Reports & Articles 

04/02/2015: Redesigning Community Colleges, by Ashley A. Smith, Inside Higher Ed - In the book, the authors show that despite a massive reform movement to improve student success at community colleges, there has been little evidence that the country has seen widespread improvement. The three authors jointly responded by email to questions about the new book, which will be released April 9.

03/29/2015: Why Can't 2,600 Jobs Be Filled in Mansfield?, by Jessie Balmert, Mansfield News Journal - Two in five U.S. employers said they had trouble filling jobs in 2014, according to the ManpowerGroup, a human resources firm that started tracking talent shortages in 2006. That's higher than the global average of 36 percent.

03/29/2015: Diversity, Student Success Challenges Resonate at AAC&U Conference, by Jamal E. Mazyck, Diverse - Dr. Carol Geary Schneider, AAC&U's president of 17 years, announced the new Liberal Education & America's Promise (LEAP) Challenge that aims to influence policy by advancing inclusive excellence in college learning.

03/25/2015: State Online College Job Market: Ranking the States, by Anthony P. Carnevale, Tamara Jayasundera,
Dimitri Repnikov, and Artem Gulish, Georgetown University, Center on Education and the Workforce - As more
Americans connect to the Internet, employers increasingly are using it to fill job openings. We estimate that between 60 and 70 percent of job openings are now advertised online, and the online job market continues to grow each year. Nearly 4 million unique job advertisements are posted online each quarter.

03/24/2015: Duplicating or Complementing? Thoughts on Dual-Served Students, by Sara Melnick, National College Access Network - There were two initial reactions to this discovery here at NCAN. The first was concern over the fact that these students are possibly being "overserviced," i.e. two or more programs were redundantly devoting resources (staff time, scholarships, services, spaces in workshops, etc.) to the same students. These students may have been receiving services from multiple programs - perhaps even the same service - unbeknownst to the programs. This scenario was distressing because we know all too well that there are many students in NCAN member-served communities who aren't reached at all because of a lack of the aforementioned resources.

03/23/2015: The End of College?, by Paul Fain, Inside Higher Ed - A growing number of books about higher education's ills have hit the market in recent years. But few have drummed up the attention, both positive and negative, that Kevin Carey's has received.

03/19/2015: Today's Anxious Freshmen Declare Majors Far Faster Than Their Elders, by Douglas Belkin, The Wall Street Journal - Instead of spending their first couple of years dipping into a range of intellectual pools, the class of 2018 was much more likely to declare an academic major during freshman year than their counterparts before the recession, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of data from a dozen randomly chosen colleges nationwide, both large and small.

03/18/2015: State Education Trends, by Andrew J. Coulson, Cato Institute - Long-term trends in academic performance and spending are valuable tools for evaluating past education policies and informing current ones. But such data have been scarce at the state level, where the most important education policy decisions are made.

03/2015: How Well Are American Students Learning?, by Tom Loveless, The Brookings Institution - The studies in this edition are on the gender gap in reading, the impact of the Common Core State Standards - English Language Arts on reading achievement, and student engagement.

02/06/2015: A Better Way to Evaluate Undergraduate Teaching, by Carl Wieman, Change Magazine - A major problem in higher education is the lack of a good way to measure the quality of teaching. This makes it very difficult for faculty to objectively determine the quality of their teaching, work systematically to improve it, and document that quality. Institutions in turn are unable to incentivize, track, or demonstrate to external stakeholders improvement in the quality of the teaching that they provide.

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Reports & Articles

03/23/2015: Competency-based Education Is All The Rage: What Is It?, by Kimberly K. Este, The Tennessean - If you've paid any attention to higher education the past couple of years, odds are you've heard the term "competency-based education," or CBE. Hailed by corporate executives, global foundation presidents and our nation's foremost education experts, competency-based education is already changing how we think about learning.

03/19/2015: Anyone Can Be a Teacher at Skillshare, an Online School, by Jonah Bromwich, The New York Times - Skillshare is an online video platform that allows anyone to sign up and teach a class. The company has proved adept at recruiting experts to teach on its website.

To view our entire Online Education section, click here.

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Reports & Articles

03/25/015: Report Underscores Key Role of High School Counselors in College Transition, by Caralee Adams, Education Week, College Bound - Researchers for the National Association for College Admission Counseling reviewed data from 2009 to 2012 to examine the practices, priorities, and effectiveness of high school counseling departments. The resulting report, A National Look at the High School Counseling Office, underscores the value of counseling services but points to a mismatch in administrator expectations and actual time granted for college counseling.

03/23/2015: Researchers Rethink Community College With Clearer Student Pathways, by Caralee Adams, Education Week, College Bound - To help more students succeed in community college, researchers suggest high schools do more career advising so students start out with a better idea of what they want to pursue.

To view our entire College Readiness section, click here.

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Reports & Articles

03/27/2015: Educators and Employers Join Forces to Improve Workforce Readiness, by Caralee Adams, Education Week, College Bound -  To make sure their curriculum is relevant and excite students about career possibilities, educators are increasingly turning to the business community. And many employers, who say they can't find enough qualified workers to fill openings at their companies, are eager to get involved.

03/24/2015: How to Successfully Earn a STEM Associate Degree, by Briana Boyington, U.S. News & World Report, Education - Students shouldn't let common myths and misconceptions prevent them from majoring in STEM subjects in community college.

03/23/2015: Promoting Skills and Training for Low-Income Workers, by Cecilia Mu�oz and Jeff Zients, The White House, Council of Economic Advisers - Secretaries Vilsack and Perez announced $200 million for projects designed to identify the most effective strategies to help participants in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) improve their skills and find jobs.

03/20/2015: Tickets To Success, The Baltimore Sun - The main reason city young people don't enter skilled jobs in those fields in greater numbers is that most don't know such opportunities exist or how to pursue them. The report suggests that local community colleges need to focus more on training students to work in Baltimore's emerging job sectors, such as health care, information technology, transportation logistics and bioscience.

03/19/2015: Who Should Pay for Workers' Training?, The New York Times - A recent article about the demand for welders in Texas and the Gulf Coast region highlighted a growing partnership between the energy industry and community colleges.

To view our entire Workforce Development section, click here.