Employment of Recent University Business Graduates: Do Age,Gender, and Minority Status Make a Difference?

This study examined differences in the process of job search based on age, gender, and minority status. A sample of 398 recent business graduates of a southern university completed a survey on their current status and job search process, which was matched to their academic record. Results showed that women had higher GPAs than did men, but fewer women went on to graduate school immediately after graduation. African Americans had lower GPAs at graduation, were more likely to have used the university placement center, and were less likely to have had internships than Whites. These results are discussed in terms of providing better preemployment opportunities for women and African Americans and in terms of a realistic employment preview mechanism for all students.     

The Effects of Task-Specific Divergent-Thinking Training

Although there is a growing body of evidence indicating that divergent-thinking skills may be very task specific, there has been no research testing how narrowly divergent-thinking training can be targeted. Seventy-nine seventh-grade students received training in poetry-relevant divergent-thinking skills. These subjects and a matched control group later wrote poems and stories, the creativity of which was judged by experts. There was a significantly greater impact on poetry-writing creativity. Implications for creativity theory and training programs are discussed. Numerous research reports (Baer, 1991, 1992, 1993, 1994a, 1994b, in press-a; Runco, 1987, 1989) have shown that the skills underlying creative performance may be quite task specific, and this suggests possible limitations on the potential benefits of divergent-thinking training. One response to this task-specific understanding of divergent thinking has been to design divergent-thinking training programs that include practice in a wide range of task-specific divergent-thinking skills. This approach has been shown to have a general effect of enhancing creativity in diverse domains (Baer, 1988, 1992, 1993). An alternate approach would be to target training to specific kinds of creativity; however, there has been no research investigating just how narrowly such divergent-thinking training can be targeted. The present investigation was designed to test what effect divergent-thinking training focusing on a single task would have on creative performance on that task and on a different, but closely related, task. The larger goals were (a) to help creativity researchers better understand the nature of divergent thinking as it impacts creative performance and (b) to be of practical value in helping educators design training programs better suited to specific training objectives. Seventh-grade students were trained in divergent- thinking skills hypothesized to be related to poetry — writing creativity. Following this training, trained subjects and a matched sample of untrained subjects wrote both poems and stories in their regular English classes. Poems and stories were judged for creativity by experts who did not know the subjects. It was predicted that training in poetry-relevant divergent thinking would result in a greater increase in creativity on a poetry-writing task than on a story-writing task.     

Responsibility, Control, and Omissions

Previously, I have argued that moral responsibility for actions is associated with guidance control. This sort of control does not necessarily involve the freedom to do otherwise. In this paper I extend the view to apply to omissions. That is, moral responsibility for an omission is associated with guidance control of that omission. This helps to provide a systematic, unified account of moral responsibility.     

The Morality of Influencing in Counseling

It is the author's intention to help counselors think through the various ways in which they influence their clients and assess the morality of various alternative counseling decisions. The task is a complex one because of the widely varied counseling situations. To consider a wide variety of contexts simultaneously, the author formulates a matrix of influencing that is used to generate a series of questions that have moral significance in counseling contexts. Each question is given extensive discussion. Alternative answers and their moral implications are considered. Examples are used throughout to clarify moral problems and the moral implications of counseling decisions.     

The University Counseling Center: An Agenda for the 1990s

Changes in higher education will hold special relevance for university counseling centers in the 1990s. Opportunities will exist for counseling center personnel to help institutions deal with some emerging problems. Research is reviewed that indicates that crisis management services, career development concerns, a changing student population, and issues related to retention all represent areas in which contemporary counseling centers could make significant contributions. Recommendations are made about how counseling centers might prepare themselves for such involvement.     

Guidance and Counseling Services in the Federal Republic of Germany

This article presents an overview of the development, implementation, and struggle to maintain guidance and counseling services at various levels within the Federal Republic of Germany.