While current debates center on whether and how to admit immigrants to the United States, little attention has been paid to interventions designed to help immigrants integrate after they arrive. Public adult education programs are the primary policy lever for building the language skills of the over 23 million adults with limited English…

Diploma and degree completion have become the fundamental standard for judging the performance of secondary and postsecondary educational institutions. Increasingly, leaders of education and workforce policy and programs assume that these measures of attainment effectively serve as indicators of adequate levels of essential literacy and numeracy…

We examine the importance of adult functional literacy skills for individuals using a quantile regression methodology. The inclusion of the direct measure of basic skills reduces the return to schooling by 27%, equivalent to two additional years of schooling, while a one standard deviation increase in the score increases earnings by 20%. For those…

The purpose of this article is to assess the course content relevance in contributing to wage- or self-employment of adult non-formal education and training (NFET) in the context of South Africa. The concern that informed this article is that adults who face long-term unemployment due to a lack of marketable skills remain unemployed after…

This paper presents a comprehensive analysis of the link between age and proficiency in information-processing skills, based on information drawn from the Survey of Adult Skills (PIAAC). The data reveal significant age-related differences in proficiencies, strongly suggesting that proficiency tends to "naturally" decline with age. Age…

We study returns to academic specialisation for Indian corporate sector workers by analysing cross-sectional data on male employees randomly selected from six large firms. Our analysis shows that going to college pays off, as it brings significant incremental returns over and above school education. However, the increase in returns is more…

This article documents a model for forecasting earnings of the nontraditional student based on macrolevel changes in educational attainment within the workforce using data from the U.S. Census Bureau. It also presents a theoretical case that illustrates the value of improving one's educational attainment level in order to sustain an annualized…

Several recent studies across the social sciences show that the spatial agglomeration of employment in a local labor market benefits both firms and workers in terms of better firm performance and higher wages. Drawing from the organizational ecology perspective, we argue that workers receive higher wages in large industrial clusters and urban…

This study investigates the economic outcomes of education for wage earners in Pakistan. This is done by analysing the relationship between schooling, cognitive skills and ability, on the one hand, and economic activity, occupation, sectoral choice and earnings, on the other. In Pakistan, an important question remains largely unaddressed: what…

Innovation is the key to productivity growth and prosperity. Most empirical cross-country analysis of the determinants of innovation focus mainly on developed countries. The objective of this study is to fill this gap in the research and analyze the determinants of innovation in transition countries of Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Union.…

"Research messages 2011" is a collection of summaries of research projects published by National Centre for Vocational Education Research (NCVER) in 2011. The publication also has an overview essay that captures the themes and highlights from the research for the year, including: (1) the initial education and training of young people and…

In this article, in a context of wage equations with sample selection, we propose a novel interpretation of the partial effects linked to education as additional measures of returns to education that complement the traditional one, which is directly obtained from the estimation of the wage offer equation. Using European Household Panel data for…

While public attention remains focused on the highest unemployment numbers in a generation, New York City is drifting toward a structural crisis with which policy makers could be grappling long after the recession fades to a bad memory. Even as the concerns about financial capital that spurred the downturn begin to subside, public officials must…

The Commonwealth of Virginia, as with other states, operates a panoply of programs whose objectives, either directly or indirectly, are to develop the state's workforce. Some programs enhance the skills of Virginians through training or formal education; whereas other programs, such as the Employment Service, attempt to facilitate the employment…

This paper reviews the literature on job-related training and the effects of these investments for different groups of individuals. The paper also elaborates on the theories, empirical explanations, and policy implications that can be drawn from these findings. Employer-provided training is by far the most important source of further education and…