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The initial transition into work has become less predictable. Therefore, emerging adults should take charge and be proactively engaged in their careers during the preparation stage of the school-to-work transition (STWT). We explored which behaviors emerging adults display during the STWT to foster their happiness, health, and productivity, how various contextual factors enable or hinder these behaviors, and to what extent these behaviors can be considered proactive.

Taking a qualitative approach, we conducted 44 semi-structured interviews with undergraduate students at an Applied Sciences University in the Netherlands six months before graduation. Additionally, we held nine focus groups (n = 55) and four interviews (n = 6) with contextual stakeholders (i.e. parents, faculty/staff, employers, the board of the university, higher education policymakers, and the Ministry of Education).

The students mentioned three main behaviors to foster their health, happiness, and productivity, namely, eating healthy food, maintaining social contacts, and reflecting on their motivations. Our analysis shows that, conceptually, none of these behaviors can be considered truly proactive. Moreover, the findings revealed multiple systemic underlying contextual hindrances to portray these behaviors, such as educational system characteristics, which make proactive behaviors less likely.

As the STWT is affected by multiple contexts, adopting a multi-stakeholder perspective is imperative when studying the phenomenon. We adopted the sustainable careers framework as a lens to uncover how emerging adults may build early career sustainability—additionally, we nuance current research on proactivity by concretizing the conceptualization of proactive behaviors.

The United States (US) sugar program protects domestic sugar farmers from unrestricted imports of heavily-subsidized global sugar. Sugar-using firms (SUFs) criticize that program for causing US sugar prices to be higher than world sugar prices. This study examines the financial performance of publicly traded SUFs to determine if they are performing at an economic disadvantage in terms of accounting profitability, risk and economic profitability compared to other industries.

Firm-level financial accounting and market data from 2010 to 2019 were utilized to construct financial metrics for publicly traded SUFs, agribusinesses and general US firms. These financial metrics were analyzed to determine how SUFs compare to their agribusiness peer group and general US companies. The comprehensive financial analysis in this study covers: (1) accounting profit rates, (2) drivers of profitability, (3) economic profit rates, (4) trend analysis and (5) peer comparisons. Quantile regression analysis and Wilcoxon–Mann–Whitney statistics are employed for statistical comparisons.

Regarding various profitability and risk measures, SUFs outperform their agribusiness peers and the general benchmark of all US firms in terms of accounting profit rates, risk levels and economic profit rates. Furthermore, compared to other US industries using the 17 French and Fama classifications, SUFs have the highest return on investment and economic profit rate―measured by the Economic Value Added® margin―and the second-lowest opportunity cost of capital, measured by the weighted average cost of capital.

This study finds nothing to suggest that the US sugar program hinders the financial success of SUFs, contrary to recent claims by sugar-using firms. Notably in this analysis is the evaluation of economic profit rates and a series of robustness techniques.

Faculty participation in the assurance of learning (AoL) is requisite both for the effective operation of the system and for accreditation compliance, but faculty often resist engaging in AoL tasks. The purpose of this paper is to provide specific recommendations to address faculty concerns and to guide AoL systems toward maturity.

This paper provides a comprehensive model of faculty resistance perspectives aligned to AoL maturity, provides specific responses to faculty resistance and introduces success markers of progress toward maturity.

Specifically, a three-stage model of AoL system maturity is presented and aligned with five faculty perspectives. For each faculty perspective, responses targeting causal factors are proposed and signs of progress toward the next level of faculty engagement are highlighted.

Faculty and AoL leaders will be able to identify their current stage of AoL system maturity and implement practical solutions to move to the next stage of system maturity.

Understanding the motivations for faculty resistance will facilitate more meaningful and effective internal interactions as a school seeks to improve its AoL system. In turn, a more effective AoL system will promote better learning experiences for students; and better learning allows students to become productive in their chosen careers more quickly, thus improving society as a whole.

To the knowledge, no prior paper has organized faculty resistance along a maturity continuum, provided targeted responses based on the level of maturity or included signs that indicate growth toward the next level of maturity.

The “unplannable” is a welcomed exception to the formal order of urban planning. This opinion article explores some examples of informal urbanism and discusses its ambiguous relationship to public space and unplanned activities in the city. The informal sector offers important lessons about the adaptive use of space and its social role. The article examines the ways specific groups appropriate informal spaces and how this can add to a city’s entrepreneurship and success. The characteristics of informal, interstitial spaces within the contemporary city, and the numerous creative ways in which these temporarily used spaces are appropriated, challenge the prevalent critical discourse about our understanding of authorised public space, formal place-making and social order within the city in relation to these informal spaces.

The text discusses various cases from Chile, the US and China that illustrate the dilemma of the relationship between informality and public/private space today. One could say that informality is a deregulated self-help system that redefines relationships with the formal. Temporary or permanent spatial appropriation has behavioural, economic and cultural dimensions, and forms of the informalare not always immediately obvious: they are not mentioned in building codes and can often be subversive or unexpected, emerging in the grey area between legal and illegal activities.