The COVID-19 pandemic brought unprecedented economic and policy challenges to the United States and other countries. Navigating out of the pandemic slowdown is another novel experience, which makes it more difficult to answer the question addressed each year in the "State of Working Pennsylvania": How is the Pennsylvania economy…

The United States and Pennsylvania economies are at a pivot point: Will we build forward better or will we build back the same? Will we make things even worse? This report revisits the policy choices that lie ahead. Most of this annual checkup on the Pennsylvania economy, the 26th "State of Working Pennsylvania," presents labor market…

Shifting realities across the world have emphasized the need to change early childhood systems thinking. Specifically, a quality early childhood workforce was in high demand before the COVID-19 pandemic and will continue to be in demand until sustainable recruitment and retention efforts are achieved. Encouraging more professionals to enter and…

The labour market outcomes for native- and foreign-born adults during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic vary considerably across countries -- with inequalities in employment even falling in some cases compared to 2017. In contrast with the 2008 financial crisis, greater educational attainment does not seem to have had a clear protective…

This position paper reviews four intersecting trends impacting the burnout and turnover of clinical staff in counseling centers in the 2020s: ever expanding service demand, mismatched clinical models, the emergence of third party vendors, and uncompetitive salaries. The authors provide a framework and make recommendations for institutions to take…

For more than a decade, academics and education policy experts have raised concerns about a widespread shortage of teachers in the United States. The first wave of warnings came in response to the drastic cuts in state and local spending on education following the Great Recession. In this report, the authors use data from a wide range of sources…

This current dissertation used case study (Yin, 2018) to examine United States female college students' perceptions of their financial literacy, especially with respect to their debt accumulation and the gender wage gap, at a public, 4-year institution in New Jersey. It answered the following research questions: How are student debt, financial…

Further education (FE) plays a key part in the post-16 educational landscape in England in delivering technical and academic education that is vital to the country's supply of skilled workers. Yet, despite this importance, the sector has been facing significant challenges in recent years, including critical staff shortages in some subject areas.…

We analyzed data from 28,601 students enrolled at nine large, public research-intensive universities who completed the Student Experience in the Research University (SERU) COVID-19 survey. Students from underrepresented and marginalized backgrounds had significantly higher odds of experiencing financial hardships compared to their peers, including…

This paper engages with current debate on the role of the university following COVID-19, exposing the ongoing corruption of traditional values of the tertiary sector, and the shift in teaching and learning expectations across the academy. It highlights the negative impact of the huge decline in government funding since the 1990s, salary inequity,…

The American Association for Adult and Continuing Education (AAACE) is dedicated to the belief that lifelong learning contributes to human fulfillment and positive social change. The mission of the AAACE is to provide leadership for the field of adult and continuing education by expanding opportunities for adult growth and development; unifying…

This is an update to the report "Deeper in Debt: Women and Student Loans." Americans today carry $1.54 trillion in student loan debt. That number has more than doubled over the last decade--increasing at nearly six times the rate of inflation. Women are particularly burdened, holding nearly two-thirds of all outstanding loans--around…