Book Recommendations for Graduate School in Economics

Book Recommendations for Graduate School in Economics Q:Â  If I want to achieve a Ph.D. in economics what steps would you advise me to take and what books and courses would I need to study to gain the knowledge that is absolutely needed to be able to do and understand the research that is needed for a Ph.D. A:Â  Thank you for your question. Its a question that Im frequently asked, so its about time that I created a page that I could point people toward. Its really difficult to give you a general answer, because a lot of it depends on where youd like to get your Ph.D. from. Ph.D programs in economics vary widely in both quality and scope of what is taught. The approach taken by European schools tends to be different than that of Canadian and American schools. The advice in this article will mainly apply to those who are interested in entering a Ph.D. program in the United States or Canada, but much of the advice should also apply to European programs as well. There are four key subject areas that youll need to be very familiar with to succeed in a Ph.D. program in economics. 1. Microeconomics / Economic Theory Even if you plan to study a subject which is closer to Macroeconomics or Econometrics, it is important to have a good grounding in Microeconomic Theory. A lot of work in subjects such as Political Economy and Public Finance are rooted in micro foundations so youll help yourself immensely in these courses if youre already familiar with high level microeconomics. Most schools also require you to take at least two courses in microeconomics, and often these courses are the most difficult youll encounter as a graduate student. Microeconomics Material You Must Know as a Bare Minimum I would recommend reviewing the book Intermediate Microeconomics: A Modern Approach by Hal R. Varian. The newest edition is the sixth one, bu if you can find an older used edition costing less you may want to do that. Advanced Microeconomics Material that Would be Helpful to Know Hal Varian has a more advanced book called simply Microeconomic Analysis. Most economics students are familiar with both books and refer to this book as simply Varian and the Intermediate book as Baby Varian. A lot of the material in here is stuff you wouldnt be expected to know entering a program as its often taught for the first time in Masters and Ph.D. programs. The more you can learn before you enter the Ph.D. program, the better you will do. What Microeconomics Book Youll Use When You Get There From what I can tell, Microeconomic Theory by Mas-Colell, Whinston, and Green is standard in many Ph.D. programs. Its what I used when I took Ph.D. courses in Microeconomics at both Queens University at Kingston and the University of Rochester. Its an absolutely massive book, with hundreds and hundreds of practice questions. The book is quite difficult in parts so youll want to have a good background in microeconomic theory before you tackle this one. 2. Macroeconomics Giving advice on Macroeconomics books is a lot more difficult because Macroeconomics is taught so differently from school to school. Your best bet is to see what books are used in the school that you would like to attend. The books will be completely different depending on whether your school teaches more Keynesian style Macroeconomics or Freshwater Macro which is taught at places like The Five Good Guys which includes the University of Chicago, the University of Minnesota, Northwestern University, University of Rochester, and University of Pennsylvania. The advice Im going to give is for students who are going to a school that teaches more of a Chicago style approach. Macroeconomics Material You Must Know as a Bare Minimum I would recommend reviewing the book Advanced Macroeconomics by David Romer. Although it does have the word Advanced in the title, its more suited for high level undergraduate study. It does have some Keynesian material as well. If you understand the material in this book, you should do well as a graduate student in Macroeconomics. Advanced Macroeconomics Material that would be Helpful to Know Instead of learning more Macroeconomics, it would be more helpful to learn more on dynamic optimization. See my section on Math Economics books for more detail. What Macroeconomics Book Youll Use When You Get There When I took Ph.D courses in Macroeconomics a few years ago we didnt really use any textbooks, instead we discussed journal articles. This is the case in most courses at the Ph.D. level. I was fortunate enough to have macroeconomics courses taught by Per Krusell and Jeremy Greenwood and you could spend an entire course or two just studying their work. One book that is used quite often is Recursive Methods in Economic Dynamics by Nancy L. Stokey and Robert E. Lucas Jr. Although the book is almost 15 years old, its still quite useful for understanding the methodology behind many macroeconomics articles. Ive also found Numerical Methods in Economics by Kenneth L. Judd to be quite helpful when youre trying to obtain estimates from a model which does not have a closed-form solution. 3. Econometrics Material You Must Know as a Bare Minimum Theres quite a few good undergraduate texts on Econometrics out there. When I taught tutorials in undergraduate Econometrics last year, we used Essentials of Econometrics by Damodar N. Gujarati. Its as useful as any other undergraduate text Ive seen on Econometrics. You can usually pick up a good Econometrics text for very little money at a large second-hand book shop. A lot of undergraduate students cant seem to wait to discard their old econometrics materials. Advanced Econometrics Material that would be Helpful to Know Ive found two books rather useful: Econometrics Analysis by William H. Greene and A Course in Econometrics by Arthur S. Goldberger. As in the Microeconomics section, these books cover a lot of material which is introduced for the first time at the graduate level. The more you know going in, though, the better chance youll have of succeeding. What Econometrics Book Youll Use When You Get There Chances are youll encounter the king of all Econometrics books Estimation and Inference in Econometrics by Russell Davidson and James G. MacKinnon. This is a terrific text, because it explains why things work like they do, and does not treat the matter as a black box like many econometrics books do. The book is quite advanced, though the material can be picked up fairly quickly if you have a basic knowledge of geometry. 4. Mathematics Having a good understanding of mathematics is crucial to success in economics. Most undergraduate students, particularly those coming from North America, are often shocked by how mathematical graduate programs in economics are. The math goes beyond basic algebra and calculus, as it tends to be more proofs, such as Let (x_n) be a Cauchy sequence. Show that if (X_n) has a convergent subsequence then the sequence is itself convergent. Ive found that the most successful students in the first year of a Ph.D. program tend to be ones with mathematics backgrounds, not economics ones. That being said, theres no reason why someone with an economics background can not succeed. Mathematical Economics Material You Must Know as a Bare Minimum Youll certainly want to read a good undergraduate Mathematics for Economists type book. The best one that Ive seen happens to be called Mathematics for Economists written by Carl P. Simon and Lawrence Blume. It has a quite diverse set of topics, all of which are useful tools for economic analysis. If youre rusty on basic calculus, make sure you pick up a 1st year undergraduate calculus book. There are hundreds and hundreds of different ones available, so Id suggest looking for one in a second hand shop. You may also want to review a good higher level calculus book such as Multivariable Calculus by James Stewart. You should have at least a basic knowledge of differential equations, but you do not have to be an expert in them by any means. Reviewing the first few chapters of a book such as Elementary Differential Equations and Boundary Value Problems by William E. Boyce and Richard C. DiPrima would be quite useful. You do not need to have any knowledge of partial differential equations before entering graduate school, as they are generally only used in very specialized models. If youre uncomfortable with proofs, you may want to pick up The Art and Craft of Problem Solving by Paul Zeitz. The material in the book has almost nothing to do with economics, but it will help you greatly when working on proofs. As an added bonus a lot of the problems in the book are surprisingly fun. The more knowledge you have of pure mathematics subjects such as Real Analysis and Topology, the better. I would recommend working on as much of Introduction to Analysis by Maxwell Rosenlicht as you possibly can. The book costs less than $10 US but it is worth its weight in gold. There are other analysis books that are slightly better, but you cannot beat the price. You may also want to look at the Schaums Outlines - Topology and Schaums Outlines - Real Analysis. Theyre also quite inexpensive and have hundreds of useful problems. Complex analysis, while quite an interesting subject, will be of little use to a graduate student in economics, so you need not worry about it. Advanced Mathematical Economics that would be Helpful to Know The more real analysis you know, the better you will do. You may want to see one of the more canonical texts such as The Elements of Real Analysis by Robert G. Bartle. You may also want to look at the book I recommend in the next paragraph. What Advanced Mathematical Economics Book Youll Use When You Get There At the University of Rochester we used a book called A First Course in Optimization Theory by Rangarajan K. Sundaram, though I dont know how widely this is used. If you have a good understanding of real analysis, you will have no trouble with this book, and youll do quite well in the obligatory Mathematical Economics course they have in most Ph.D. programs. You do not need to study up on more esoteric topics such as Game Theory or International Trade before you enter a Ph.D. program, although it never hurts to do so. You are not usually required to have a background in those subject areas when you take a Ph.D. course in them. I will recommend a couple of books I greatly enjoy, as they may convince you to study these subjects. If youre at all interested in Public Choice Theory or Virginia style Political Economy, first you should read my article The Logic of Collective Action. After doing so, you may want to read the book Public Choice II by Dennis C. Mueller. It is very academic in nature, but it is probably the book that has influenced me most as an economist. If the movie A Beautiful Mind didnt make you frightened of the work of John Nash you may be interested in A Course in Game Theory by Martin Osborne and Ariel Rubinstein. It is an absolutely fabulous resource and, unlike most books in economics, its well written. If I havent scared you off completely from studying economics, theres one last thing youll want to look into. Most schools require you to take one or two tests as part of your application requirements. Heres a few resources on those tests: Get familiar with the GRE General and GRE Economics Tests The Graduate Record Examination or GRE General test is one of the application requirements at most North American schools. The GRE General test covers three areas: Verbal, Analytical, and Math. Ive created a page called Test aids for the GRE and GRE Economics that has quite a few useful links on the GRE General Test. The Graduate School Guide also has some useful links on the GRE. I would suggest buying one of the books on taking the GRE. I cant really recommend any one of them as they all seem equally good. It is absolutely vital that you score at least 750 (out of 800) on the math section of the GRE in order to get into a quality Ph.D. program. The analytical section is important as well, but the verbal not as much. A great GRE score will also help you get into schools if you have only a modest academic record. There are a lot fewer online resources for the GRE Economics test. There are a couple of books that have practice questions that you may want to look at. I thought the book The Best Test Preparation for the GRE Economics was quite useful, but its gotten absolutely horrid reviews. You may want to see if you can borrow it before committing to buying it. There is also a book called Practicing to Take the GRE Economics Test but Ive never used it so Im not sure how good it is. It is important to study for the test, as it may cover some material that you did not study as an undergraduate. The test is very heavily Keynesian, so if you did your undergraduate work at a school heavily influenced by the University of Chicago such as the University of Western Ontario, there will be quite a bit of new macroeconomics youll need to learn. Conclusion Economics can be a great field in which to do your Ph.D., but you need to be properly prepared before you enter into a graduate program. I havent even discussed all the great books available in subjects such as Public Finance and Industrial Organization.

