Despite decades and hundreds of billions of dollars of federal and state investment in policies to promote postsecondary educational attainment as a key lever for increasing the economic mobility of lower income populations, research continues to show large and meaningful differences in the mid-career earnings of students from families in the…

Recent years have seen accelerating interest in measuring the employment outcomes of recent college graduates. New data tools and research, such as the College Scorecard, increasingly sophisticated state-level data systems, and studies investigating students' long-term economic mobility, continue to roll out. While postgraduate wages have been an…

The "Code of Virginia" vests the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia (SCHEV) with the responsibility to develop a statewide strategic plan that reflects statutory goals for higher education in the Commonwealth, identifies a coordinated approach to such state and regional goals, and emphasizes the future needs for higher…

Using detailed administrative data from Virginia, this paper examines whether community college "vertical transfer" students who resemble "native four-year" students in their accumulated college-level credits and performance at their point of entry into the four-year sector perform equally well in terms of both academic and…

Year Up's Professional Training Corps (PTC) adapted its successful workforce program for low-income young adults to operate in college settings to reduce costs and enhance scalability. The one-year program provides six months of training in basic academic, professional, and occupational skills, extensive supports, a behavior contract, and a…

Policymakers have become increasingly concerned with measuring--and holding colleges accountable for--students' labor market outcomes. In this article we introduce a piecewise growth curve approach to analyzing community college students' labor market outcomes, and we discuss how this approach differs from two popular econometric approaches:…

The State Council of Higher Education for Virginia (SCHEV) has produced new reporting tools of graduate wage outcomes out to twenty years post completion. These reports are available at the statewide level by program discipline (two-digit level of the Classification of Instructional Programs). It was found that reported wages increase by level of…

Many community college students start college in developmental education and leave before enrolling in college-level coursework or making much progress toward a degree; thus, developmental education courses represent the primary education these students receive. Using student-unit record data from two large community college systems linked to wage…

This report examines how technology and automation are changing the job market -- and what states can do to prepare adults for the new workplace. It analyzes shifts from low- to middle-skills jobs, details current education levels, and offers recommendations for retooling adult education programs.

Calls to increase the number of undergraduate STEM credential recipients have largely failed to differentiate between sub-baccalaureate and four-year credentials at the undergraduate level, which is problematic for workforce development. In this paper, the authors develop a classification system for sub-baccalaureate STEM credentials that is…

Virginia faces a future in which higher education will play an increasingly important role. Virginians will need deeper and broader knowledge and skills to be engaged, productive participants in the evolving Commonwealth and its economy. At the same time, the demographics of the emerging generation are changing, as an increasing share of youth…

In every state in the South, the percentage of residents with bachelor's degrees or higher who were born outside the state exceed the percentage born in-state, reflecting their dependence on imported talent over building their own talent-development systems. In Virginia, the Southern state with the highest percentage of residents with a B.A. or…

America and the South seem to have turned a corner on the deep and prolonged recession that started in 2008. The stranglehold it has had on jobs and job prospects caught many by surprise, and it has caused education leaders to refocus state policy on the relationship between career preparation and education. This report provides updates on the…

The Virginia Plan for Higher Education, now in its sixth year, charts a course to make Virginia the best-educated state by 2030. The State Council of Higher Education for Virginia developed The Virginia Plan as part of its statutory role to "advocate for and promote the development and operation of an educationally and economically sound,…

At a time of sustained unemployment and sluggish job growth, students and policymakers are increasingly asking tough questions about postsecondary education and training outcomes. Do graduates find jobs? What are they paid? What will they earn in the future? Despite growing national interest in this information, good answers are not widely…