How Do We Get Students Ready For the Jobs of the Future?
This story is the second in a seven part editorial series exploring the balance between student learning and job skills. We’re asking leaders and thinkers in education and technology fields: Can America educate its way out of the skills gap? This series is brought to you by GOOD, with support from Apollo Group. Learn more about our efforts to bridge the skills gap at Coding for GOOD.
http://www.good.is/posts/how-do-we-get-students-ready-for-the-jobs-of-the-future
Class Central - MOOC
A complete list of free online courses offered by Stanford, Coursera, MIT and Harvard led edX (MITx + Harvardx + BerkeleyX), and Udacity
http://www.class-central.com/
Partnering to Better Serve Adults
Partnering to Better Serve Adults
Click on the attached article for examples of the partnerships promising strategies for serving adults with prior college credit in a number of areas—prior learning assessment, the usability of web portals, stackable certificates, just to name a few
http://adultcollegecompletion.org/node/138
Merrimack Valley Partners for Progress
Middlesex Community College and Northern Essex Community College are co-founders of the Merrimack Valley Partners for Prmogress program, an initiative designed to forge alliances between companies across the region and the regions premier educational institutions. In addiition to being strong academic institutions that can boast high transfer rates to four-year schools, Middlesex and Northern Essex have made workforce development a cornerstone of their mission.
http://www2.necc.mass.edu/mvpp123/index.php
http://www2.necc.mass.edu/mvpp123/index.php
Merimack Valley Partners for Progress: A business perspective
Building a Competitive Workforce: The Community College Advantage
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“We all know what the power of a skilled, educated, and motivated workforce can do for productivity, innovation, quality, and competitiveness,” said Ryan. “Our people make the difference…Our challenge as employers is to ensure that we have the right skills in-house to meet quickly evolving business needs, as well as to retain talent, and have a talent pipeline for long-term success.”
Ryan shared details on Raytheon’s collaboration with Middlesex and Northern Essex community colleges, including a series of 80- noncredit courses that was created to train production workers in the late 1990’s and the Electronic Equipment Technology Program, a 29-credit program currently offered onsite at Raytheon.
He called community college workforce training programs “affordable, flexible, and comprehensive.”
For Profit Schools
Obama's victory promises continued scrutiny for For Profit schools
Phoenix fourth quarter net income has fallen 60 percent from the year before. The number of new students enrolling had slumped by 13 percent, and yet costs were up. Phoenix closed more than half of their brick and mortar campuses and laid off almost 5 percent of its staff.
The re-election of President Obama isn't likely to result in a slew of new regulations aimed at for-profit colleges. But with student debt and the cost of college expected to remain high-profile issues in his second administration, industry observers foresee little let-up in the focus on the for-profit sector.
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Phoenix fourth quarter net income has fallen 60 percent from the year before. The number of new students enrolling had slumped by 13 percent, and yet costs were up. Phoenix closed more than half of their brick and mortar campuses and laid off almost 5 percent of its staff.
Is this a momentary downturn as the industry adjusts
to a new reality of greater oversight and savvier students, or is it the
beginning something more profound -- a bubble's big burst. It's still too early
to pin down a definitive answer. But there's reason to think this is more than
just a blip.
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It’s been a tough year for the University of Phoenix. But
don’t count out the big dog of for-profits just yet.
Massively Open Online Courses
The year of the MOOC
The paint is
barely dry, yet edX, the nonprofit start-up from Harvard
and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has 370,000 students this fall
in its first official courses. That’s nothing. Coursera,
founded just last January, has reached more than 1.7 million.
“I like to
call this the year of disruption,” says Anant Agarwal, president of edX, “and
the year is not over yet.”
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Antioch
University is the first US institution to receive approval from Coursera to
offer college credit for specified Coursera MOOCs (massive open online
courses). Through this new partnership, Antioch University and the Antioch
University Los Angeles campus can reduce student costs to complete a four-year
degree and expand course offerings through free online courses offered by the
highly respected universities that have partnered with Coursera. Culver City, October 29, 2012
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Online university courses have become the Next Big Thing for higher
education, particularly in the United States, where millions of students have
signed up for courses from some of the most upmarket universities.
But a major stumbling block has been how such digital courses are
assessed. When students are at home how do you know whether they are
cheating? How do you know the identity of the person answering the questions?
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Can education be democratized and the cost of each course reduced to
zero, similar to the entertainment industry?
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Let’s hear from students around the country and the world about their
experiences with free online higher education.
America's Talent Gap
Compelling Numbers
29% of CEOs have said that the
inability to find the talent they need is impacting strategic investments,
causing them to either cancel or delay new initiatives.
77% of CEOs are concerned about the unavailability of key
skills, with 60 percent saying that this skills gap makes it harder to fill
jobs.
There are open, available jobs for up to 1/3 of the
current U.S. unemployment rate -- yes, one-third.
What's behind the gap?
There are multiple factors. One important cause is
American companies' increasing need
for employees with a wider breadth of knowledge and more
sophisticated skills
American business leaders, working collaboratively with
government and educators, can provide the leadership needed to ensure that the
United States succeeds in this globally competitive world.
Read more at the below link's
CCRC working paper Career-Tech programs
Using data obtained from interviews and program websites at Washington community and technical colleges, the authors of this study examine the structure of community college career-technical programs in allied health, business and marketing, computer and information studies, and mechanics and repair.