ACT Scorers How to Perfect Your Score

Guide for Top SAT / ACT Scorers How to Perfect Your Score SAT / ACT Prep Online Guides and Tips Are you already scoring well on the SAT and getting a 1400 or above (2100 in the 2400 scale)? This puts you in a special class, and your strategy for improving your SAT score will be very different from the average students'. Having made the improvement myself, I’ll show you how you can aim for a perfect SAT score too. Why Strategies for Top Scorers and Average Scorers Are Different Where you are on the learning curve absolutely affects what you’ll learn next. Learning to walk as a baby is very different from learning to run in middle school, which is again very different from learning to run in pro marathons. Strategies that are central when you’re doing poorly suddenly stop working when you’re doing well. The main reason for this is that gaining points when you’re an average scorer is more about increasing your skill, whereas gaining points as a top scorer means adapting to the exact shape and format of the test. Completely new strategies are needed, and I’ll show you those SAT strategies right here! My Own Experience as a Top Scorer When I first started studying for the SAT, I was already scoring a 1400 (equivalent to a 2100 on the 2400 scale). As defined above, this definitely qualifies me as a top scorer, and no doubt I was thankful to score even that much. I wanted to score higher though, so I picked up the most popular books: Kaplan, Princeton Review, you name it. I noticed one thing very quickly: All the books are aimed, in a fuzzy way, at average SAT scorers. If you were scoring 400-600 on each section, the material they presented could help you. Kaplan went over basic content like the general idea of geometry areas, but they never spent time talking about how to ace the hardest math questions. In fact, I noticed that many of Kaplan’s hardest math questions had errors, revealing that the book writer wasn’t the best at math. Likewise, Princeton Review was full of test-taking tactics, but they revolved around eliminating just one or two answers or skipping questions. If I’m aiming for a high score, I can’t afford to skip questions or just guess after eliminating a single answer. It dawned on me that the reason most sources were completely unhelpful to my situation was that as a top scorer, my path to improvement was much different than that of the average scorer. Upon realizing this, I began to sit down and spend dozens of hours thinking about the unique situation that we top scorers are in. Not very many resources target us. We suffer from a unique set of issues compared to the average scorer. And most books are written by people who are barely better test takers than us. After really thinking through the issues for many hours, I came up with a set of strategies. These strategies have worked well for me, my classmates, and my tutoring students. Today, we have proof through tens of thousands of our students at PrepScholar that these strategies universally work for top scorers. Let me show you how this strategy works for you! The results of applying my top-scoring strategies: a perfect score. Strategies That Work for Average Scorers But Won’t Work for You First, we will go over strategies that work for average students but will likely stop working once you cross that magical 1400 threshold (30 out of 36 on the ACT or 2100 on a 2400 SAT scale). I’ve picked the most common and helpful strategies for average students that totally stop working for top students. These strategies are alsogood first steps at illustrating how strategies in general can change as your skills change. Learning General Content When you’re scoring 500 in each section, it’s a pretty good idea to do a general review of all your skills. Review circles, rectangles, algebra, and so forth. Average scorers likely have general deficits in their subject knowledge of subjects. However, if you’re a top scorer, learning general content doesn’t work well for you. This is because, as a top scorer, there will likely only bea few areaswhereyou have deficits, and, even in these areas, your deficit will be slight. Unlike average scorers, you won’t be missing serious knowledge across a vast set of skills. This means that learning general content will be a lot less effective than focused study. If you’re a top scorer, you’ll want to hone in on weaknesses rather than gloss over broad topics. The key to thisis identifying exactly which areas are missing and doing a strong push to eliminate those few specific weaknesses. To use another analogy, an average scorer is like a lawn filled with lots of weeds. The best way to remove all the weeds is to spray herbicide everywhere. But as a top scorer, you only have a one or two clumps of weeds in your lawn. The best strategyfor you is just to see where the weed clumps are and target only those areas topull the weeds out. Question Skipping In Jekyll and Hyde, the same man transforms between a good Dr Jekyll and an evil Mr Hyde. In the same way, question skipping is the most powerful of strategies for a low scorer, but it can be harmful to a high scorer. If you’re scoring low, knowing how to skip makes a world of difference. Suppose you have 30 minutes to do 30 math problems. Tenof those problems are really easy, tenare medium difficulty, and tenare hard. If you’re not great at math, trying all 30 is crazy. You probably won’t get the medium and hard questions, and you’re spread thin for the easy questions if you try to answer one question per minute. You might get five problems correct. Instead, question skipping will save your day. If you focus all 30 minutes on the ten easy problems, you’ll spend a careful three minutes on each and probably get all the easy ones. This means you’ll get ten problems correct instead of five, doubling your score. However, if you’re scoring high, you are afforded no such luxury to skip. You have to do all the problems. Once your section score gets above 600, skipping questions starts becoming harmful. A 600 (say in Math) means that you are only allowed to get about ten questions wrong out of 50. If you skip even two or three questions in the entire section, you will already have used upa good part of your quota of tenquestions. With a low margin for error, you need to squeeze every problem for all the points it’ll give you by at least trying it and eliminating some answers. Thus, even at 600, there is no room for skipping. Note: when I say skipping here, I don’t mean leaving the question blank! The New SAT and ACT have a guessing reward, so you never leave the question blank. Skipping here only refers to not spending time on a question. These are the two biggest strategies that work for average scorers but not top scorers. Hopefully, now you have a bit of understanding for why the strategies are different. Just like a 3rd grader needs to learn different math than an th grader, you now need to learn new strategies. Skipping: works for average scorers and hopscotch, but not high scorers Strategies That Stay the Same Before we get into top-scorer specific strategies, I want to emphasize a few strategies that will stay the same. Not everything changes between a toddler learning to walk and a pro marathoner trying to break the time limit. Some things are the same for both of them: like being healthy and exercising. Likewise, top scorers have a few strategies in common with average scorers. In fact, we have alist of strategies that work for all test-takers, regardless of where you are scoring. There are many strategies that are still useful for top scorers like doing realistic practice, understanding your mistakes, not getting in your own head, and so forth. Some of these strategies are worth repeating: Putting in the Time You absolutely still have to put in the time to improve. Just like the old saying in sports goes, no pain, no gain. High scorers come in two camps. The first camp has already put in dozens of hours of SAT study by the time they read this, and they have no fear of putting in even hundreds of hours naturally. If you’re in the first camp, good for you. Work comes easy to you; you should target at least a hundred hours more of studying, and you can skip to the next section. The second camp is students who typically find studying hard. At this point, they may have put less than five hours into studying. They might have scored high because they’re â€Å"naturally smart†, but they haven’t studied a lot. I’ve been in this camp too, so I understand, but I have some advice for you. First, you absolutely can’t think of the SAT as a test of how smart you are. While you may feel good that your initial score was high, if you don't study you'll quickly get discouraged when your score doesn't improve. You might become prone to thinking that you’re just not that smart, and there’s nothing you can do about it the opposite of the truth! It’s much more effective to think of the SAT as not testing how smart you are right now, but how much you work. Thinking of the SAT as a test that reflects hard work isn’t just a useful mindset, it’s also true. After training thousands of students, I consistently find that those who put in more time score higher, even students who were already starting out with high scores. As motivation, you have to realize that, as a high scorer, it is even more important to put time into studying. First, you have less room to improve, so improvements will come harder. You can’t just learn some skipping strategy and raiseyour section score 50 points. Those 50 points will come from your sweat and tears. You need to work extra hard. As additional motivation, you have to really want it from inside. Not your mom, not your teacher, but you need to really want it. Choose a goal, either a school or a score, and convince yourself that it’s important. Then, set a specific amount of time that you want to study and goals for how much to study each week. Every week, see how you’re doing against the goals. Doing Realistic Practice Realistic practice has always been important, but as a top scorer, having real tests is even more critical. Like I said before, improving as a top scorer is all about understanding every contour, flaw and detail of the test. This process is incredibly test specific. Molding yourself into a perfect SAT test taker is way different than molding yourself into the perfect ACT taker. At the high score extremes of the test, all the flaws and quirks become magnified. The ACT always has more time pressure, but when you’re aiming for a perfect 36 on the Math section, you suddenly find yourself under immense time pressure to solve Math Olympiad-level problems. The SAT is known for being tricky, but when you’re aiming for an 800 on Math, you can suddenly end up losing substantial points for missing just a couple of very subtle definitions. When you’re a top scorer, improvement becomes very format-specific. The layout, timing, andfeel of the test all start mattering much more than general math or reading skills. Thus, it’s absolutely critical that you practice on actual SAT or ACT tests given the past. It’s OK to or drill on imperfect problems, but when you actually take a practice SAT or ACT for evaluation and learning, make sure you use a real test you haven’t seen before and make your setting as realistic as possible. Ideally, you’d usethe same exact timings for sections and breaks, and you’d do the entire practice test all in one sitting. At this point, everything matters. Power Strategies for Top Scorers Up to this point, we’ve been talking only about strategies for average scorers. First, we talked about strategies that won’t work for you anymore, and then we went over strategies that you can still use. In this section, we show the jewels, the unique power strategies for top scorers that will get you substantial further improvements. To reiterate, this section is for top scorers whom we define as students who score 700 or more in each section already. To understand top scorer strategies, I will explain the standard pattern of weaknesses that I see in top scorers. The standard pattern for top scorers is that they’re missing points for exactly three reasons: Content Gaps These are small, isolated areas of knowledge that the top scorer hasn’t mastered yet. A top scorer by definition can’t have minor gaps in all areas, and they can’t have major gaps in any area. Therefore, a top scorer may only have minor gaps in a small set of areas. Identifying these gaps, and whether they even exist, will itself take work. Carelessness Top scorers tend to be content masters, but carelessness doesn’t respect knowledge or intelligence. Carelessness can afflict anyone. No matter how good your math is, you’ll never get a question right if you miswrite a 2 as a 3. Time Trouble Top scorers need to answer all questions, and they need to not be careless. On top of that, the SAT and ACT are timed tests. Add this together, and all top scorers suffer from time trouble. That is to say, all top scorers run out of time, and mastering these tests is all about running out of time just as you get everything correct. Folks, take a look at the list above. For the vast majority of top scorers, this list covers all the reasons they score less than they’d like to. Attack Strategies The method that I will show you, the method that works, will go in tactically, surgically, and eliminate each one of the weaknesses above. The method doesn’t optimize for a fast bump in score at the start instead, it'sa surefire, robust way to completely eliminate all sources of error that a top scorer will have. My method is based on the concept of