This white paper analyzes the potential effects of requiring income-driven repayment for all federal loans as well as relying on paycheck withholding for loan payments, with particular attention to the implications for low-income students and families. The Institute for College Access & Success (TICAS) also examines the relevance and evolution…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to introduce the key themes in the area of the impact of demographic change on young workers and older workers in relation to education, skills and employment, as discussed in the papers included in this section. The authors have also drawn upon data from their project "From Young Workers to Older…

Government spending is declining, yet the need for jobs and training is higher than ever. The current supply of quality apprenticeships is clearly not sufficient to meet demand and that was highlighted this year when British Telecom received 24,000 applications for only 221 places on its apprenticeship programme. The main obstacle to increasing…

For highly educated refugee professionals who flee to the UK, gaining a university qualification is one of the key strategies which can be used to re-establish a professional identity and find employment, and yet little is known about their experiences in higher education. This article utilises Bourdieu's framework of field, capital and…

In Sen's Capability Approach (CA) well-being can be defined as the freedom of choice to achieve the things in life which one has reason to value most for his or her personal life. Capabilities are in Sen's vocabulary therefore the real freedoms people have or the opportunities available to them. In this paper we examine the impact of capabilities…

This paper gives an overview of the work of the recent independent Inquiry into the Future for Lifelong Learning in the UK. The author first outlines the range of the Inquiry, to give an idea of the overall context; this includes its application in each of the regions within the UK ( England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.). He turns then…

Human Capital Theory has been an increasingly important phenomenon in economic thought over the last 50 years. The central role it affords to education has become even more marked in recent years as the concept of the "knowledge economy" has become a global concern. In this paper, the prevalence of Human Capital Theory within European…

This article summarises previous academic research into university education, distinguishing between arguments for and against improving access. Several views are summarised, including structural-functionalism, which claims that powerful social groups maintain their status and income, and human capital theory, which focuses on employee…

Access to English for speakers of other languages (ESOL) courses is crucial for society, social cohesion and the economy. In 2006 it was estimated that 600,000 people in London alone had an ESOL need. In some parts of the country, as many as 50 per cent of adults have Entry-level ESOL needs. ESOL is no longer an issue only for urban areas. People…

This article presents an alternative approach to the dominant analysis of graduate employability, through a consideration of the dynamic and socially mediated interaction that graduates have with labour market. This interaction is largely constitutive of their dispositions and identities as graduates, and entails a dynamic interplay between…

This article discusses the RSA Opening Minds competence framework, an innovative curriculum to meet the needs of young people as future employees, lifelong learners and as citizens of the twenty-first century.

Purpose: The primary objective in this paper is to examine the role of small- to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in promoting and/or hindering educational opportunities to adult employees in the UK. Design/methodology/approach: The paper draws on 12 case studies of SMEs in England and Scotland, which form part of a larger European Sixth Framework…

This paper estimates the effects of human capital skills largely created through education on life's chances over the life cycle. Qualifications as a measure of these skills affect earnings, and schooling affects private and social non-market benefits beyond earnings. Private non-market benefits include better own-health, child health, spousal…

Using the 1991 to 2007 waves of the UK British Household Panel Survey (BHPS), the authors estimate a fixed effects specification that has as outcomes (i) earnings and (ii) an indicator of social position measured using the CAMSIS scale. Adopting a fixed effects specification enables them to isolate the role of lifelong learning on these two…

This paper examines the ways in which credentials from a range of education providers are used to (re)produce transnational financial elites in London's international financial district. Extant research has examined the long-standing relationship between educational background and entry into these financial labour markets. Far less attention has…