By prioritizing engagement opportunities, faculty development programs have the potential to help participants build relationships with available support systems, consider the perspectives and needs of their students, and interact with a community of practice. This article considers the engagement strategies that remain core to a professional…

There are nearly 1 million credentials in the United States that students and workers can take advantage of, but how information about these credentials is collected and communicated is oftentimes inconsistent and hard to access. In February, we invited a group of postsecondary and workforce development experts to consider how policymakers can…

Facilitated networking, integrated into professional development programs, allows faculty participants to foster opportunities for engagement while strengthening collaborative relationships that help to humanize digital learning. This article considers the networking that is central to a professional development program that credentials faculty at…

Earning industry certifications helps people prepare for jobs in a range of careers. Doing so in high school may help students prepare for college as well. Using administrative data on two cohorts of first-time 9th graders in Florida, we examined whether earning a certification was associated with postsecondary enrollment and degree attainment and…

Earning industry certifications helps people prepare for jobs in a range of careers. Doing so in high school may help students prepare for college as well. Using administrative data on two cohorts of first-time 9th graders in Florida, we examined whether earning a certification was associated with postsecondary enrollment and degree attainment and…

Research suggests that high-quality work-based learning (WBL) can be a promising approach to solving the leaky pipeline for undertapped demographic groups such as women and students of color, including for STEM fields Community colleges are especially important vehicles for WBL due to their diverse student populations and their partnerships with…

Higher education faces increasing demands to take a more active and direct role in assuring employability for students. Micro-credentialing and badging is a growing movement, attractive for its flexibility and efficiency in connecting students with careers and jobs. This paper presents a case study of the development and pilot of an…

The MLIS curriculum gap and nonteaching academic librarian's teaching identity development comprise the problem under investigation. The purpose of this interpretive phenomenological analysis was to examine the meaning of nonteaching academic librarians' experiences in north and northcentral Florida with information literacy (IL) instruction, and…

Florida is experiencing a shortage of high-quality mathematics teachers. According to the Florida Department of Education (FLDOE), there was a critical shortage of K-12 mathematics teachers (among several other subject areas) at the start of the 2022-2023 school year (FLDOE, 2022). In this report, the authors present selected findings from the…

As the U.S. workforce ages, baby boomers retire, and birth rates decline, the United States is facing an estimated shortfall of 8 million workers between now and 2027. At the same time, the U.S. economy is becoming ever more knowledge-based. Having a marketable postsecondary credential, whether an academic degree or a professional certification or…

The quality of care children receive from birth to kindergarten sets them on a trajectory for successful entry to school. Children who receive high-quality care, which is provided by qualified early educators with demonstrated mastery of the essential early learning core competencies, enter school ready to learn. Shortages of credentialed early…

States face transformational disruptions in education and work that have further widened skill and equity gaps. Area technical centers (ATCs) are under-utilized public educational institutions that are powerful tools in expanding equitable pathways for learners to gain postsecondary credentials that lead to meaningful careers while helping states…

This report from JFF with a select group of community college practitioners, makes the case for policymakers, employers and practitioners to invest in and strengthen short-term credentialing programs to rapidly retrain unemployed workers for better career prospects, especially workers affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. It includes key commitments…

This study illustrates a method for evaluating the accuracy of performance metrics and identifies potential institutional and student attributes that may increase the likelihood of classification errors. Longitudinal data were obtained from the Integrated Postsecondary Eduation Data System for public 4-year institutions (N = 558) to evaluate…

State policymakers recognize the economic imperative to ensure that education and training are connected to good jobs. Employers are seeking -- and are often struggling -- to hire appropriately skilled workers. For job seekers, the path to a good job with education beyond a high school diploma is certainly clearer than one without postsecondary…