isolate and eliminate. The idea is that we will attack each of the reasons above, one-by-one, until you’re free of errors. Attacking Content Gaps First, we want to eliminate content gaps. To isolate content gaps, we will purposefully not focus on time issues for the moment, Thus, during this phase, you will give yourself double the usual amount of time to do problems. For example, give yourself 60 minutes to do a 30-minute section. We will also purposefully focus away from carelessness. For all questions where you can identify carelessness as the reason you answered a question incorrectly, you can ignore it. This only includes questions where you understand everything but literally misread a number or bubbled in the wrong letter. Carelessness does NOT include misinterpreting a confusing word or making a wrong judgmentcall. These cases are bothreal content issues and not carelessness. With these allowances, take your first practice test. That is, go through one full practice test, and give yourself double the time allowed (split into multiple test sessions if need be). Then, go through every single question you got wrong. The ones that were due to carelessness ignore for now. For all other questions, write down the reasons you didn’t get it. List all possible contributing reasons. For example, if you didn’t apply a sphere surface area formula correctly you should write: Did not understand surface area Did not remember surface area formula 3D geometry Since you’re a top scorer, you shouldn’t get many questions wrong, and you should only have a very short list of reasons at the end. Tally up the reasons, and look at the top 2-4 reasons. These are your content gaps that you need to solve. For each of the top content gaps, come up with a couple of training methods you can use to solve the gaps. Each training method should take at least an hour so you’re not looking for quick fixes. To continue the example above you would write: Did not understand surface areas (4 problems) Training: Review difference between surface and volume (1 hour) Training: Read calculus section on surface areas (2 hours) Training: Google â€Å"Surface area questions† and try a number of them (1 hour) Did not remember surface area formula Training: Create flashcards for 20 most popular surface areas and memorize (2 hours) Training: Open calculus textbook and use calculus to re-derive all above surface areas (3 hours) 3D Geometry Weaknesses Training: Read 3D Geometry Section (1 hour) Training: Do math textbook 3D geometry exercises, complete the three most difficult questions you find (1 hour) Training: Hunt for five 3D Geometry Problems on the SAT and solve each at least two different ways (1 hour) Then, implement your plan. Do all the steps you promised yourself in the time you promised, and then try again with another practice test. Keep on doing this until the number of content mistakes you make has decreased substantially. A good rule of thumb is that you want to eliminate 75% of your content mistakes by repeating the process above or spend 40 hours studying, whichever comes first. Note about PrepScholar: You can do the above method yourself. In fact, I just told you how to identify your errors, come up with the right training, and eliminate your mistakes. However, you might want a program to do it for you. In that case, it’s exactly what PrepScholar Online Prep is for. Our software automatically detects the questions you get wrong, how often you get them wrong, and why you get them wrong, so you don’t have to do the hard work yourself. As you go through practice tests, ask yourself: Are you seeing a reduction in content gap mistakes due to your training? If so, what parts of your training were most effective? How can you do more of this in the future? If not, why did you continue to make the same content mistakes despite training? Why was the training not effective? Improving your standardized testscores is hard work, both in terms of effort and intelligence. You have to put real time and thought into reflecting why you got questions wrong to improve. This deep thinking is a part of testprep that can’t be bypassed by any tricks. You need to spend effort and creativity to find why your training is working or not. Note about PrepScholar: While no one can do all the hard thinking for you, sometimes you can enlist the help of vetted professionals. PrepScholar Online Tutoring tutors are trained in the exact method above. They will help you think of training strategies and reflect on why certain strategies are working or not. Attacking Carelessness Now that you’ve finished attacking content mistakes, the second stage is to attack carelessness. You can blend this in with attacking content, but it’s best not to combine attacking carelessness with attacking time trouble. The method for attacking carelessness is the same as above. Give yourself more time than usual, and notice which problems you’re making careless mistakes on and what caused you to be careless. Somequestions you may want to ask yourself when you answer a question wrong include: Did you not read the question properly? Did you misread a number you calculated because your work was too messy? Did you know the correct answer but filled in the wrong bubble by mistake? When I started training for the SAT, I thought carelessness was an unchanging personality trait. I thought I was doomed to make a certain number of careless mistakes. It turns out that carelessness is something you can controlandcombat by having better habits.If you apply the right methods and safety checks, you’ll rarely be careless. For example, if you make it ahabit tobrush your teeth nightly or buckle your seat belt, you’ll find that very rarely do you forget to do these things. Since you have the luxury of extra time, you should try to adopt two habits. The first habit is double-reading each question and underlining keywords before you even begin working on the problem. A lot of carelessness comes from not reading the question correctly. For example, if you see the question: How many even integers are between -3 and 14 inclusive? I would read it twice, and then underline the question as follows: How many even integers are between -3 and 14 inclusive? Each of the underlined words, if misread, could lead to a disastrous misinterpretation of the problem. â€Å"Even† can be easily misread to meanodd or all integers. â€Å"Inclusive† is underlined to remind you that you should include the number 14 in your calculations. The second habit is to re-read the question one last time before filling in the answer. I learned this trick from a top scorer in my test competition days, and it has worked wonders for me and students I’ve taught it to. The idea is that, if you misinterpreted a problem, that misinterpretation will be obvious on your final reading of the problem. To recap:In order to reduce careless mistakes, read the question twice before you start working on it, and underline the keywords. Then, once you've figured out the answer, read the question through one last time to make sure you've understood it perfectly. You can develop your own habits based on introspection of what causes your careless mistakes. For example, if you make arithmetic mistakes, double-check each line, or show more of your work. If you keep in mind that the solution to carelessness can be method-based, you can use these methods to solve all your careless mistakes. However, what if some careless mistakes persist even if you use a lot of methods designed to catch carelessness? What if you’re careless in choosing which line to look at when looking at author intention? Or you’re careless in remembering which idiom is correct? You should understand that these are not careless mistakes, but mistakes of content. Remember, if a mistake persists even after a slow, careful reading of the problem, you canassumethat it’s not really carelessness, but rather a content problem. In the case of persistent problems, I would re-read the section here on carelessness as well as try to identify underlying content issues. Time Trouble Now that you have gotten rid of sufficient content and carelessness problems, it’s time to tackle that final problem all top scorers have time trouble. Generally, this refers to the feeling that you can do better if you had more time. The SAT and ACT are designed with strong time constraints. In fact, you're doing something wrong if you ever find yourself ending a section even a minute early. Up until now, you’ve been giving yourself double time (or more) so you can hone in on your content or carelessness issues. Now you can practice reducing your time. A good way to do this is to reduce your time by 20% each practice test and make sure your mistakes aren’t shooting up. Every time you repeat a 20% reduction, if your mistakes stay the same, then you’re good. For example, for a 50-minute section, start by giving yourself extra time: 100 minutes. If you’re doing well at 100 minutes, reduce this to 80, then 64, and then finally 50 minutes. Inevitably, you’ll need to start developing your own timing strategies to deal with the lower time. Many of these strategies will be ad-hoc. You’ll think of them, try them, and they’ll work. The best students are good at introspection, coming up with strategies, and evaluating whether those strategies work. Here are the two most common and helpful strategies for improving your time management: Rush Through the Easy Questions If a question is clear, go through it fast, but still apply your carelessness prevention habits (diligence) to ensure you get it right. When you’re at the top it’s a fight between diligence and time, and you want to do a bit of both. A common strategy is to reduce your time by 50% on easy questions, spend the standard amount of time on normal questions, and increase your time by 50% on hard questions. For example, suppose you have a 60-minute math section with 60 questions. Each question should take 60 seconds to do this is the standard time. For easy questions, you should target 30 seconds, for medium questions, you should target 60 seconds, and for truly hard questions, target 90 seconds. It makes sense to play with the cutoffs for difficulty and timing to see what works best for you. Skip and Come Back Everyone gets stuck on questions. I’ve scored 99.9th percentile on my SAT and ACT, and I routinely get stuck once or twice per section. If you allow getting stuck to cost you five minutes, you’ll be hosed. If you find that, after spending 90 seconds on a problem, you aren’t getting an answer, try your best guess and mark the question with a â€Å"G† (for guess). This means at the end of your first pass-through of the test, you’ll need to have some extra time. Use this extra time to come back to the guesses. Guesses aren’t the only problems you should come back to. There are certain hard questions that will take a while to double-check, which is not worth doing on your first pass-through the test. For these questions, you can mark them with a â€Å"C† and come back to them later as well. The general reason to skip and come back is because not finishing a single pass-through of every question is highly damaging. Not looking at two or three questions guarantees you won’t get those questions right. Thus, you want to at least touch all problems, and leave a few minutes at the end to come back. You should play around with the strategies above. Look at how double-checking reduces carelessness but increases time. Look at what sorts of markings you should make and how many passes you should make through your test (hint: it’s probably more than one). As you decrease your time, you’ll find these strategies continue to work well and allow you to maintain the same score at 1x standard time. Wrap Up The strategy guide above will carry you far, and likely all the way, if you follow it fully. To recap, I’ll touch upon a few points again. The first is that, for top scorers, losses come mainly from three sources: content gaps, carelessness, and time issues. By isolating each item, you’ll be able to solve each of them with much higher consistency. While you’re doing this, you should still maintain a few strategies that work for all scorers. Two strategies worth repeating are using real practice questions and putting in the time needed to really improve your score. Next Steps Now that you know which strategies a top scorer should use, there is no reason not to get started as soon as you can. If you’re self-studying, you should immediately try to apply the strategies above and also useour blog for further advice. You may also be interested in checking out PrepScholar Online Prep as it does all of the above for you, in optimal ways. For example, we know that you’re a top scorer, and we won’t give you strategies that only work for average students. We’ll emphasize strategies that work especially well for top scorersand give you tips for timing and diligence. Best of all, we’ll identify your exact content gaps which is the hardest and most important information for top scorers like you to know. Click below and you can try us out risk-free for 5 days! Further Reading Since you're already a top scorer, you're probably aiming for a perfectstandardized testscore. Check out our guides to getting a perfect score on the SAT and a perfect score on the ACT,written by our resident full-scorer on both tests. Want to know what it takes to get into the most competitive colleges? Learn how to get admitted to Harvard and other Ivy League schools from a Harvard alum. Need some practice tests to help with your test preparation?We have free and official practice tests for the SAT and the ACT.

