education Archives - Page 3 of 4

80% self-censor

7 April 2022. New York Times:

“There is now little doubt that students frequently bite their tongues because they feel unsafe. A 2021 survey of more than 37,000 college students — by far the largest on free expression to date — found that more than 80 percent of students censor their own viewpoints at least some of the time, while roughly one in five students regularly do so. Meanwhile, only 40 percent of students say that they are comfortable openly disagreeing with their professors.”

Yes, hypersensitivity on American university campuses is well-known. What does this have to do with communication and feedback within American companies? Everything. Political correctness, like it or dislike it, has been a growing force in the United States for several decades.

Rankings USA

Rankings – or standings – are particularly popular in the U.S. Where an individual, team, organization „stands“ is always in competitive comparison to other individuals, teams, organizations.

Examples of college and university rankings include US News and Business Report, Princeton Review College Rankings, College Prowler Traditional College and University Rankings. Subjects of rankings include Liberal Arts Colleges, National University, Research, Student Satisfaction, Diversity, Alumni Networks, among others.

Business school rankings are found in BusinessWeek, Forbes, US News Business School Rankings, Princeton Review Business School Rankings, Wall Street Journal Business School Rankings, Poets&Quants, the Economist. Subsets include region, country, specialization, composite, and endowment.

Law School rankings are found in Vault, LLM Guide, Princeton Review Law School Rankings, US News & World Report, Gourman Report, Hylton, Leiter, National Law Journal, QS World University Rankings, and Judging Law School Rankings.

Corporate rankings are found in Fortune 500, MarketWatch, Most Ethical Companies Rankings, Netweek Green Rankings, Careers.org Company Rankings, Forbes Company Rankings, SEO Company Rankings. Subcaterogies include revenue, ecologically friendliness, ethical behavior, innovation, size, industry, sector, social media presence, pay, employee satisfaction, and career development.

Long-term planning

The Technical University of Dortmund in Germany:

What will the city look like in the future? How do we deal with climate change? What will tomorrow’s transportation look like? How do we use the limited space we have? Spatial planning is an interdisciplinary engineering and social science field that deals with spatial developments in living, working and environmental conditions.

The different spatial levels range from the living environment and residential quarter to the urban district, the city as a whole, the region, the state and federal levels, and even the European and international levels. On all spatial levels, different technical orientations, such as urban development, housing, traffic, landscape, are considered in their interdependent relationships and effects.

Technical University Munich

There is no mandatory length of a thesis. Most well-written master’s theses have between 50 and 80 pages, Bachelor’s theses typically have between 40 and 60 pages. However, depending on your topic and your writing style, more or fewer pages may be appropriate.

Be aware that your thesis will only be evaluated based on the written document and the defense. If you did some nice work (that you might have shown to your adviser at some point) and forget to add it to your written document, it cannot be evaluated.

German Master’s thesis

A master’s thesis is a scientific or artistic work that is written for the completion of a master’s degree. The master’s thesis generally serves as proof that the examinee is able to write a scientific or artistic work independently, but with supervision.

The academic master’s degree is usually awarded with a university examination. The state degree Master is usually awarded through a state final examination. In Germany, this final examination of a master’s course usually consists of a course-related part, the examination or final thesis and the oral final examination (at some universities).

For quality assurance, the Standing Conference of the Ministers of Education stipulates that master’s degree courses must be completed with a final thesis (master’s thesis), “which demonstrates the ability to independently work on a problem from the respective subject using scientific methods within a specified period of time.”

In the absence of a clear regulation, the The author of the master’s thesis continues to be referred to as “Diplomand” in everyday life, even if the term “master’s student” is also found. The Master’s thesis is usually either the last examination or the penultimate examination before the final oral examination.

Planning Doesn’t Have to Be the Enemy of Agile

Planning was one of the cornerstones of management, but it’s now fallen out of fashion. It seems rigid, bureaucratic, and ill-suited to a volatile, unpredictable world. However, organizations still need some form of planning.

And so, universally valuable, but desperately unfashionable, planning waits like a spinster in a Jane Austen novel for someone to recognize her worth. The answer is agile planning, a process that can coordinate and align with today’s agile-based teams. Agile planning also helps to resolve the tension between traditional planning’s focus on hard numbers, and the need for “soft data,” or human judgment.

Employees want more training

More than ever since the corona crisis, employees have feared that their qualifications are no longer sufficient, a study shows.

Little Bell

Mid-1990s. University of Bonn. Professor Dr. Schmidt enters the classroom with books and papers under his arm, and his little bell. The topic: Game Theory in the Context of International Politics.

A graduate student moves to the front of the room to give his presentation. Hardly a minute into it a shrill ding-a-ling pierces the air. The students don’t dare move a muscle. “Ladies and gentleman. Time and again I simply must impress upon you the need to define the terms you use. You cannot simply throw complex terms around the room without having first clearly defined them!“

A few students risk rolling their eyes. The presenter sweats, squirms and stammers his way through his material. Professor Dr. Schmidt sits down in his chair, his left arm on his desk, in his hand his little friend the bell– ready to get shrill at a moment’s notice.

Term paper

German universities have clear guidelines concerning term papers and the formal presentation of their results. Objectivity and precision (accuracy) are a must. Statements not supported by sources are considered invalid.

The focus of the presentation should always be on the subject matter. The discussion thereafter serves the purpose of delving deeper into that subject matter in an objective, impassionate, and academic way.

Distanz! – literally: distance. Personal pronouns (I, he, she, they, we) are avoided, in order to avoid “drifting into subjectivity.” Instead the passive form is expected. German professors watch very closely. Not following these guidelines leads to lower grades, or worse.

Academic Papers

For Germans, all new knowledge is based on previous knowledge. Before Germans accept new knowledge, they need to see how it flows from current knowledge.

Academic works in Germany, including Master‘s and Ph.D. level theses, almost always begin with a full account of relevant context information: definition of terms, lengthy description of topic, current status of research, methodology applied. The context can amount to as much as one-third of the length of the paper. Some universities expect that it exceed one-half.