Apprenticeship is engrained in America's history -- three of the Founding Fathers started their careers as apprentices. Apprenticeship is a model employers can trust, helping to ensure talent is prepared for in-demand opportunities while also providing a quality postsecondary path for young Americans who are questioning the traditional four-year…

The further education (FE) sector in the UK, or post-compulsory education as it is often referred to, has undergone some radical changes in recent years. Historically, FE is synonymous with vocational education and training, providing communities with courses that tended to be in practical, non-academic subjects. Many FE lecturers came from…

According to Debra Bragg, Amy Pickard's article "WIOA: Implications for Low-Scoring Adult Learners" (EJ1125478) offers a provocative analysis of the federal Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA) that is important for any educator to read, especially educators who work with adult learners in postsecondary education. Pickard's…

Competency-based education (CBE) is a rapidly growing movement of postsecondary and K-12 programs that allow learners to move ahead based on what they know and can do, rather than time spent in class. At the postsecondary level, CBE could be a pathway that helps many thousands of learners move from poverty to prosperity. This paper considers how…

Prior research has classified strategies to facilitate adult learners' transitions to postsecondary opportunities into five broad categories: advising, General Educational Development-plus (GED-plus), English as a second language, career pathways, and college preparatory (Zafft, Kallenbach, & Spohn, 2006). This two-part study relied on…

There is a lack of coherence between education, training and work in Australia indicated by low proportions of VET graduates who work in occupations related to their qualification and mismatches between qualifications, skills and work. This paper discusses how student flows through tertiary education can further illustrate this lack of coherence.…

The current literature review explores the factors that contribute to academic persistence for adult learners. The aim of the study is to identify current research-based strategies aimed at supporting learner persistence, particularly for low-skilled adults. Elements of three theoretical frameworks, namely, expectancy-value theory (EVT), goal…

The Tennessee Higher Education Commission (THEC) was charged by state statute with developing a statewide Master Plan for the future development of public universities, community colleges, and colleges of applied technology, with input from the Board of Regents and the University of Tennessee Board of Trustees. The overriding function of the Plan…

For the last year, an independent panel chaired by Sir Adrian Webb has been evaluating the role of the further education (FE) sector in the delivery of education, lifelong learning, and skills in Wales. The challenges facing the panel were considerable and its remit broader than that of the Foster review in England. In response, the final report…

People learn in many different ways and in many different places. What is learned informally or experientially is often the same or similar to what may be learned in traditional formal learning environments. There are many reasons why recognizing experiential learning is viable educational option, more so in today's economy than ever before. Prior…

In contrast to traditional public administration in which public managers were responsible for meeting service targets set by politicians (e.g. a top-down, bureaucratic approach) and new public management (a more market-driven approach to public service provision that aimed to reduce the reach of government), public value aims to put the…

The human service industry has become a complex industry in which agencies must respond to the demands of the marketplace. To respond to these demands, agencies must develop and maintain their knowledge capital by offering an extensive array of learning opportunities related to their business goals. The corporate university, a contemporary…

In late 2006, the National Center on Education and the Economy released "Tough Choices or Tough Times: The Report of the New Commission on the Skills of the American Workforce." With compelling language, the report updated and sharpened the findings of the center's influential 1990 report, "America's Choice: High Skills or Low Wages," which called…

Analyzes four models for work place learning, focusing on their respective learning design models. Shows how work place education affects issues of deskilling, the objectification of the worker as human capital, and the reproduction of capitalist ideology and inequalities of gender, race, ethnicity, and class. Calls for new directions for adult…

This paper, the introductory chapter to a forthcoming book ("Financing Recurrent Education"), discusses the political and economic dimensions of life-long learning (recurrent education) and suggests methods by which a recurrent education system might be constructed and financed. The decline in youthful labor force entrants and forecasted changes…