"Return on Investment in College Education" is the second publication in a series of informational briefings developed as part of The Guardians Initiative: Reclaiming the Public Trust, an effort to educate and engage trustees as advocates on key issues in higher education. What is the return on investment (ROI) in college education?…

The Certification Data Exchange Project (CDEP) was launched in 2012 to provide a model for sharing industry-recognized credential attainment data. Increasingly, employers and education leaders are recognizing the value of industry credentials to verify the knowledge, skills and abilities that students bring to the workforce. As states take steps…

Every person deserves the opportunity for dignified employment that provides living wages and potential for advancement. However, for many in America today, this is far from reality, as they are caught in a cycle of low-wage work, earning poverty wages, and unable to move up in the economy. Local leaders, firms, and workers need to adapt quickly…

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.

In this comparative content analysis, job postings for academic advising personnel from U.S. and Canadian higher education institutions were examined to ascertain expectations for job candidates in terms of skills and duties, educational requirements, and compensation. Fifty-three job descriptions from 18 research-intensive, public universities…

Stackable credentials--sequential postsecondary awards that allow individuals to progress on a career path--have been suggested as a way to enhance the labor market prospects of middle-skill workers. Yet, thus far, little evidence has been provided on the economic value of these credentials. Here, we report a series of estimates on the association…

The gender wage gap in the United States is a well-documented social and economic phenomenon. The Equal Pay Act of 1963 has done little to bring parity between men's and women's wages. Existing data show a relationship between race, age, geography, immigration, education, and women's pay status. This study analyzes wage disparity within higher…

Ample evidence indicates that a person's human capital is important for success on the labor market in terms of both wages and employment prospects. However, unlike the efforts to identify the impact of school attainment on labor-market outcomes, the literature on returns to cognitive skills has not yet provided convincing evidence that the…

The stratification system in India has resulted in the socioeconomic inequality in society and defines women domestic workers as one of the lowest segments of society. This qualitative and quantitative study aims at describing the problems of female domestic workers, the relationship of their employers with them, and exploring the impact of…

An effective teacher is the most important school-based determinant of education outcomes. Therefore it is crucial that school districts recruit and retain high-quality teachers. This is increasingly challenging given that the supply of teachers has been greatly affected by high early to mid-career turnover rates, annual retirements of longtime…

Colorado has the second most-educated adult populace, but largely because it imports college-educated labor from other states. Almost 56 percent of Coloradans have a high-quality certificate, associate's degree, bachelor's degree, or higher. Yet at the same time Colorado has the fifth lowest high school graduation rate in the nation. The state's…

Adolescents face daily tradeoffs between human capital investment, labor, and leisure. This paper exploits state variation in the repeal of Sunday closing laws to examine the impact of a distinct and plausibly exogenous rise in the quantity of competing diversions available to youth on their educational attainment. The results suggest that the…

The main objective of this study is to empirically test a number of theory-based models (i.e., fixed effects [FE], random effects [RE], and aggregated residuals [AR]) to measure the generic knowledge as well as the degree attainment rates and early labor outcomes gained by students in different programs and institutions in higher education. Our…

Today, more than 60 percent of teachers in the United States work under a union contract. The rights of teachers to unionize and bargain together have expanded dramatically since the late 1950s, when states began passing "duty-to-bargain" (DTB) laws that required school districts to negotiate with teachers unions in good faith. Recently,…

The State of the Early Childhood Workforce (SECW) Initiative is a groundbreaking multi-year project to shine a steady spotlight on the nation's early childhood workforce. The SECW Initiative is designed to challenge entrenched ideas and policies that maintain an inequitable and inadequate status quo for early educators and for the children and…