Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to explore an employability enhancement initiative, the Additional Skills Acquisition Programme (ASAP) project in the state of Kerala, India, as a case for the inclusive development of employability in college and university students. Design/methodology/approach: ASAP is applied as a case study to examine the…

The paper addresses the impact of COVID-19 on vocational education and training, seeking to discern the outline of possible directions for its future development within the debates about VET responses to the pandemic. The discussion is set in its socio-economic context, considering debates that engage with the social relations of care and…

Lifelong learning has been the subject of international policy debates and incremental developments over the past century. The purpose of this paper is to critically reflect on the neoliberal discourse of key competences for lifelong learning, which is promoted by the European Union as a self-sufficient policy solution that can cure a wide range…

This paper aims to present a general perspective of the actions developed by the Uruguayan Broad Front, which has been defined as an example of the reformed left in Latin America. The Broad Front governed Uruguay between 2005 and 2020. It implemented several alternative and innovative policies. Methodologically, the paper is empirically supported…

As part of the federally-funded grant project "SLIDE: The School Librarian Investigation--Decline or Evolution?" this study analyzed the status of school librarian employment for almost 13,000 U.S public school districts from 2018-19 and 2020-21. The purpose of the study was to learn how the COVID-19 pandemic, which radically disrupted…

When the coronavirus pandemic arrived, the United States was already deeply unequal. Before the pandemic, 140 million Americans were poor or near poor, living just one emergency above the poverty line. Inequality in the United States did not happen suddenly and cannot be explained as the consequence of individual failures; rather, decades of…

Each Labor Day the Keystone Research Center releases an annual checkup on the health of the Pennsylvania labor market, "The State of Working Pennsylvania." The 2018 edition focused on state-level data, mostly available through June 2018. This addendum to that report focuses on 2017 data released last month by the Census Bureau on incomes…

The Council on Postsecondary Education (Council) is charged with guiding the reform efforts envisioned by state policy leaders in the Kentucky Postsecondary Education Improvement Act of 1997 and is Kentucky's statewide postsecondary and adult education coordinating agency. To gain better insight into economic conditions and workforce trends,…

Could we combat poverty by reducing the number of unintended and nonmarital births? This article proposes a federal policy that would provide all women with information about, and free access to, a range of contraceptive services, including long-acting reversible contraceptives; reviews what it is that we do and do not know; discusses several…

The COVID-19 pandemic crisis has exposed the glaring inequities in school systems -- from the broadband and computers needed for online education to training teachers to keep classes going digitally. Most education systems were nimble: they rethought the curriculum, embraced hybrid learning, adjusted school calendars and schedules, and adapted…

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.

A landmark new study reported that upward mobility in the Keystone State since the late 1990s exceeded that in most parts of the United States. This report, focused on more recent trends, contains some bad economic news. It shows that Pennsylvania's economy has performed poorly from the perspective of typical working families since the end of…

Across national contexts, in the attempt to develop and buttress "knowledge economies", increasing pressure is placed on the need for flexible lifelong learners capable of constant knowledge and skills renewal. In this paper, I explore the impact of this broader sociopolitical context on the policy approach to poverty and, in particular,…

Turkey regulates the special education of students with disabilities and, particularly, those who have intellectual disabilities (ID) based on international and national legal texts. However, the gap between law and practice cannot be denied. The existence of obstacles to special education for students with disabilities or ID continues in Turkey.…

The labour markets in Mexico are characterised by uncertainty in terms of the lack of work contracts social protection, unemployment, high level of self-employed workers independently and micro-businesses, low income levels, the involuntary part-time working and low levels of unionisation. They all indicate that the labour situation currently…