Employers need a pipeline of quality workers with different levels of skill and desired earnings. Almost half of U.S. jobs today can be defined as "middle skill" jobs, requiring less than a four-year degree but more than a high school diploma. The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) occupational projections indicate that job categories for…

Education is key to America's economic success as technological change and global competition increase exponentially. Unfortunately, where once the nation was atop the world academically, today American students rank in the middle of the pack. Not surprisingly, business leaders and the American public are concerned about the quality of American…

The U.S. economy today has been in recovery since 2009. But nearly everyone agrees that the recovery is anemic--too slow to reduce the high level of unemployment. Real Gross Domestic Product (GDP)--the total value of all the goods and services produced in the United States--increased at an annual rate of 2.8 percent in the fourth quarter of 2010.…

Until the global financial crisis, neo-liberalism had appeared invincible. This article examines the global rise of neo-liberalism and its impact on education, particularly its treatment of the social democratic ideal of equality. Drawing on examples from education and other socio-political factors, it considers whether the financial crisis is…

Purpose: This paper takes an empirical approach to determining the effect that a critical access hospital (CAH) has on local retail activity. Previous research on the relationship between hospitals and economic development has primarily focused on single-case, multiplier-oriented analysis. However, as the efficacy of federal and state-level rural…

Despite the significant implications of the foreign doctorates' stay or return decision on a personal level, as well as for the home and host countries, there is very little research that provides a comprehensive understanding of the factors that predict international doctorates' decision to stay in the US and how those factors differ by country…

The term "public pedagogy" first appeared in 1894 and has been widely deployed as a theoretical construct in education research to focus on processes and sites of education beyond formal schooling, with a proliferation of its use by feminist and critical theorists occurring since the mid-1990s. This integrative literature review provides the first…

Creativity is acknowledged to be important for economic growth and as an everyday life-skill, however several influential reports have suggested that education could do more to harness creative talent. Creative cognition literature suggests the lack of creativity is at least partly the result of "fixation" (difficulty in generating novel…

It's no secret within the academic or manufacturing communities that community colleges are the nation's training ground for industrial-skilled trade careers. But outside community college classrooms and industrial plants, many people are in the dark about the growing numbers of these often-well-paid and in-demand jobs. This article introduces the…

Academic entrepreneurship has become an increasingly important means by which universities can contribute to the economic development of a country. In Italy, universities have produced more than 700 academic spin-off companies in the last ten years. This paper uses case studies to develop an understanding of the key factors that underpin the…

The brain-drain caused by imbalanced economic development has produced a lack of qualified teachers in rural China. Short-term volunteer teaching has emerged as a response. Despite the popularity of such programs, little systematic data have been gathered regarding their strengths and weaknesses. A short-term volunteer teaching program was…

A widely held view is that good schools are essential to a nation's international economic success and that high test scores on international tests of academic skills and knowledge indicate how good a nation's schools are. The widespread belief that good schools are an important contributor to a nation's economic success in the world is supported…

Given the increasing power of neoliberal and neoconservative agendas in education internationally, critically democratic policies and practices are now even more important. Yet, one of the major problems with critical work in education has been the fact that some of the academic leaders of the "critical pedagogy" movement and of critical…

In Less Developed Countries (LDCs), most graduates from higher institutions of learning are absorbed in the informal sector and/or micro and small enterprises. Knowledge development through training, research and experiential learning may lead to creating or discovering new knowledge/technology or creating new value, by applying…

Background: Physicality in human movement characteristic of indigenous sporting forms in Africa is grounded in a multitude of cultures. During the period of colonial Africa, there was the introduction of British sporting forms, policies, and practices in schools and society. It was through schools and missions that the colonists introduced sport…