(ZPICS), (RAC) and Healthcare Fraud Waste and Abuse Research Paper

(ZPICS), (RAC) and Healthcare Fraud Waste and Abuse - Research Paper Example Fundamentally, the practice of auditing started with the concept of oversight in which conventional Medicare auditing commenced with the practice of peer review organizations, commonly known as quality improvement organizations (QIOs) as was formerly established in 1982; and this program was designed to improve both efficiency and quality of Medicare services to the relevant patients; after this enactment, four major areas of Medicare were chosen for the purpose of scrutiny: care transitions, beneficiary protection, prevention and patient safety ((Blumen and Lenderman, 2010). the important legislation in the form of Medicare Modernization Act (MMA) was signed by George W. Bush on December 8, 2003 (About CMS, n.d.). In the following parts of this paper, first, background information has been provided in which basic information about healthcare system, fraud and abuse definitions have been given. It is followed by development segment in which more detailed view of the ZPICS and RACS ha ve been included. Subsequent to that, the HEAT uses have been elaborated in which examples pertaining to HEAT program and efficiency for delivering or satisfying the ultimate objectives of CMS. After this segment, impact section has been included in which the practical effort of these programs on the ground practices has been detailed. Before the summary part, strengths and weaknesses of these programs with regard to fraud, abuse and waste have been elucidated.

My opinion about Alternative Worlds Article Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

My opinion about Alternative Worlds - Article Example Megatrends describe the major and progressive changes that will define and shape the world in the near future. The world in 2030 will certainly be a lot different than the world at present as different factors, including individuals’ position, ownership of power, demography, and availability of food, water and energy, would have changed. According to the article, the major trends in the near future are likely to concern individual empowerment, diffusion of power, demographic patterns, and growing food, water and energy nexus. Each of these megatrends is discussed as below. Individual Empowerment refers to the individualistic power that people in future are likely to possess as compared to the present. In the next 15 to 20 years, the level of poverty is likely to reduce thus causing a rise in the number of people categorised as middle class in the entire world. Also, such people would be more educated, have access to modern communications and manufacturing technologies, as well as live in a world with better health-care facilities. This trend is significant as it determines the amount of power that an individual possesses. Unlike the present where individual power is limited, this trend will give people much say in matters that affect them. Diffusion of power describes power shift from powerful states such as United States and Europe, to other emerging economies in the world such as China and Brazil, and finally to non-state groups or coalitions. As other economies grow, it will be difficult for some few states such as the U.S. to assume total power. In addition, emergence of groups that own most factors of production and communication networks will cause power to further shift from states to amorphous coalitions. This trend is significant as powerful states such as United States will lost much of the power to the other players in global leadership. The third megatrend is in demographic patterns and this describes the composition and the nature of the

Economic Globalization and Civil War Essay Example for Free

Economic Globalization and Civil War Essay Researchers Katherine Barbieri and Rafael Reuveny attempt through their study on economic globalization and civil war to find the relation, if any, between the effects of globalization and the occurrence of civil wars in developing countries. Their hypothesis is that globalization has positive effects on developing countries, causing them to have more stability and become less likely to erupt in civil war. Using the examples of 74 civil wars spanning the years of 1970-1999, the researchers compared variables of globalization including international trade, foreign direct investment, foreign portfolio investment, and internet use against periods of civil war in corresponding countries. Their results revealed that when the globalization variables, with the exception of internet use, are more important to a country it is less likely to have a civil war. These variables produce an economic stability that makes people less inclined to interrupt the status quo. Their results showed that poor countries with large populations that were less likely to be economically equal in already dire financial straits are far more likely to see internal unrest. While globalization is unlikely to be the root cause of civil war and can help reduce the likelihood it cannot prevent it as there may be deeper forces at work such as cultural or ethnic inequalities that may be exacerbated by globalization.

