Over the past ten years Australian higher education has undergone a transformation from a binary structure, marked by a division of 'traditional universities' and colleges of advanced education, to a uniform university structure. This transformation was first proposed in 1987 by the Hon. John Dawkins, Minister for Employment, Education and Training in the Hawke Labor Government. The proposals appeared in the form of a 'Green' policy discussion paper which drew substantial amounts of criticism from the academy, but nonetheless were swiftly transformed into policy as a 'White' paper or policy statement. Since that time, Australian higher education institutions have been subject to a series of changes that have fundamentally changed the patterns of tertiary education provision established over the previous forty years. They have experienced a re-allocation of research funds which has eroded the established advantage of the traditional universities; they have been obliged to accept amalgamations; and, student numbers have expanded at a rate and to a proportion never previously imagined. All of this has been achieved under the banner of improving Australia's place in the highly competitive international economy. The champions of a restructured higher education sector have argued that this competitiveness is greatly dependent upon Australia's ability to improve the scientific and technical base of its human capital: higher education must move towards a more efficient and effective provision of education which will meet the needs of the market.The transformation of higher education has been achieved without the unanimous blessing of the academy. Many of the most strident critics of what have come to be known as the Dawkins Reforms are academics who have expressed dismay at these changes. In particular there has been as strongly argued case that the reforms, with their ++ / emphasis on science and technology, mark the end of liberal education in Australia. Australian higher education is now, they declare, the site of mass education based upon a new instrumentalism in which the liberal arts have no significant place.This dissertation takes such criticisms as its focus. In particular it attempts to show that the critique founded upon a defence of the inherent role of liberal education in the Australian university sector has been misguided. Furthermore, the dissertation argues that because so much of the attack on the restructuring policy took this form there was little place for a substantial critical appraisal of the validity of restructuring based upon an imperative of the market.The idea of the university in Australia as one fundamentally defined by liberal education is examined at two levels. First, it is argued that the notion of liberal education used to defend the university against new instrumentalism is an idealised notion which both ignores the historical construction of such an idea at a time when liberalism itself was undergoing transformation, and, wrongly assumes the absence of instrumentalism, within it. Second, the history of the establishment of the university in Australia is reviewed to show that whilst the founders of the universities often had sympathies for the liberal arts, from the outset Australian universities were consistently conditioned by the drive for instrumental education.Higher education policies in the post-WWII era are given particular attention in order to show that mass higher education is no new phenomenon, but the continuation of the drive towards expanded education provision. Just as with the expansion of schooling to mass schooling, a greatly expanded higher education sector has been necessary to fulfil the continued demands of the social democratic consensus. The thesis concludes with the argument ++ / that the critique of higher education reforms has been hobbled by the absence of a critical sociology of education which could place the restructuring of Australian higher education in the context of the transformation of social to market democracy.

No description available.

The study explores collective action in Sweden between 1980 to 1995 using time-series data from the European Protest and Coercion Database. In spite of severe hardship during the crisis of the early 1990s, Swedish strike-rates declined. However, contention merely shifted from workplaces into the streets; there was indeed a protest movement against austerity, as shown by a series of large demonstrations, and some riots, between 1989 and 1993. Further analysis indicates this movement faded as it was increasingly chanelled into the electoral campaign of the labor pary; having won the 1994 election, the organised labor movement no longer had an interest in sustaining the protest movement against austerity.

No description available.

After the Velvet Revolution in 1989, the Czech media landscape was getting its second wind. The boom in the private sector of the broadcasting landscape of Czechoslovakia, and later the Czech Republic, was unprecedented. However, it often preceded the legislative changes of the reborn state. Society-wide changes were followed by granting of first experimental licenses to local radio broadcasters, but in 1993 the Broadcasting Council decided to provide the transmitters to two nationwide stations - Frekvence 1 and Radio Alfa. Alfa was, in fact, the first nationwide private radio in the Czech Republic which started broadcasting on September 13, 1993. During six years of existence, it has earned its place on the private radio market in the Czech Republic. Until today, a little legacy of this frantic time has been retained, therefore it is even more important to remember the existence of Radio Alfa through memories of radio journalists who formed the radio during that time and experienced this key stage of the Czech media market in the 1990's. This is also the aim of the thesis, which offers a comprehensive picture of the origins of commercial radio broadcasting in the Czech Republic (with emphasis on so-called dual broadcasting system) through a case study of Radio Alfa, including research...

Denna uppsats analyserar Cecilia Edefalks konstverk genom ett postmodernistiskt raster. Tre verk - En annan rörelse, In the Painting the Painting, Självporträtt - från 1990-talet undersöks avseende konstens utformning och påverkan av postmodernistiska konstuttryck. Genom diskursanalysens metod undersöks dessutom konstdebatten vid denna tidpunkt då postmodernismen vann terräng i Sverige samt hur konstkritiken yttrade sig avseende Edefalks konst. / This essay analyzes artworks by Cecilia Edefalk through a postmodernist lens. Three artworks - Another Movement, In the Painting the Painting, Selfportrait - from 1990s are examined regarding design and influence of postmodernist expressions. Through the method of discourse analysis the debate of art is investigated, as well as art critics regarding Edefalks artwork, at the time postmodernism developed in Sweden.

