Reports & Articles 

06/15/2015: What Makes A College Veteran Friendly?, by Alexander McCoy, Task & Purpose - So what truly makes a college veteran friendly, and what can other colleges do to improve? Here are some clues to look for when seeking out a veteran-friendly school.

06/14/2015: 7 Seriously Bad Ideas That Rule Higher Education, by Joshua Kim, Inside Higher Ed,  Technology and Learning - In a world of information abundance, an education that is valuable (at least one that anybody will pay for) will be small-scale - one built an environment where the professor and the student know each other as individuals. This is the real lesson of MOOCs, adaptive learning platforms, and all those other technologies that seek to lower the cost of education by prioritizing scale over relationships.

06/12/2015: The Five U.S. Cities With the Most Educated Latinos, by Janie Boschma, NationalJournal - Nowhere is educational attainment higher for Latinos than in Miami, where 26 percent of Latino working adults ages 25-64 hold at least a four-year degree. By comparison, 42 percent of Miami's white population is college educated - a 16-point gap.   

06/12/2015: Lingua Franca for Credentials, by Paul Fain, Inside Higher Ed - Credentialing has exploded in type and number in recent years, as job seekers earn a growing range of certificates, badges, experiential transcripts, industry certifications and licenses, in addition to traditional college degrees. That expansion has led to a chaotic, fragmented system, according to the Lumina Foundation. Students and employers often are confused about what credentials represent and whether rigor is behind them.

06/11/2015: Implementing a CBE Program: Lessons Learned from Community Colleges, by Russ Poulin, WCET Frontiers - There has been tremendous growth and innovation in CBE. This is especially true in programs that map well to specific occupations. While it is hard to summarize all that was shared, this article presents some key takeaways of the recent conference on CBE programs.

06/10/2015: Prepare for Stiff Competition to Get an Associate Degree in Nursing, by Devon Haynie, US News & World Report - Students should make sure their prerequisites count toward another degree, just in case they don't get into a nursing program, experts say.

06/09/2015: High School Graduation Rates: The Good, The Bad And The Ambiguous, by Anya Kamenetz, NPR Ed - Officially, the U.S. has a high school graduation rate of 81 percent - a historic high. But our months-long investigation, in partnership with reporters at 14 member stations, reveals that this number should be taken with a big grain of salt.

06/09/2015: Solving Latino Achievement Gap Critical for Arizona's Future, by Lea Marquez Peterson and Eileen Klein,  Arizona Star, Tucson.com - Hispanic students are less likely than the general population to enroll in either college or graduate school. While 50 percent of Arizona's high-school students pursue post-secondary education, only 44 percent of Hispanic students pursue a college education. Even more startling, only 10 percent of Hispanic students who enroll in our public universities will earn a degree; given that two-thirds of all jobs by 2018 will require a post-secondary education.

06/08/2015: Rich vs. Poor: The Growing 'Class' Gap in Higher Education, by Brian C. Mitchell, HuffPost, College - Through a battery of math and reading tests to determine whether the most disadvantaged students were simply overconfident with their dreams "outstripping their academic skills;" the finding is telling: "educational achievement does not explain the gap in bachelor's degree attainment." Put in other terms: "Class trumps ability when it comes to college graduation." Both reports raise the question of whether education from "cradle to career" is in a crisis from which it can recover.

04/2015: Credentials for All: An Imperative for SREB States, Southern Regional Education Board - The future looks brighter for young people with the right postsecondary credentials. Higher education attainment of any kind benefits individuals in the labor market. Post-recession, jobs for those with bachelor's degrees have increased, and jobs for workers with some college or a postsecondary credential have mostly recovered.  

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Reports & Articles

06/05/2015: Daphne Koller on the Future of Online Education, by Alexandra Wolfe, The Wall Street Journal - The Coursera co-founder on the advantages of learning online-and why traditional universities aren't going to disappear.

06/04/2015: Thrun Sees Nanodegrees as Key to Ed Democratization, by Tara Garc�a Mathewson, EducationDive - The Next Web reports that nanodegrees are designed to take six to nine months to finish and cost a flat $200 per month, with coursework completable at any time and graded on demand.

To view our entire Online Education section, click here.

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Reports & Articles

06/13/2015: Collecting Credit Before College Even Begins, by Kimberly Bonvissuto, Crain's Cleveland Business - While many are pursuing college-level courses in high school to combat the skyrocketing costs of higher education, school administrators say exposing high school students to challenging college-level work also is important for their future success.  

06/05/2015: Forum Guide to College and Career Ready Data, National Center for Education Statistics - The Forum Guide to College and Career Ready Data examines how data are being used to support CCR initiatives.

06/2015: Course, Counselor, and Teacher Gaps: Addressing the College Readiness Challenge in High-Poverty High Schools, CLASP - The analysis highlights stark differences in the quality of college preparation that high school students receive based on their schools' concentration of poverty. The paper compares characteristics of high-poverty high schools (more than 75 percent of students eligible for free or reduced lunch) to mid-high poverty (50-75 percent eligible), mid-low poverty (25-50 percent eligible), and low-poverty high schools (fewer than 25 percent of students eligible).

To view our entire College Readiness section, click here.

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Reports & Articles

06/15/2015: Eyeing Tesla, College Offers New 4-year Degree in Logistics, San Jose Mercury News - Truckee Meadows President Maria Sheehan said it's the responsibility of community colleges to respond to changing economic climates as quickly as possible. "And that's the exciting part - when you can do something that is responsive that's going to address certainly jobs for the future and economic revitalization," she said.  "Distribution and logistics are key to so many industries that are here now and industries that are coming," said Michael Pender, the managing director of Porous Power Technologies.   

06/12/2015: Community Colleges Skilled at "Upskilling", by Augusta A. Julian, Kentucky.com - "Upskilling" is the new term for moving through levels of skill development to prepare for the next step in a career. Corporate staffing professionals at the summit gave the community colleges our due as skilled workforce providers, but they also challenged us to do better.

06/11/2015: Remediation for Job Seekers, by Paul Fain, Inside Higher Ed - A new consortium of four community colleges will work on course content with big companies in advanced manufacturing and financial services. The group, announced today, includes Neosho County Community College, a largely rural institution located in Kansas, Everett Community College in Washington State, the City University of New York's LaGuardia Community College and the Alamo Colleges, a five-college system located in San Antonio.

06/05/2015: Institutions Say This Is the New Priority in Higher Education, by Ron Bethke, eCampus News - According to the results the Education Advisory Board (EAB)'s annual Future of Online and Professional Education Survey, improving how institutions track career success has emerged as the highest priority for senior executives of online and professional higher education programs.

06/03/2015: Help Wanted: 11 Million College Grads, by Bill Gates, GatesNotes - By 2025, two thirds of all jobs in the US will require education beyond high school. (That includes two-year and four-year college degrees as well as postsecondary certificates.)  

05/28/2015: Nonacademic Skills Are Key To Success. But What Should We Call Them?, by Anya Kamenetz, NPR, Education - More and more people in education agree on the importance of learning stuff other than academics. But no one agrees on what to call that "stuff". 

To view our entire Workforce Development section, click here.