Women in America Essays -- essays research papers fc

â€Å"The Evolution of Women in Society†   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Throughout United States history oppression of people has always been prominent, whether through African American’s and segregation or Asian American’s during the Vietnam War. What is often ignored is our history of the oppression of women. No matter what time in history, there is always a case to be found of the discrimination over gender. Many people know of how African American’s came into freedom and the long perilous road it took, but few know the struggles, changes and hardships that women have perceived to get where they are today. As the civil war halted and industrialization and urbanization came into play, the role of women changed dramatically and their status in the society in the aspects of employment, equal-rights, and in the home.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Women entered the work force suddenly and abruptly. With the advent of typewriters, clerical work, and assembly lines, women were looked for more and more to fill labor positions. Although the typewriter was not responsible for the employment of women as clerical workers its existence probably facilitated or eased the entrance of women into offices (Binder 68). Also expansions in industrial and retail sectors saw women employment in clerical jobs skyrocket. In 1920, the amount of women in clerical work was over 12 times that in 1880 (Norton 341). Some women were getting supervising jobs but they posed no threat to male managers (Norton 3...

A Survey of Engineering Education in Nigeria Essay

Sustainable development at local, regional and global scales is perhaps the most daunting challenge that humanity has ever faced. Knowledge and its application are two elements common and central to each of the economic, social and environmental pillars of sustainable development and the many approaches aimed at achieving sustainability. Solutions to the major sustainability problems of the 21st century including poverty alleviation, decoupling of economic growth and environmental impact, renewable energy sources, desertification, diminishing ecosystem services, biodiversity maintenance and use, climate change, and the risk of megacities – all critically require knowledge from scientific research and appropriate technologies. Those solutions are available to any society which invests adequately in the optimum education and training of its engineers. The role of educational outcomes in the promotion of economic growth has long been recognized by economists and other people. Early researchers like Smith are cited by Okoye (1989) to have noted the acquisition and use of the abilities of all inhabitants or members of a society through education as part of its economic fortune. Engineering education has been an integral part of national development strategies in many societies because of its impact on productivity and economic development. Galloway cited by Eze (2008) made a serious case about engineering education reform for the American Society in particular and for the global arena in general. She argued that if engineers are to compete successfully in the global world in the 21st century and establish the profession as a leader in solving most of the world’s problem of infrastructural development, engineering education must embrace the need for professional innovation and do so very quickly. Central to this innovation, the presentation explained that the institutional understanding for the long established methods of practicing engineering and educating future engineers are in critical need of reforms, if the profession must remain relevant. If United States that have almost finished public infrastructure can be invited to any engineering education improvement summit, then Nigeria who is in search of technological and economic transformation that could rival that of the 1st world countries come the year 2020 needs total overhaul in engineering administration and training. Nigerian institutions turn out large number of engineering graduates every year. Yet, not many of our engineers are involved in many of the engineering activities going on in most parts of the country. Why?  We shall examine briefly the making of the Nigerian engineer as a basis for determining his relevance and proper placement in committee of global professionals. THE EDUCATION OF THE NIGERIAN ENGINEER Ideally, an engineer has to be trained in a broad sense so as to be able to synthesize ideas, design new systems, plants and machinery and manage a complex mixture of resources including men, materials, machinery and money. In pursuance of this, the Nigerian engineer begins his introduction to formal learning much like any other person from the very basic forms i. e. the nursery and primary schools. He then proceeds to the secondary school which is where some diversification begins. Here, the student gets his first introduction to basic science and technology ideas and concepts. This also marks the beginning of the process where the individual attains cognition, acquires process skills and develops scientific attitudes which will enable him think critically. After the secondary level, he then progresses to the tertiary stage. The entry qualification to an engineering program had been reviewed by Oluka et al. This involves a minimum of five credits in ordinary level subjects which must include mathematics and the basic sciences. With this qualification, candidates apply through the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) who conducts a national examination for applicants. Final admission is given by JAMB on recommendation by the Universities based on certain policies which include merit, educationally disadvantaged states and discretion. For direct entry students, admission is given without any examination. However, the candidates must have the higher school certificate or GCE advanced level in three subjects-Physics, Chemistry and Mathematics. Candidates must undergo at least 6 months of Industrial Attachment under the SIWES program sponsored by the Industrial Training Fund (ITF), Oluka et al (1999). It is in the Universities that the engineer gets properly acquainted with engineering theories and practical via the regular forms of formal training (lectures, seminars, projects etc) and interactions with experienced people in the field of study. The selection and organization of curriculum content, curriculum implementation and evaluation, the development, distribution and use of teaching materials,  standard of examinations among other things go a long way in determining the effectiveness of this process and how the workforce of engineers being produced through it is able to meet the demands and yearnings of a fast changing world. ROBLEMS OF ENGINEERING EDUCATION IN NIGERIA THE CURRICULUM OF ENGINEERING EDUCATION AND ENGINEERING STUDENTS EVALUATION As discussed above, some factors such as the curriculum and how it is implemented, facilities available, prevailing government policies regarding education, general standard of education in Nigeria affect the quality of the engineers that are produced by the system. While the domain of education in Nigeria has been growing largely because of the need to have adequate manpower to meet the challenges of making the country great and to meet the demands of the 21 century, unfortunately, there is no sustained efforts to use education to prepare the Nigerian engineer to meet the on-the-job requirements of entrepreneurs in blue chip companies in the country or to fend for himself and also create job for others given the supposed wealth of knowledge. This simply means that the dydx in the classroom require some modifications so as to translate to putting food on the Nigerian engineer’s table in the event of job unavailability upon graduation. What obtains now is as dangerous as it is disheartening. An average Nigerian graduate engineer is considered â€Å"half baked† or †unemployable† because they have been claimed not to possess adequate competencies required by their end users. This has thrown a big challenge to tertiary education and training of future engineers in Nigeria. It is noteworthy that the problems related to curricula became noticeable soon after Nigeria’s independence from colonial rule in 1960. By the mid-1960s, educators and educational planners were rethinking Nigeria’s education system and in particular, the curriculum being taught in the schools. The question is; has Nigeria educational policy been capable of providing the needed manpower development to stir the nation’s socio-economic exigencies left by the colonial masters? Eze (2008) affirms that an independent survey by an indigenous project managing firm put the contribution of engineering construction of all categories and dimensions to Nigeria’s GDP at only 1. 5%. This is compared with 6% which the sector contributes to GDP in most developed and developing economies. For example, engineering related activities account for about 8% of the UK’s GDP, 16% in Republic of Ireland’s, 11% of the United Arab Emirates, 6% GDP in India and South Africa respectively. The slow pace of industrialization and technological growth in Nigeria can be attributed to the widening gap between science and technology as a result of inability of engineering education programme to adequately utilize the scientific ideas to promote technology. Science Teachers’ Association of Nigeria (STAN) is a body that have worked hard to translate national and educational objectives into curricula and teaching objectives through the development of curricula designed to help individuals attain cognition, acquire process skills and develop scientific attitudes which will enable them to think critically, manage and use available resources, to effectively adapt to their environment, assume responsibilities and fulfill domestic, economic, social, and political roles. The council for the regulation of engineering in Nigeria (COREN) can as a matter of urgency seek any needed support from government and institute an active machinery to give a critical appraisal of the engineering education curriculum with a view to identifying defects and devising original solutions. Today, there are many institutions made up of eighty nine universities owned by government and private organizations, several colleges of education and agriculture and mono/polytechnic that produce graduates for the few job situations that are available in the country. The graduate engineer is therefore faced with the difficulty of readily gaining jobs immediately after school due to the deficiencies in the curriculum and evaluation pattern in which he was molded. Some of the problems associated with the current curricular and evaluation methods include but not limited to the following: * They are based on a foreign model involving ideal conditions (staff, equipment, infrastructure, training opportunities, etc) that are not easily duplicated in developing countries. * There is a shortage of highly competent indigenous teaching and support staff with h sufficient wide practical experience of technological intricacies. * The curricular seems to exhibit some imbalance between pure and applied sciences and the practical engineering and technology realities, project/business management and innovation concepts and entrepreneurship skills development. * The duration of the sectional semesters for the teaching of engineering courses is very short to allow for good comprehension and application by the students. * The student evaluation and grading is almost dependent on his performance on theoretical examinations devoid of consolidating practical orientation. SELECTION OF ENGINEERING STUDENTS Given a very good curriculum, engineering education administration must be free from mediocrity. My participation in teaching and invigilating engineering students’ examinations raised issues which have continued to agitate my mind as a lecturer, and as one who is expected to make inputs to the production of good engineers. A good percentage of the students find it very difficult to understand the basic principles of engineering courses and hence put a very poor performance in the examinations. This is a pointer that they are not supposed to have been admitted into the engineering school in the first place. In event of escaping a dependable and credible admission scrutiny, COREN in conjunction with the engineering school administration should device a process of pruning the engineering misfits and placing them in other disciplines where they would perform better and later contribute to nation building. The problem recognition, formulation and solution task of an engineer really calls for a little above average students who will later consider societal repercussions and constraints within a complex landscape of old and new ideas. With this, Nigerian engineering graduates will be dissociated from the report of Okadara (1984) and Oladeji (1994) who variously showed that of the initial years of tertiary education, majority of graduates (86. 