results of the OLS and WLS regression indicate that there is no significant evidence of any empirical effect of publication bias in the extant literature. The results of the logistic regression also revealed that grade point average, gender differences, prior knowledge of real estate discipline and potential difference in year of enrollment impact on students’ academic performance in terms of their ability to graduate at first attempt. In addition, factors such as age, marital status, high school grade and geopolitical/ethnic background of undergraduate real estate students do not influence their opportunities to graduate at first attempt from the university.

This paper focuses only on one specialized university of technology offering a bachelor’s program in real estate in Nigeria, so as to remove any extraneous factor(s) that could be present in the other institutional settings where students have completed such program. Extending similar study to tertiary institutions in Nigeria that share similar geographical characteristics and institutional settings can produce far-reaching generalization.

This paper contributes to the scanty literature on factors affecting the academic performance of students in an undergraduate real estate program in Nigeria. A scientific element of novelty in this paper is the evidence of the absence of the underlying effect of publication bias in the extant literature on students’ academic outcome in tertiary institutions. Findings from this study serve as the basis for university officers to monitor significant transitions in real estate students’ academic progress, so as to identify those who are unlikely to graduate at first attempt early at the entrant level. Generally, the outcome of this research could provide faculty and admission officers in tertiary institutions with complementary information in arriving at an informed decision in a non-discriminatory admission process.