Decreased State Appropriations and their Impact on Texas Public Four-Year Higher Education Institutions Tuition Rates through Deregulated Tuition

The purpose of this nonexperimental quantitative correlational study was to examine the relationships between state appropriation decreases and the deregulated tuition cost increases in Texas public four-year higher education institutions. State appropriation decreases are those decreases in the state’s financial investment in higher education. Deregulated tuition is the tuition rate set by higher education institutions that is not regulated by the Texas Legislature. By studying the decreases in state appropriations and the increases in institution tuition rates, an understanding can take shape of what impact, if any, the disinvestment by state legislatures has caused to the operations of higher education institutions. Findings from this study showed no evidence of a correlation existing between the decrease in state appropriations and the increase of Texas public higher education institution tuition costs, when the analysis reviewed the timeframe from fiscal years 2003 to 2016.

The rebirth of Chinggis Khaan: state appropriation of Chinggis Khaan in post-socialist Mongolia

A massive monument of Chinggis Khaan (Chinggis Khaan's name is spelt differently depending on the language in which it was written and on conventions of transliteration. Among the most common are Chinggis, Genghis, Genghiz, or Jengiz. For the purpose of the paper, the Mongolian transliteration is used.) imposingly gazes down from the government palace in Ulaanbaatar, the capital city of Mongolia. The monument was erected in 2006 in commemoration of the 800-year anniversary of the establishment of “the Great Mongolian State.” Occupying arguably the most prominent national space, the monument serves as an arresting emblem of the state. With its silent yet triumphant symbolization, the monument articulates the state's new ideology in the post-Soviet era. The monument is one of countless symbolic and material grand-scale state expressions appropriating Chinggis Khaan. In this article, I examine the state's appropriation of Chinggis Khaan as the marker of Mongolian post-socialist national identity. In doing so, I critically examine how the state appropriates history, remembering and forgetting certain parts, to cultivate a shared sense of belonging and pride. Unifying the public in shared glorification and celebration of Chinggis Khaan ultimately serves to instill devotion to the national political and ideological project.

Environmental Threat II

Changes in public funding of higher education have affected cost, price, and access. State budgets have become more volatile in recent years, and this has increased budget uncertainty for public institutions. In addition, the real value of state appropriation has trended downward in most states for many years. Public universities continue to fall further behind selective private competitors in spending per student. Falling quality at many public universities affects time to graduation and graduation rates, and the burden falls disproportionately on less-well-off students. We risk a bifurcation of our higher education system into well-funded selective private colleges and a less selective underfunded public sector that serves the bulk of the nation’s most vulnerable students.

The Local Spaces of Statebuilding: The Case of Albania (1920–1939)

Drawing on studies that envisage the local as a site where nation-state building and the affirmation of sovereignty are produced rather than simply reproduced, this article proposes to shift the focus to the local level. By exploring the case of school policies in interwar Albania, at the very heart of the assertion of the new state’s sovereignty, it studies the control of local space as the locus of these processes. More specifically, it focuses on the power relations surrounding the role of religion in school space, state appropriation of school buildings structuring religious spaces, and the effect of the inscription of actors involved in these negotiations—be they agents of these policies or not—into social spaces.

Taijiquan y Taoísmo. De religión a arte marcial, de arte marcial a religión

<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; margin: 0cm 0cm 6pt;"><span style="mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;" lang="EN-GB"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">This study explores the ways in which the construction and deconstruction of a martial arts-Daoism connection has figured in political ideology, national iden-tity, and commercial interest during the past 400 years of Chinese history. Focusing on the taijiquan-Daoism-Zhang Sanfeng nexus, it traces the wrapping of a martial art in indigenous religious garb during the periods of Manchu rule, Japanese occupation, and post-Mao 21st century. It concludes by reporting on a contemporary movement in China to revive the cult of Zhang Sanfeng and to cast taijiquan as a form of religious practice. In this light, taijiquan emerges as an important site of constructing “Chinese-ness” in the face of state appropriation and Western cultural imperialism.<strong style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"></strong></span></span></span></p>