6%) found work within two months of searching, but as their institution grew older, the length of time they needed to find employment increased. I strongly believe that institutions remain the same but the quality of students that pass through it experience gradual degeneration due to unwarranted compromise. INFRASTRUCTURAL DEVELOPMENT Suppose the right students are admitted into the engineering schools and their training is guided by a well structured and societal problem-responsive curriculum, the problem of poor or absence of state-of-the-art laboratories, instructional materials and a conducive engineering academic environment must also be arrested. The situation why engineering graduates find it difficult to secure adequate job after their graduation is not unconnected with infrastructural handicaps in their institutions which is no fault of theirs. Consequently, many engineering graduates do not possess appropriate job competencies required by employers. Some could not develop their personality traits due to the absence of suitable infrastructure to spur creative and innovative strategies that could promote the engineer’s qualities and enhance his proficiency. Unfortunately, several end users of engineering graduates’ skills have had to spend huge sums of money to retrain these graduates to suit their business after the completion of their programmes of study, even though they were selected at the background of excellent and imposing certificates. This certainly calls for engineering curriculum innovation and renewal, better monitoring and evaluation of engineering students, as well as immediate overhaul of engineering schools infrastructure in Nigeria. Such action must be in line with every factor needed by engineering students to confidently secure or create employment easily for themselves and the several others who are waiting on the unending employment queues outside the tertiary institutions. Our universities, polytechnics and technical colleges that are supposed to train proficient engineers, technologists, and technicians are now filled with obsolete and in most cases nonfunctional equipment. This affects the quality of products from these technological institutions. India, it is claimed, ranks third to the United States and the former USSR in scientific and technical manpower (The Nigerian Engineer, December 2003). It has over four million scientists and engineers. In 1985, Indian universities have 750,000 Engineering students registered. There were five elite institutions called India Institutes of Technology, funded and equipped to the highest standards, to provide high quality university graduates in electronics, computer science and other high technology disciplines. Their products emigrate in large number to the University States and other countries to apply their skills where they are also valued and in demand, like the Republic of Ireland and Philippines. It is however not a surprise to see engineering graduates in our Nigerian Universities who cannot differentiate between a bolt and a nut. Some other problems associated with engineering education and technology development in Nigeria includes but not limited to the following: * Lack of innovation and motivation. * Graduates are produced in older discipline at the expense of new or emerging discipline. * Poor funding * Graduates of Science and Technology exodus to other professional areas * Dilapidated and obsolete state and quality of laboratories in engineering schools and departments * Very astronomical student increase and lecturers decline TECHNOLOGY DEVELOPMENT AND SELF-EMPLOYMENT The technological development of any nation is critical to the economic survival and vibrancy of that nation. This holds particularly true for developing nations like Nigeria, who is still grappling with chronic problems of public infrastructure, total unemployment and underemployment, which have retained them in the class of 3rd world countries with dismal economic frustration. A country is said to be technologically backward when * It cannot produce capital goods such as tractors, lathe machines, drilling machines, cars, trains, and other very important equipment. * It is unable to exploit her natural resources except with the help of foreigners who will normally provide the technology and expertise to undertake the exploitation of her resources. * It is unable to mechanize her agriculture i. e. crude implements are still used for agricultural production activities by a large percentage of those who are involved in agricultural production. * It depends on other countries for the supply of its spare parts for industrial machinery etc. Nigeria can be adjudged a technologically underdeveloped/poor country going by their possession of all the characteristics itemized above. The greatest contributor to her qualification as such is the inadequacy of the indispensable trio of science, engineering technology and innovation (SETI) for any economy that is serious about technology development. SELF-EMPLOYMENT Self employment can be defined as earning a living by working independently or running a gainful business for the satisfaction of one’s needs. Having realized this, many industrialized and newly industrialized countries have committed resources and time to the promotion of entrepreneurship through various means including specific emphasis on the educational sector  reorientation, especially at the tertiary level. As stated earlier in this paper, many Nigerian engineering graduates have been branded â€Å"unemployable†. It is the duty of engineering educators to rebrand our future engineers. Suffice it to observe that the present problem accumulated over the years. The compartmentalization of educational, industrial, employment and labour policies in Nigeria seem not to have encouraged self employment right from the colonial era. Many of the educational policies centered on primary, secondary and adult education. The colonial educational policy centered on the production of literate nationals who were required to man positions, which would strengthen the colonial administration. Thus our educational institutions, few as they were remained factories for producing clerks, interpreters, forest guards and sanitary inspectors as no special professional or entrepreneurial skill was envisaged in the educational system, (Akinyemi, 1987). Unfortunately, the trend affected the foundation of engineering education in Nigeria. The complete absence of enterprise education in the educational policy had continued till now. The industrial policy which came on board only after the Nigerian independence in 1960 initially concentrated on the establishment of big industries with utter neglect for small scale business. By so doing entrepreneurship which is the bedrock of small scale business was unwittingly de-emphasized. The combination of apathy to ‘education for self-employment’ in the engineering schools system and the long term apathy to the development of entrepreneurial skill through a robust and all encompassing engineering curriculum has contributed in no small way to the serious unemployment problem facing the engineering graduates. There needs to be an urgent link between engineering education, enterprise and self employment through an integrated national policy on engineering education. This would serve as a panacea for solving the massive unemployment problem, diminish rural poverty and empower a larger percentage of the citizens economically. NEED FOR REFORM It is obvious that Nigeria is grappling with myriads of economic, social and political problems. Even, the structures and practice of democratic governance reintroduced in 1999 needs a structural reform to sustain it. Faced as it is with so many short term issues, the government should be aware that she should also address long term issues, which posses the greater potential to shape the countries future. In today’s world in which markets are increasingly globalizing and technological changes are recognized as a leading indices of economic growth and dynamism, Nigeria cannot afford to neglect the need to an active Engineering and Technological infrastructure operating in a policy environment, which encourages and rewards research and development, as well as meritocracy. Much as Nigeria has conveyed a curriculum conference to restore the direction of our National education objectives in 1969, and have experienced some technological growths, we are yet to see technological development. Our economic life has refused to improve in an era when many nations of the world have entered the phase of industrial revolution in which computers, robots, microelectronics, biotechnology and nuclear technology are in common use, Nigeria is yet to grasp the first phase of industrial revolution which began in Europe in the eighteenth century. We must henceforth seek to create the much needed technological culture in which the general public is made aware of the need to use scientific methodologies in their daily operation. Many graduates of our institutions are unemployed or unemployable. This ultimately poses questions to the nature of training given to them in our institutions. Do they have enough specialized skills that would make them job seekers or job creators in the area of Science, Engineering, Technology and Innovation? Meanwhile, the National Economic Empowerment and Development Strategy (NEEDS) demonstrated that so much has been put into paper to grow the economy. This has not translated to the much expected transformation, technology development and self employment capability in the citizenry. Something really has to be done and very quikly especially with reference to the Millenium Development Goals (MGGs) which is focused on poverty eradication and the Vision 20-20-20 national development plan. REMEDIES AND CONCLUSION STAFF TRAINING AND RETENTION Continuous training of the trainers is very important in engineering education. To obtain a grounded knowledge and detailed experience in real world aspects of engineering theories, policies and global best practices, with emphasis on current status and further studies of various engineering fields, the engineering educators must be subjected to continuous sponsored training courses. Making efforts to prevent the fully trained engineering educators from resignation of their duty is equally essential. Engineering is a professional course. Their practitioners must be well taken care of by government. If not, the experts would be tempted to move to other spheres where they get better pay for their services. Poor conditions of service also explains why engineering lecturers leave the country to acquire more knowledge and skill but either refuse to return or leave teaching entirely for the industry. There is also some cases where skilled and intelligent engineering teachers remain in their teaching and research objectives, but do not devote their full attention to the work in their bid to supplement their economy through other activities. The engineering lecturers’ remuneration ought to be adjusted to come at par with that of other professionals in the country. This will not only arouse the needed interest in the job but also prevent brain drain in engineering education and provide for more efficient teaching and research exercise. A number of recommendations for the successful administration of science and engineering education in Nigeria are given below with respect to self-employment and technology development in the nation: * Strengthening University-Industry Interaction Programme * Periodic Accreditation Exercises by Regulatory and Professional bodies such as National Universities Commission (NUC), National Board for Technical Education (NBTE), COREN, MDCN, NIA, etc. * Introduction of Supervised Graduate Training Scheme in Engineering (SGTSE) * Curriculum Review in Institutions to address the current unemployment in the country * Establishment of Nigeria Institute of Engineering Technology with the aim of providing practical drills to graduate engineers of all discipline. * Provision modern engineering infrastructure. * Establishment of Technology Innovation Fund. * Launching and Development of Mobile Internet Unit for easy access to current trends in engineering practice. There is also the need to bridge the gap between the Nigeria Entrepreneur and the University. Very few entrepreneurs have been stimulated to have meaningful interaction with the Universities and Polytechnics. There is a lot to be learnt by the Universities from the experiences of entrepreneurs who have toiled, failed and succeeded, and failed again and succeeded (Olufokunbi, 1995). Similarly the entrepreneurs can achieve this inter-relationship by: * Inviting academics to spend some time in their establishment e.g. Sabbatical leave; * Sending some of their staff for in-service training in tertiary institution * Visiting higher institutions on invitation to share experiences with students and staff * Financing research and consultancy especially those related to their businesses. CONCLUSION A survey of the administration of engineering education in Nigeria has been made in relation to technology development and self employment. Its advantages and drawbacks have been reviewed. It is now known that for any nation especially developing ones like Nigeria to grow and develop, proper attention has to be paid to the environment, condition and manner in which engineering education is taught in her institutions, as it is the backbone of all technology development. Qualitative mastery of the tenets of engineering by lectures and students will aid self-employment and inadvertently effect the actualization of the federal government of Nigeria’s vision 20-20-20 development goal. REFERENCES Oluka, S. I. Onwualu, A. P, Eneh, I. I. (1999). Engineer – In- Society. SNAAP printers and publishers, Enugu Eze, E. M, (2008). Infrastructural Development in Nigeria: Need for Engineering Edducation Reforms. On the occasion of 12th Herbert Macauly Memorial Lecture, University of Nigeria, Nsukka, june 7, 2008 Bassi, S. Y, (2004), The role of the Directorate of Technical Cooperation in Africa (DTCA) in Technology Transfer and Acquisition in African Countries. Proceeding of Africa Regional Conference on Engineering Educatio, University of Lagos, Nigeria, 20th-22nd September, 2004 Okoye, C. C. (1989). The place of manpower planning in national economic development. Paper presented at the national seminar on manpower planning organized by National Manpower Board in collaboration with ILO and UNDP http://www. herpnet. org/REFORMING_HIGHER_EDUCATION_IN_AFRICA/Chapter%2015. pdf Okadara, J. T. (1984). Employment Status of University of Ibadan Graduates 1950-1971 Ibadan University Press, Ibadan. Olunloyo, V. O. S (2002). The challenges of Globalization for the Design of Technical Curriculum in Developing Countries, First Edition, University of Lagos Press. Federal Government of Nigeria: National Manpower Board. 1986, 1984 Graduate Employment Tracer Study. Lagos, Nigeria. Oladeji, S. I. (1994). Absorption of educated manpower into Nigeria’s informal sector. Diagnostic Studies, National Manpower Board. Lagos, Nigeria. Adeniyi, E. O. (2001). Problems of the national education system. In strategies of introducing new curricula in West Africa, Akinyemi A. O. (1987). Effects of Government Policies on the Development of Small-Scale Industries in Nigeria. Paper presented at the National Conference on Small-Scale Industries Organized by Business and Projects Consultancy of NISER Ibadan. 23-25th Feb. 1987. Aladekomo O. Florence: Nigeria Educational Policy and Entrepreneurship. 2004. http://www. krepublishers. com/02-Journals/JSS/JSS-09-0-000-000-2004-Web/JSS-09-2-075-148-2004-Abst-PDF/JSS-09-2-075-083-2004-Aladekomo-F-O/JSS-09-2-075-083-2004-Aladekomo-F-O. pdf Uwaifo V. O. (2005), Vocational Education and Generous education, Conflict or convergence. Niger J. Education press, Institute of Education; Ambrose Ali University, Ekpoma Uddin P. S. O, Uwaifo, V. O, (2005). Principles and Practice of Vocational Technical Education in Nigeria, Ever blessed publishers, Benin City. Olufokunbi B. (1995). Entrepreneurship within The Nigerian Economy Today. Paper Presented at the Conference on Entrepreneurship within the Nigerian Economy organized by CIRD, Obafemi Awolowo University Ile-Ife. 11th Oct. 1995. Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia: en. wikipedia. org/wiki/education_in_Nigeria Science and Technology for Sustainable Development. 2002.

