Context: Research increasingly suggests that the high school diploma has lost its meaning as a symbol of life preparation. Having faced economic struggles earlier and longer than most regions of the United States, the "Rust Belt" region offers important lessons for the broader nation regarding how high schools might prepare youth for…

The Skills for Life (SfL) initiative followed the Moser Report (1999) and incarnated a Third Way agenda that sought to address England's perceived adult skills deficit. SfL marked a large investment in adult education but also a distinct shift to a more focused, instrumentalist role for Further Education (FE) in England. A new structure of teacher…

The aim of this article is to exemplify the value of using a phenomenological approach when investigating graduates' lived experiences of vocational learning. For this study, qualitative data was obtained during a series of email interviews with 35 participants. As a group they are highly aspirational and, during their graduate studies, were…

Peer assessment is utilized extensively in digital learning, and many studies have examined the positive influences of online peer assessment on learning (eg, Tseng & Tsai, 2007). However, other studies indicate that this type of activity has negative influences. For example, students may question the fairness of an assessment or disagree with…

Community engagement in higher education is a shift beyond the traditional roles of instruction and research. This paper presents a transnational view of community engagement developed from two case studies of universities in the Philippines and Australia. The study, revealed variations in the way community engagement is understood and implemented…

In the current economic climate, alumni associations are taking hard looks at their budgets and making cuts where necessary. However, the recession is an opportunity for alumni associations to create and build alumni loyalty through networking and career services--when they are needed most. Many alumni association budgets are set through the end…

School administrators in California are getting greater flexibility in how they spend more than $300 million intended for instructional materials, along with encouragement to use some free digital textbooks for high school courses, as a result of cost-cutting measures brought on by the state's budget crisis. Extensive changes to the state's…

Peter Pistorino says there is a name for the way he thinks a school district should launch an energy conservation initiative: an "envelope" approach. The term refers to looking at the outside package of a structure to check for inefficiencies: Examine the observable, external sources of energy loss such as the doors, windows, insulation,…

It is known that anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions are a major contributor to global climate change and that reducing our emissions will stem its acceleration (Baker et al., 2007). Aside from emission reductions, another method for stemming global climate change is to reduce the levels of greenhouse gases already in the atmosphere by storing…

The goal of environmental education is to create a citizenry that is knowledgeable about the biophysical environment, aware of ways to help solve environmental problems, and motivated to work toward their solution. Today environmental issues are more complex and urgent than ever, but the schools have not met the challenge of preparing young people…

The recession has complicated the path in life that many students had envisioned. As a result, campus mental-health counselors say more students are expressing anxiety about the economy's effect on their future. Visits to campus counseling centers have been climbing for several years, according to the Association for University and College…

TIAA-CREF, the financial services company that manages retirement portfolios for professionals in academia and other select fields, avoided the heavy losses other financial firms incurred during last fall's financial meltdown. Thus far, the indicators reflect TIAA-CREF's prudent, disciplined investment strategies. From Sept. 30 to Dec. 31, 2008,…

For years, there has been a need for teaching students about business process integration. The use of ERP systems has been proposed as a mechanism to meet this need. Yet, in the midst of a recent economic crisis, it is difficult to find funding for the acquisition and implementation of an ERP system for teaching purpose. While it is recognized…

How a school is organized--or, more specifically, the extent to which teachers work together and treat one another as professionals--can influence elementary school students' mathematics achievement. So suggest the authors of a recent study on the impact of school organization on longitudinal student achievement (Moller, Stephanie, Roslyn A.…

The measurement of sustainability for institutions, businesses, regions, and nations is a complex undertaking. There are many disciplinary approaches but sustainability is innately interdisciplinary and the challenge is to apply these approaches in a way that can best measure progress towards sustainability. The most common methods used by…