It is critical that K-12 and higher education rise to meet employer needs by providing more skills-based, workforce-relevant learning opportunities to students throughout the state of Tennessee. It will take close collaboration with the community and industry for the Tennessee State Board of Education to accomplish its mission of preparing every…

In late 2020, Congress passed the FAFSA Simplification Act, restoring access to federal Pell Grants for confined and incarcerated students for the first time since 1994. Following the reversal of this nearly 30-year ban, the U.S. Department of Education (ED) established a new application process for institutions of higher education seeking to…

High-quality work-based learning opportunities enable students to develop necessary skills and contribute to positive employment outcomes. State leaders are recognizing the value of work-based learning experiences -- not only for individuals but in service of state attainment and workforce development goals. As leaders recognize the value,…

This qualitative case study explores the Human Resource Development (HRD) interventions utilised in respect of local eco-skills with one marginalised group, the Roma, in the City of Liverpool, UK, and responds to HRD research calls into the cause of cycles of inequality. The case study illustrates the challenges experienced by precarious workers…

Community college students are an untapped reservoir of talent and including them in social work education aligns with the values of the profession. Yet these students encounter formidable obstacles on the path from a 2-year degree to an affordable social work degree. In this article, we describe the systems thinking underlying a newly instituted…

Delivering training in regional, rural and remote (RRR) Australia is not easy. Australia is a large, diverse country, and ensuring that training is suited to individual locations, which are unique in their landscapes, economies, industries and cultures, is challenging. There is an ongoing policy interest in making sure that the vocational…

Intermediaries play a complex and critical role in the growing work-based learning ecosystem, but little is known about the funding models that support them or how their funding approaches might vary depending on the programs they lead, where they sit within an ecosystem, or the nature of their relationships with other partners. To begin building…

Multi-institutional educational partnerships are a promising approach to developing the skilled technical workforce. Inexorably, the ability to maintain such partnership networks that support skilled technical workforce education was disrupted by COVID-19. The purpose of this study is to explore Southwest Virginia's science, technology,…

Millions of working Californians are unable to fulfill their families' basic needs. Higher-paying jobs that require specialized skills are beyond their reach, and many entry-level jobs are likely to be automated by 2022, so there is an urgent need to redesign the state's education and training systems to help people get the skills they need to…

Effective collaboration among schools and agencies is critical to the success of pre-employment transition services (pre-ETS). We examined the views of 596 middle and high school educators regarding pre-ETS and the employment prospects of their students with disabilities. Educators overwhelmingly affirmed that youth with disabilities needed better…

The announcement that Taiwanese manufacturing giant Foxconn will bring 13,000 jobs to Wisconsin and partner with Gateway Technical College is great news for the state's community and technical colleges and their students, but it's not particularly surprising. The state's two-year colleges have been notching all sorts of workforce development…

When it comes to digital literacy, how do we know what kind of skills America's workers need for the workplace, how they can best acquire them, and what competencies or credentials can help them signal their preparedness to employers? Over the past four months, National Skills Coalition staff interviewed business, education, and workforce leaders…

New York City is home to nearly 100 apprenticeship programs today, but the vast majority of them--93 percent--are in the building trades and manufacturing. As the demand for tech talent surges, the city has an enormous opportunity to leverage this powerful training model to expand pathways into technology careers. Arguably the most powerful tool…

Community colleges and non-traditional student populations, such as adult learners, often experience a unique set of academic and non-academic challenges. This is particularly true for those in rural America, where resources and community supports are less abundant. This report describes how rural community colleges are overcoming these barriers…

Community colleges are beginning to build on guided pathways reforms in partnership with employers, universities, and K-12 schools to create cross-sector pathways to college and career opportunities for students--particularly those students traditionally underserved by higher education. The aim is to improve economic mobility for community…