A Problem Of Fit

A critical examination of the complex system of college pricing—how it works, how it fails, and how fixing it can help both students and universities. How much does it cost to attend college in the United States today? The answer is more complex than many realize. College websites advertise a sticker price, but uncovering the actual price—the one after incorporating financial aid—can be difficult for students and families. This inherent uncertainty leads some students to forgo applying to colleges that would be the best fit for them, or even not attend college at all. The result is that millions of promising young people may lose out on one of society’s greatest opportunities for social mobility. Colleges suffer too, losing prospective students and seeing lower enrollments and less socioeconomic diversity. If markets require prices to function well, then the American higher-education system—rife as it is with ambiguity in its pricing—amounts to a market failure. In A Problem of Fit, economist Phillip B. Levine explains why institutions charge the prices they do and discusses the role of financial aid systems in facilitating—and discouraging—access to college. Affordability issues are real, but price transparency is also part of the problem. As Levine makes clear, our conversations around affordability and free tuition miss a larger truth: that the opacity of our current college-financing systems is a primary driver of inequities in education and society. In a clear-eyed assessment of educational access and aid in a post-COVID-19 economy, A Problem of Fit offers a trenchant new argument for educational reforms that are well within reach.

This volume is a collection of papers that advance our understanding of the metaphysics of powers — properties such as fragility and electric charge. The metaphysics of powers is a fast developing research field with fundamental questions at the forefront of current research, such as Can there be a world of only powers? What is the manifestation of a power? Are powers and their manifestations related by necessity? What are the prospects for dispositional accounts of causation? The papers focus on questions concerning the metaphysics of powers that cut across any particular subject-specific ontological domain -- whether philosophy of science, philosophy of mind, ethics, epistemology – investigating the metaphysical structure of powers, the nature of the manifestation of powers, the necessity or contingency of a power’s relation to its manifestations, and powers and causation. A number of authors also engage in discussion with Humean and neo-Humean treatments of causation, thereby making contributions to a larger metaphysical debate beyond powers. Additionally, the authors engage critically with the latest contributions to the debate on powers in the literature, thereby bringing together in a wholesome and analytical way the most recent and noteworthy theoretical developments in this research field.

Stella Chess and Alexander Thomas' new book illuminates one of the most significant theoretical and practical implications in professional publications on temperament today: the concept of goodness of fit. When individuals achieve accordance with the properties and expectations of their respective environments, they have attained goodness of fit, which ultimately enables their psychological growth and health. They can function on a healthy level with a potential for a positive life course. Beginning with a clear definition and explanation of the concept of goodness of fit, the book goes on to delineate the evolution of the goodness of fit concept, its clinical applications, and the biopsychosocial elements relevant to the goodness of fit model. The authors provide insightful step-by-step commentaries on individual case histories that concern such problems. Each case is unique and intriguing, and is reviewed by the authors in a compelling manner. As is appropriate to their research, they have wisely taken into account a wide variety of environmental expectations and demands-parental and other caregivers' child practices and goals, peer group judgments, special community values, as well as cultural and ethnic diversity. They also address possible educational rules and expectations, career stresses, sexual issues and marital conflicts. In the past, clinical applications of the concept of goodness of fit have been restricted to a modest number of community parent guidance temperament programs and have not received their due attention. In their recent work, however, Chess and Thomas, long-standing psychiatrists with forty years of clinical experience, step outside past boundaries and explore a panoply of clinical cases, including all age-periods, ranging from infancy to adulthood. Using the clinical data obtained from numerous case histories, the authors develop an insightful clinical system from which researchers and clinicians of mental health professionals, pediatricians and educators alike can benefit. Goodness of Fit: Clinical Applications, From Infancy through Adult Life aims to answer the question of how to create a healthy consonance between individuals and their environments in order to achieve optimal development, and will undoubtedly enhance both our understanding of psychological development and personality maturation as well as the clinical methods used to analyze them.

