The U.S. Department of Education (Department) Office of Inspector General (OIG) Strategic Plan for Fiscal Years (FY) 2023 through 2028 represents the planned direction of the organization for FYs 2023-2028. It continues the 40-plus year commitment to the mission to promote the efficiency, effectiveness, and integrity of the Department's programs…

College has become a risky proposition for students as well as taxpayers. Fewer than six in 10 students who start a degree will ever finish, which means that they won't see a return on the money they've spent to attend--and if they took out a loan from the federal government, they might be left with unaffordable debt. In the latter case, the…

Recent changes in education and training policy in England continue to focus on creating a 'demand-led' system in an environment where public funds are dwindling and where more responsibility is being devolved away from central government. This raises questions about governance of the system, among others, and the roles that key system actors are…

The National Reporting System (NRS) is the accountability system for the federally funded, State-administered adult education program. It addresses the accountability requirements of the Adult Education and Family Literacy Act, Title II of the Workforce Investment Act (WIA-P.L.105-220). This document presents (1) the NRS measures that allow…

The Australian federal government is preparing a new higher education quality assurance framework under the leadership of the recently established Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency (TEQSA). Groundwork for this framework included a major national demonstration project to develop outcome-based graduate standards in a selected range of…

Accreditation in the United States is about quality assurance and quality improvement. It is a process to scrutinize higher education institutions and programs. Accreditation is private (nongovernmental) and nonprofit--an outgrowth of the higher education community and not of government. It is funded primarily by the institutions and programs that…

The overall aim of this volume of essays is to honor Frank B. Murray's commitments to empirically-based quality assurance and to the development of increasingly effective systems of quality control in educator preparation programs. As the editors approached the authors with the invitation to contribute an essay, two characteristic aspects of…

This report shares the findings from the first nationally representative survey of young people's perspectives on mentoring. While mentoring is needed and wanted by young people to help them stay on the path to high school graduation, college success, and productive adulthood, a significant mentoring gap exists in America, especially for at-risk…

Accreditation in higher education originated as a means of communicating useful information about the quality of various institutions of higher education. Yet, over the past half century accreditation has evolved into a system for determining eligibility for the receipt of funds from third parties, most notably the federal government, but also in…

Modern Australia evolved from separate colonies, which came together as a federation a century ago. The balance of state/federal responsibilities is relevant to most aspects of Australian life. This includes higher education, where universities are largely state owned but federally funded (with government funding declining), while the other higher…

Last month, higher education company the Apollo Group, Inc. (Apollo) confirmed that it entered into an agreement with the United States (US) federal government to resolve a long-standing lawsuit concerning its subsidiary, the for-profit University of Phoenix (Phoenix). Originating in 2003, the False Claims Act lawsuit filed by university officials…

The challenge of creating evidence-based practice bedevils a number of fields. In education, the federal government has historically placed substantial responsibility for translational research in the hands of the Regional Educational Laboratories (RELs), which were established in 1966 as part of the original Elementary and Secondary Education Act…

With the presidential candidates both underscoring their support for entrepreneurial initiatives in education, policy experts are advancing ideas for helping such efforts flourish. In their October 15 debate at Hofstra University, both Senators John McCain of Arizona and Barack Obama of Illinois used questions on education to talk about school…

Presented herein is a statement of George A. Scott, Director Education, Workforce, and Income Security. The author discusses the extent to which the Department of Education's policies and procedures for monitoring eligibility requirements for federal aid at proprietary schools protect students and the investment of Title IV funds. This testimony…

Technological innovation is driving fundamental changes in all aspects of our lives. This is especially true of digital content, as our use of e-books, downloadable music, streaming television and movies, and online social networks has exploded. However, the explosive growth in our use of digital content seems so far to have eluded many of the 50…