A framework for structure with four dimensions—program alignment, program prescription, information quality, and active program advising and support—is used to examine the practices of relatively high- and low-performing colleges within each field of study.
The allied health, computer and information science, and mechanics and repair programs were found to be highly structured; the business and marketing programs were found to have a moderate level of structure. Overall, there was limited evidence of a connection between program structure and program performance.
Structure in Community College Career-Technical Programs: A Qualitative Analysis (CCRC Working Paper No. 50)
A framework for structure with four dimensions—program alignment, program prescription, information quality, and active program advising and support—is used to examine the practices of relatively high- and low-performing colleges within each field of study.
The allied health, computer and information science, and mechanics and repair programs were found to be highly structured; the business and marketing programs were found to have a moderate level of structure. Overall, there was limited evidence of a connection between program structure and program performance.
Structure in Community College Career-Technical Programs: A Qualitative Analysis (CCRC Working Paper No. 50)
What works for career-tech programs
What works for career-tech programs
A common college-level
mechanism in high-performing
colleges was an early alert system, which provides a proactive and potentially
consistent way to identify students who are having trouble with a course or a
program of study and intervene before they fall too far behind.
High-performing programs were less
likely to emphasize the associate degree and more likely to promote long-term
vocational certificates that require fewer general education courses and let
students enter the workforce quickly.
High-performing programs have an
emphasis on earning a long-term certificate.
Students immediately seek paid employment providing them with more
motivation to complete a certificate vs. focusing on an associate degree to
improve long-term career options.
Low-performing programs offered more
short-term certificates, which tend to be less valuable in the workplace. It’s
possible programs with low graduation rates begin offering short-term
certificates so “students would have at least some credential even if they
dropped out,” the study concludes.
Visit this site for the full article:
Adult Education (ESL, GED,College Prep) One Communities Response
Adult Basic Education includes such programs as English as a Second Language (ESL), General Educational Development (GED), College Prep and FastTRAC, which addresses the skills gap in the in-demand areas of the workforce by training educationally under-prepared adults in career-specific fields.
This article is about one local communities response.
http://mankatofreepress.com/sports/x2082763176/Adult-education-grows-as-economy-struggles
This article is about one local communities response.
http://mankatofreepress.com/sports/x2082763176/Adult-education-grows-as-economy-struggles
Community Colleges: A Bargain!
Recent studies indicate that
U.S. employers require 800 to 1,000 new photonics (laser and optics) technicians
each year. Despite this need, the 31 U.S. colleges that currently offer
photonics programs enroll fewer than 800 students and produce fewer than 300
new technicians each year.
Is it really necessary to spend
tens of thousands of dollars in pursuit of a college degree? Community colleges
offer an overlooked alternative.
Take a look at the full article
by visiting the link below:
Cracking the Credit Hour
Higher
education can be successfully organized on a basis other than time.
Federal
policy should encourage traditional institutions to think differently about how
they deliver and award credit for learning and also create a space for
nontraditional institutions and organizations to prove their ability to help
students achieve real, objectively verified learning outcomes.
But competency-based higher education remains relatively
uncharted territory. In an era when college degrees are simultaneously becoming
more important and more expensive, students and taxpayers can no longer afford
to pay for time and little or no evidence of learning.
Read more at the article found on this link:
Help Wanted; Assessing the Skills Gap (ICW report)
America remains a leader in innovation, but its workforce is
falling behind. Education and workforce development systems have not kept pace
with the demands of the 21st century, and we all bear the costs of
this failure… Basic training programs alone cannot bridge the skills gap. As a
result, more than 3 million jobs continue to go unfilled despite high, persistent
unemployment.
The choice is clear: We can act swiftly to bridge the U.S.
skills gap, or we can sit back and watch our competitors prosper while our
economy plods along.
So how do we bridge the skills gap?
In the attached report, we hear directly from the education and business leaders who strive to manage the skills gap challenge every day. They share with us the deficiencies in their current and future talent pools and outline their vision of what it will take for the United States to regain its footing as the most skilled workforce in the world.
These leaders ultimately remain confident that we can fix our education and workforce development systems, and they are prepared to work with local and national leaders to get the job done. We hope policymakers and education leaders will join us in putting America back to work
In the attached report, we hear directly from the education and business leaders who strive to manage the skills gap challenge every day. They share with us the deficiencies in their current and future talent pools and outline their vision of what it will take for the United States to regain its footing as the most skilled workforce in the world.
These leaders ultimately remain confident that we can fix our education and workforce development systems, and they are prepared to work with local and national leaders to get the job done. We hope policymakers and education leaders will join us in putting America back to work
~
of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. ICW promotes the rigorous educational standards and
effective job training systems needed to preserve the strength of America’s greatest economic
resource, its workforce.
© Institute for a Competitive Workforce, September 2012.
Higher Education and Business Partnerships
People entering the workforce, specifically students with
some form of higher education degree, do not have enough skills and education
to take on the jobs that are available.
Read the full artlicle at the below link:
Bridging the Skills Gap; Higher Education and Businesses work together
STEM Students Gap
Recent studies indicate that U.S. employers require 800 to 1,000 new photonics (laser and optics) technicians each year. Despite this need, the 31 U.S. colleges that currently offer photonics programs enroll fewer than 800 students and produce fewer than 300 new technicians each year.
Read the full article at the below link:
In dire need of STEM students
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