This report provides a deep dive into higher ed admissions employees, who play a key role in the future sustainability of colleges and universities. In addition to highlighting the pay and size of the admissions workforce, the report focuses on time in position, diversity, and pay equity. Taken together, we find that colleges and universities have…

Child care and early education (CCEE) educators typically have low levels of compensation; limited opportunities for education, training, and professional development; inconsistent working conditions; and high levels of stress and burnout. There are also high rates of job turnover, which can strain remaining educators and decrease the quality of…

Postsecondary education (PSE) is more than just a learning opportunity for people with intellectual disability--it's an effective pathway to competitive employment and financial independence. Research shows PSE leads to higher employment rates and increased wages for people with intellectual disability, and long-term cost savings for supporting…

This paper estimates returns to education during a period of sharp wage cuts in Greece, considering both the endogenous nature of education and women's self-selection. Findings suggest that dramatic wage declines were followed by sharp decreases in returns to education, while the documented convergence of returns between genders is an added…

In 2021, Child Trends was selected to conduct a literature review and develop a policy and practice report to map the history of systemic racism in the U.S. and how it has influenced early childhood education (ECE) policy and practice, with a particular focus on educator pay and benefits, preparation, and workforce stability. This report…

The author of this article provides an example of how one might incorporate behavioral economics into teaching macroeconomics or labor economics at an undergraduate level. The focus is on two macroeconomic concepts--wage determination and the Phillips curve--and shows that the implications and conclusions of both models differ from their textbook…

In 2021, the DC Council established the Early Childhood Educator Pay Equity Fund ("Pay Equity Fund") to improve compensation for early educators in licensed child development centers and homes. The fund leverages a tax on individuals earning more than $250,000 a year to sustainably fund supplemental payments to early educators in efforts…

Recent years have seen accelerating interest in measuring the employment outcomes of recent college graduates. New data tools and research, such as the College Scorecard, increasingly sophisticated state-level data systems, and studies investigating students' long-term economic mobility, continue to roll out. While postgraduate wages have been an…

Meritocracy is a rationality that has significantly shaped the lives of people in modern societies, and today we all more or less believe that those who are smart, capable and hardworking will succeed in life. This seems to be a rule that applies in more or less all areas of public life. In the Western world, evaluating and judging ourselves and…

Students who have dropped out of high school--and those at risk of doing so--are at greater risk of lifelong poverty, involvement with the criminal justice system, dependence on government welfare programs, and even premature death. In the last few years, however, the problems at high schools have compounded, as pandemic-era school closures led to…

Companies are facing a persistent and growing skills gap, which has been exacerbated by the tight labor market. Employers use industry certifications, college degrees, boot camps, and badges to measure job skills, but until recently it was impossible to compare certifications or degree attainment. This paper describes credential transparency and…

The number of jobs in computer science (CS) and information technology (IT) is projected to grow rapidly in the United States over the next decade as the demand for workers expands and current CS and IT workers retire. Against the larger backdrop of growth in CS and IT employment and wages nationally, Ohio is looking for ways to grow and diversify…

Each year, millions of high school students consider whether to continue their schooling and attend and complete college. Despite strong evidence that a college degree yields far-reaching benefits, some critics of higher education increasingly argue that college "does not pay off" and that some students--namely, disadvantaged prospective…

The purpose of this memorandum is to affirm that funds available under the Carl D. Perkins Career and Technical Education Act of 2006, as amended by the Strengthening Career and Technical Education for the 21st Century Act (Perkins V), may be used to develop, improve, and support Registered Apprenticeship (RA) programs that are part of the…

Textbook data is essential for teaching statistics and data science methods because it is clean, allowing the instructor to focus on methodology. Ideally textbook datasets are refreshed regularly, especially when they are subsets taken from an ongoing data collection. It is also important to use contemporary data for teaching, to imbue the sense…