Understand The Role Of The Social Care Worker

1 Understand working relationships in a care setting. 1. 1 Explain how working relationships are different from a personal relationship; a working relationship is different because of boundaries, in a personal relationship you have a different approach to your partner than you would to your colleague. 1. 2 Describe different working relationships in a social care setting; you work with a varierty of different people in the work settings; i. e doctors, family members and colleagues. You work with a doctor when an individual becomes ill or has a fall.You work with family members to let them know about their family member in your care. You work with colleagues as part of the job to care for a large number of indviduals. 2 Understand the importance of working in ways that are agreed with the employer. 2. 1 Describe why it is important to adhere to the agreed scope of the job role; It is important to adhere to the agreed ways of the job role set by the employer as this sets out boundaries in your job role, enables you to know your role and responsibilities.Knowing your own level of competence and skills, knowing your job description. 2. 2 Outline what is meant by ‘agreed ways of working'; By following the companies policies and procedures based on safety guidelines. 2. 3 Explain the importance of full and up to-date details of agreed ways of working; By recieving a up to-date job description and reading it you know if you are the right person for the job.You would know if you had the right qualifications and experience the company is looking for and you would know what they expected from yourself. 3 Understand the importance of working in partnership with others 3. 1 Explaine why it is important to work in partnership with others; It is important because if nobody worked in partnership the nobody in the care setting would know how to communicate and pass on information on each individual and they would be less confident in the work place.3. 2 Identify ways of working that can help improve partnership working; Team work. Questionaires can increaae communication skills. Ringing other landings. Make what you say clear so you can get your point across. 3. 3 Identify skills and approaches needed for resolving conflicts; The ability to be quiet an listen. To be able to listen to other peoples points and opinions and to be considerate of them. 3.4 Explain how and when to access support and advice about; Partnership working: in the workplace generally speaking, support and advice about working through and learning how to resolve conflicts would come from a person with more experience in the company such as head of department. Resolving conflicts: openly discuss differences in a calm and rational manner. For example, when having heated professional discussions with colleagues avoid rising to challenges or suggestions that you are incorrect or ask colleagues to listen to you and respect your opinions, but also respect their opinions.

Proposal Writing Services

Proposal Writing Services Proposal Writing Services Why Do We Need Proposal Writing Services Proposal writing services are very useful while speaking about any proposal writing, especially, if it is your first experience in this field. In order to write a successful proposal you have to be very well educated and highly experienced in this matter, however, if you write it for the first time it is but natural that you do not have the proper background knowledge to complete the task. Service papers are those to help you coping with all this mess. Proposal Writing Services Have No Boundaries! Our proposal writing services are ready to support you at any stage of your proposal. Whether you need to make your RFP/RFA analysis or review, whether you need to prepare your business proposal outline, whether you do not know how to arrange your proposal and need any design assistance, or maybe you have already written your proposal and just want a specialist to have a look at it; in all the above-mentioned cases you are welcome to use service papers. Even if you have written your proposal by your own, it is better to make an editing of it. A lot of attention is paid not only to the whole content of your proposal, but also to such points as grammar, typos, and structure. That is why it is recommended to use proposal writing services, such as proposals editing. We Take Full Responsibility for the Outcomes! Proposal writing is a very responsible task that may influence your future life; that is why you have to understand all the responsibility, which lies on you while your proposal writing and presenting. You see, there is a number of special RFP/RFA requirements, which you should meet while writing. That is why if you want to be sure that your work is of a proper level and meets all the demands, better use service papers. If we are speaking not only about studying process but also about real life where you have a lot of rivals, who just dream to annihilate you, it is but necessary to consult with the real profession al while your business proposal preparing. There are several main points, which should be included into your business proposal in order it to be competitive. While writing, you should target the company, which you appeals to; it means that you have to impress and convince the company that your business proposal is the only one, which suits. Service papers are here to help you targeting the destination of your business proposal.