The purpose of this study is to explain how Australia has bargained for improved outcomes in its trade with the United States over the 1980s and into the early 1990s. This explanation is sought by means of an analysis of the forces which have shaped Australia's trade policy-making towards the U.S. in the five trading sectors of wheat, sugar, beef, steel and international air passenger transport. The study adopts a theoretical framework which postulates that state actors and institutions are principally responsible for trade policy-making and the concomitant bargaining strategies adopted to improve trade outcomes. However, a state-centred approach needs to be qualified by state actors' accomodation of societal-actor demands for policy action. While exogenous to this domestic bargaining process, influences emanating from the international political economy must also be taken into account. The relationship within and between state and societal actors, influenced as they are by international institutions and ideas, are critical to understanding the bargaining approaches made by one state towards another. It is argued that sectoral trading outcomes between Australia and the U.S. can be understood by reference to a bilateral bargaining process within each trading sector. Within each such bargaining process, Australia has, within broad bilateral and multilateral approaches, devised strategies by which it could mobilize sectorally-specific resources to seek to exploit opportunities and minimise problems so as to improve its trading outcomes. The nature of these sectoral strategies has been influenced by first, the nature of the U.S. policy and policy-making process; second, the Australian domestic bargaining process between state and societal actors; and third, and to a lesser extent, prevailing ideas and the perceptions of the negotiating parties.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between computer attitudes held by tertiary students and the selected variables of gender, age and previous computer experience. It was hypothesized that no statistically significant differences would be found within the relationships tested. A questionnaire comprising the Computer Attitude Scale (CAS), demographic and other questions was administered to the population enrolled in an introductory computer unit at the University of Canberra, Australian Capital Territory in Semester 1, 1992. The results were subjected to t-test and one-way analysis of variance testing. Statistically significant findings were noted between both gender and computer anxiety, and gender and computer confidence, with female students being more anxious and male students being more confident. Students with previous computer experience were found to be significantly less anxious and more confident with computers. More research on possible causes of these relationships and ways of overcoming computer anxiety is needed before the findings can be fully implemented.

The purpose of this study is to explain how Australia has bargained for improved outcomes in its trade with the United States over the 1980s and into the early 1990s. This explanation is sought by means of an analysis of the forces which have shaped Australia's trade policy-making towards the U.S. in the five trading sectors of wheat, sugar, beef, steel and international air passenger transport. The study adopts a theoretical framework which postulates that state actors and institutions are principally responsible for trade policy-making and the concomitant bargaining strategies adopted to improve trade outcomes. However, a state-centred approach needs to be qualified by state actors' accomodation of societal-actor demands for policy action. While exogenous to this domestic bargaining process, influences emanating from the international political economy must also be taken into account. The relationship within and between state and societal actors, influenced as they are by international institutions and ideas, are critical to understanding the bargaining approaches made by one state towards another. It is argued that sectoral trading outcomes between Australia and the U.S. can be understood by reference to a bilateral bargaining process within each trading sector. Within each such bargaining process, Australia has, within broad bilateral and multilateral approaches, devised strategies by which it could mobilize sectorally-specific resources to seek to exploit opportunities and minimise problems so as to improve its trading outcomes. The nature of these sectoral strategies has been influenced by first, the nature of the U.S. policy and policy-making process; second, the Australian domestic bargaining process between state and societal actors; and third, and to a lesser extent, prevailing ideas and the perceptions of the negotiating parties.

This study focuses on annual earnings assimilation and the employment probability, described as the assimilation of annual earnings and the extent of which available workers are being used respectively (in this case workers originating from a certain country) of immigrants arriving from former Yugoslavia, i.e. Bosnia-Herzegovina, Serbia and Croatia, to Sweden during the Yugoslav wars occurring in the 1990s. Previous research made on immigrants, and in this case focusing on refugees, brings some empirical standpoints; initial annual earnings of refugees are lower than those of labour-market immigrants and natives, higher education level as well as geographic closeness and cultural similarities between source country and host country makes the transition and assimilation easier for immigrants. Immigrants incur a net-cost on public sector finances during their first years in host country, but that it diminishes as years since migration increases. These longitudinal regressions were made for two different cohorts and genders separately. The cohorts included individuals in ages 20-64 years of age from countries previously being a part of former Yugoslav that arrived in Sweden between the years of 1990 and 1995, and between 1996 and 1999. These cohorts are being studied in three cross-sections, 1990, 1995 and 1999. A brief history of the Yugoslav wars will also be presented in this thesis. Our results show that the refugees from former Yugoslavia had a positive assimilation in to the Swedish labour market, and our results are in line with previous theory regarding labour market assimilation. Moreover, men without university education as well as women with university education assimilate faster in comparison to their corresponding opposites in regards of educational level. However, both genders, regardless of educational level, assimilated. This confirms some of the theory presented in this thesis.