As the largest funder of adult basic education (ABE) in the nation, providing over $600 million through its Basic Grants to States (U.S. Department of Education, 2019), the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA) drives ABE policies and practices. In a review of the announcement on Title II, the phrase "transition to" is repeated…

In this commentary, the authors review one area of federal policy, adult basic education policy, since its inception in the 1960s as an example of how educational policy can drift from its broad purpose as it responds to political, social, and economic forces. The authors argue that its current narrow focus on workforce development underestimates…

In this policy forum commentary, we call for improved national and state-level data collection and access relevant to the principal pipeline. We focus specifically on how access to quality data can inform, has informed, and is critical to policy and practice across three segments of the principal pipeline--principal preparation, licensure, and…

In April 2013, "NEJHE" launched its "New Directions for Higher Education" series to examine emerging issues, trends and ideas that have an impact on higher education policies, programs and practices. In this installment, DiSalvio interviews Matthew Sigelman, CEO of Burning Glass Technologies, a Boston-based labor market…

Higher education is at a crossroads, not only in the U.S. but also globally. This challenge is prompting an immigrant union to once again take up the labor movement's historic role of speaking for the common good and the broad interests of working people. Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Local 615 represents 18,000 property service…

From the "sexual behaviour of young people" in the 1960s to "youth and the great recession" in the 2000s a steady current running through the author's educational research career has been "youth". Although the early stages of his career supplied the foundations for the topic of this paper--starting in 1962 with a…

A focus of Government policy has been the need to ensure that those at the lower end of the labour market invest in their human capital through re-engaging with learning, which has been assumed to enable progress into better-paid employment. This article explores the problems created by "bad jobs" and the evidence for the existence of a…

In our knowledge-based world, the societies that prosper are the ones that generate knowledge--through research, through the interwoven relationship between the academe and funded research bodies and with industry. They are the new "centre". It is strange indeed to think of the countries of the Arab Gulf States as the…

This paper was presented to a meeting of the Wellington Exchange, an international group of higher education officials, in December 2008. One of the topics of the meeting was around the issue of possible skills shortages emerging as a result of demographic trends, with the ageing of the population of developed countries. The paper argues that this…

The studies in this issue break the mold of the traditional stage model of the development and testing of evidence-based interventions (EBIs) within the confines of highly controlled studies (Onken, Blaine, & Battjes, 1997). Although this approach has merits, the need for EBIs in school settings has outpaced their deployment. The authors of these…

The article focuses on how the present vocational education and training (VET) system in Australia might be modified to better accommodate possible VET futures change. It begins with the premise that VET's role is to contribute to skills acquisition through "formal" education and training. The authors propose a simple VET futures role…

Since its creation in 1958, the European Social Fund (ESF) has played a major role in supporting the development of vocational training in the Member States. However, compared to other, more recently launched, EU programmes and initiatives in the area of education and training, the ESF has not made a significant contribution to the debate about…

This article argues that the work of school principals in South Africa is shaped by two major sets of constructs or "landscapes": the literature on leadership and management which provides particular constructions of the field and its changes; and the terrain of new policy frameworks adopted after apartheid to transform the education…

Modern business discourse suggests that a key bulwark against market fluctuation and the threat of failure is for organizations to become "agile'", a more dynamic and proactive position than that previously afforded by mere "flexibility". The same idea is also directed at the personal level, it being argued that the…

The three papers in this document cover issues related to labor force analysis and educational investment in developing countries. They present an overview of the present situation, advocate the replacement of a dominant technique by a well-structured planning process, and suggest the wide range of analytic approaches available and necessary if…