Economic projections show that skills-based technological change across industries and occupations will support rising demand for postsecondary education and training. By 2025, the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce projects that 68 percent of the jobs in Iowa will require some level of postsecondary education. A key…

At this moment, roughly 12 million Americans are unable to find work, with more than 40 percent of that number unemployed for six months or more. At the same time, current estimates put the number of job vacancies in this country at 3 million per month. The most popular explanation for this apparent paradox, the one put forth by former President…

For decades, the popular conception of a college student in this country has been the full-time residential financially dependent student who enrolls in a four-year college immediately after graduating from high school. That student has not been the norm at U.S. postsecondary institutions for more than 30 years. Such students exist but they are…

As health care providers, patients, and employers adjust to the changes related to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, which promises to extend medical coverage to thirty million previously uninsured Americans, community colleges are gearing up to keep pace with rising economic and societal demands for medical and allied health…

This executive summary highlights several findings about healthcare. These are: (1) Healthcare is 18 percent of the U.S. economy, twice as high as in other countries; (2) There are two labor markets in healthcare: high-skill, high-wage professional and technical jobs and low-skill, low-wage support jobs; (3) Demand for postsecondary education in…

The generative economic power and social influence of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) has made the production of a capable science and engineering workforce a priority among business and policy leaders. They are rightly concerned that without a robust STEM workforce, the nation will become less competitive in the global…