An interdisciplinary framework for sustainable helping through cross-system collaboration This hands-on resource provides clear, practical guidance for supportive service professionals working in a home-based environment. Drawing on best practices from a range of disciplines, this book provides a clear map for dealing with the complex and often ambiguous situations that arise with individuals and families, with applications extending to supervision and organizational change. Readers gain the advice and insight of real-world frontline helpers, as well as those who receive care, highlighting new ways to approach the work and re-think previous conceptualizations of problems and strengths. Helping efforts are organized around a shared, forward-thinking vision that anticipates obstacles and draws on existing and potential supports in developing a collaborative plan of action. The book begins with stories that illustrate core concepts and context, presenting a number of useful ideas that can reorient behavioral services while outlining a principle-based practice framework to help workers stay grounded and focused. Problems are addressed, and strength-based work is expanded into richer conversations about strengths in the context of intention and purpose, value and belief, hopes, dreams, and commitments. Topics include: Contextual guidance with helping maps Engaging people and re-thinking problems and strengths Dilemmas in home and community services Sustainable helping through collaboration and support A strong collaboration between natural networks, communities, and trained professionals across systems creates an effective helping endeavor. Ensuring sustainability may involve promoting systems change, and building institutional supports for specific supervisory, management, and organizational practices. Collaborative Helping provides a framework for organizing these efforts into a coherent whole, serving the needs of supportive services workers across sectors.

This book offers a clear process for managers, professionals, and future leaders to help discover their personal meaning in life and apply it to their work. The author uses research outcomes and theories to refute the contemporary philosophy that stresses following an individual’s passion alone when choosing a particular job or career. Instead, she recommends employing a personal meaning-oriented approach to life and work, and then becoming passionate about one’s work organically. The book also highlights the positive outcomes to organizations and societies when individuals engage with finding meaning in work, focusing on physical and emotional health and satisfaction. The author provides numerous examples of leaders who have aligned their personal meaning and organizational mission, also known as “meaning-mission fit,” and the relationship of this alignment to their emotional well-being. Together, the research, theory, and evidence in this book equip leaders and managers with an inspiring model to find their own meaning-mission fit, as well as create opportunities for the employees to do the same.

Costume designer Alison Freer’s styling kit is a magical bag of tricks, built to solve every single wardrobe malfunction on earth. TV and film productions wait for nothing, so her solutions have to work fast. In How to Get Dressed, Alison distills her secrets into a fun, comprehensive style guide focused on rethinking your wardrobe like a fashion expert and making what’s in your closet work for you. She provides real-world advice about everything style-related, including: • Making every garment you own fit better • Mastering closet organization • The undergarments you actually need • The scoop on tailors and which alterations are worth it • Shopping thrift and vintage like a rockstar Instead of repeating boring style “rules,” Alison breaks the rules and gets real about everything from bras to how to deal with inevitable fashion disasters. Including helpful information such as how to skip ironing and the dry cleaners, remove every stain under the sun, and help clueless men get their sartorial acts together, How to Get Dressed has hundreds of insider tips from Alison’s arsenal of tools and expertise.

A “bracing and well-argued” study of America’s college debt crisis—“necessary reading for anyone concerned about the fate of American higher education” (Kirkus). College is far too expensive for many people today, and the confusing mix of federal, state, institutional, and private financial aid leaves countless students without the resources they need to pay for it. In Paying the Price, education scholar Sara Goldrick-Rab reveals the devastating effect of these shortfalls. Goldrick-Rab examines a study of 3,000 students who used the support of federal aid and Pell Grants to enroll in public colleges and universities in Wisconsin in 2008. Half the students in the study left college without a degree, while less than 20 percent finished within five years. The cause of their problems, time and again, was lack of money. Unable to afford tuition, books, and living expenses, they worked too many hours at outside jobs, dropped classes, took time off to save money, and even went without adequate food or housing. In many heartbreaking cases, they simply left school—not with a degree, but with crippling debt. Goldrick-Rab combines that data with devastating stories of six individual students, whose struggles make clear the human and financial costs of our convoluted financial aid policies. In the final section of the book, Goldrick-Rab offers a range of possible solutions, from technical improvements to the financial aid application process, to a bold, public sector–focused “first degree free” program. "Honestly one of the most exciting books I've read, because [Goldrick-Rab has] solutions. It's a manual that I'd recommend to anyone out there, if you're a parent, if you're a teacher, if you're a student."—Trevor Noah, The Daily Show