Quotations for Boss Appreciation Day

Quotations for Boss Appreciation Day America and Canada have set aside 16 October (or the nearest working day) to celebrate Boss Appreciation Day. Employees think of innovative ways to express their  gratitude  to their bosses. Some say it with cards and flowers; others like to throw lavish parties. The first ever Boss Day was observed in 1958. That year, Patricia Bays Haroski, a secretary at the State Farm Insurance Company in Deerfield, Illinois, registered National Boss Day. Four years later, Illinois Governor Otto Kerner realized the importance of this occasion. National Boss Day became official in 1962. Today, the concept of Boss Day has spread to other countries too. Observing Boss Appreciation Day Boss Day  can be just another excuse for fawning employees to win favors from their manager who controls their promotions and salary incentives. Often, celebrations can reach comical proportions, where employees fall over each other, trying to outdo their gestures. But an astute boss rarely falls for such sycophantic advances. Instead of smiling down on the toadies, good bosses reward the best workers on their team. The retail industry has shown a burgeoning commercial interest in Boss Day. Retail giants have swooped in to cash in on the card  and gift sales. Merchandise such as mugs proclaiming No. 1 Boss to cards announcing Happy Boss Day generate tremendous revenues, as buyers throng to woo their bosses. You dont need to burn a hole in your pocket to impress your boss. Drop a  Thank You  note on their desk, share a meal, or simply wish your boss with a Happy Boss Day card. Good and Bad Bosses Bill Gates famously said, If you think your teacher is tough, wait until you get a boss. He doesnt have tenure.  Your boss is the first point of contact with the corporate world. If you have a great boss, you can smoothly sail through the rest of your work life. However, if you have a bad boss, well, you can hope to learn from lifes challenges. On Boss Day share this tongue-in-cheek quotation by motivational speaker Byron Pulsifer: If it wasnt for bad bosses, I wouldnt know what a good one was like. A bad boss makes you appreciate the worth of a good one. Dennis A. Peer highlighted one way to separate the good bosses from the bad when he said, One measure of leadership is the caliber of people who choose to follow you. The boss is just a reflection of his team. The stronger the boss, the more resilient the team. With these  Boss Day quotes, you can understand the role of bosses in the workplace. Your Boss May Need the Motivation It is not easy being the boss. You may hate your boss decisions, but at times, your boss has to swallow the bitter pill and play the hard taskmaster. Even the best bosses need recognition. Bosses feel reassured when their employees respond to them positively. Dale Carnegie, the best-selling author of How to Win Friends and Influence People said, There is only one way... to get anybody to do anything. And that is by making the other person want to do it. This quote about bosses reveals your boss well-kept secret. A bad manager may simply dump a project in your inbox; a good manager persuades you that the project will be good for your career. Appreciate Your Boss Leadership Qualities Compliment your boss on her  leadership skills. As Warren Bennis said, Managers are people who do things right, while leaders are people who do the right thing. Emulate Your Success-Oriented Boss Is your boss good at his job or is he just plain lucky? You might think it is the latter, but if you see a pattern of successes, you will realize that your boss methodology actually works. Learn from his insights, and understand the way he thinks. You can gain valuable insight with his mentorship. A positive outlook, a never-say-die attitude, and a constant drive for greater accomplishment pave the road to success. Are You Stuck With a Boss From Hell? Short of getting transferred or switching jobs, there is precious little you can do about a good-for-nothing boss. You can only hope that his superiors will see the light and strip him of his managerial powers. If you have a disorganized or unreasonable manager, you will have to work around his flaws. So, tune out the negative thoughts and refresh your mind with positive thinking. A good sense of humor will bail you out of misery. On bad days when Murphys Law rules, entertain you with this hilarious Homer Simpson quote, Kill my boss? Do I dare live out the American dream? Look at the Bright Side Fortunately, most bosses have their plus points too. That disorganized superior may be a  creative genius. That conniving manager could be a whiz with numbers. That lazy boss may never breathe down your neck. Assess your boss talent and efficiency by studying his work relationships. Good bosses earn respect from their colleagues and team members. Cary Grant said, Probably no greater honor can come to any man than the respect of his colleagues. This quote about respect provides great insight into workplace equations. How to Manage Your Boss Bosses are of different breeds and they come in all sizes and shapes. The best way to manage your boss is to let her know that you are by her side. Be the problem-solver, not the whining child. You will win her confidence by sorting out her problems along with your own. Make Boss Day a special occasion to strengthen the boss-employee relationship. Raise a glass in honor of your favorite boss. Remember the words of J. Paul Getty who said, The employer generally gets the employees he deserves.

Middle Eastern Studies Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Middle Eastern Studies - Essay Example It is important to understand how the countries came to be and what the balance of power has been. But things are changing rapidly. By looking at the following three media sources, we can get a sense of what is happening and how modern people from the Middle East view the world. Haaratz is a liberal Israel newspaper. One of the main issues in Israel these days is the problems in Iran. Israeli government officials are plotting a potential attack on Iran. Haaretz, as a liberal voice, can sometimes be critical of this idea. There is clearly an emphasis on politics over other issues. The paper is not concerned with oil (as Israel has none) or youth issues. Much of the discussion is existential: how should Israelis live, how should they treat the Palestinians, etc. There is much opinion and much discussion in this newspaper, and many ideas are generated by it. It is a great example of Israel’s free press. There is no censorship of the materials—and the paper is frequently cr itical of the government. Tehran Times appears to be strongly influenced by government censors. The stories present the president of Iran in a favourable light. The paper also pushes a paranoid line, suggesting that Iran is surrounded by enemies which wish to do it harm. There is an article about Iranian prisoners who may be executed in Saudi Arabia. The attitude appears to be negative. The oil sanctions are clearly affecting the Iranian economy, and there are stories about this. Youth unemployment is high. Iran is suffering from the kind of huge demographic change which Richards talks about in his chapter. The old order is fading, but not fast enough. The old order still has enough power to put down uprisings, as they did in 2009, but this will last forever. One day they will fall and the consequences of this will be unforeseeable. Reading the Tehran times, it is clear that there is kind of siege mentality the people of Iran are suffering from. All of this is evident from the paper . It appears to be a sad country. The United States is considered to be an enemy, according to this paper. We can see how Iran is trying to build alliances with other misfit countries in the region. Overall, this is a depressing newspaper for a depressing country. Al Jazeera is like the CNN of the Middle East. It is based out of Qatar and provides regional coverage in a less biased manner than other local media. The headlines are often outward looking and focus on the international scene, but from the point of view of all people in the Middle East. The tone is a unifying and quite liberal one. It is clear that Al Jazeera is not the organ of any dictator or tyrant. They have done a lot to inspire the revolutions that have occurred over the last few years. They appear to support democracy and even women’s rights—ideas which are alien to many Arabs in the region. There is even some objectivity shown towards Israel. There is an emphasis on oil news as this the main commodi ty traded in the Middle East and the source of much wealth. Overall, the news is a bit soft-ball but it is clearly not censored by any government. The Middle East is a rapidly changing area of the world. Every month brings something new. All of last year the world focused on Libya. Now, with Gaddafi dead, the world has turned to watch the civil war unfolding in Syria. Only a few years ago, we all watched Iraq

Madeleine Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Madeleine - Essay Example The talks with the prostitutes in her neighborhood started altering Madeline morals. However, she moved to St. Louis to live with a friend while she was seventeen. She began to work in a factory but realized she was pregnant after working for a few months. She thus ran away from the friend’s house and moved into a brothel within Kansas since she could not support herself financially. To hide her identity, she invented the name Madeleine Blair. She later lost her baby and almost managed to avoid being engaged in sex trade when she migrated to Chicago. In Chicago, she started her life working in a department store. However, the salary is meager and she could not support herself. She ended up getting back to prostitution. Therefore, the major reason why Madeleine got into prostitution was the unplanned pregnancy. When she realized she was pregnant, she was ashamed of herself and left her friend’s house. Since she had no means to support herself she ended up getting into pr ostitution. Another reason that led Madeleine get into prostitution was her early exposure to talks regarding prostitution. She had lived in environments where prostitution was considered a lesser vice. Therefore, she easily got into the sex industry when she was compelled by her financial needs. Although she was aware of the existence of sex industry, she had tried to avoid being a prostitute by searching for a noble job since she wanted to retain her respect. However, the dire need for money and her condition of being pregnant drove her into the industry. Alter some time, her desire for money increased making it hard for her to leave the sex industry. She started migrating from brothel to brothel and ended up establishing her own brothel in Canada. 2) What does her story tell us about life during the late Gilded Age? How was she affected by industrialization, urbanization, rural decline, and the social problems associated with these transformations? In the Autobiography, Madeleine approves that the sex industry was of great economic benefit to the western countries. Madeleine considers prostitution as the only way that women could contribute to economic growth. Even the authorities and most people in Canada viewed sex industry as important in enhancing economic growth. Men considered brothels as crucial and would even go to nearby town in search of sex if there were no brothels in their locality. As industrialization progressed, men started earning better salaries. Most of them spent part of their salaries to pay for sex. This demonstrates that industrialization contributed to increase in prostitution. Madeleine describes her brothel as one that constituted an important social and economic component. It fulfilled the needs of the working class (Anonymous 180-184). To the girls who worked in the brothel, it was their source of income hence a form of employment. Moreover, the local municipal authorities greatly benefited from the bribes that Madeleine gave the m. The common people viewed prostitution as an important component of the local economy that was beneficial to all. Women could get employment, the authorities made profits, and men had some place to spend their leisure time. Therefore, people viewed brothels as institutions as important sector of the economy that enhanced exchange of money. With industrialization, there was increased number of women in urban centers. To them, prostitution was a noble way of earning