Workers' skills are critical to U.S. industrial productivity and competitiveness and to maintaining living standards. Training is the key. Good training pays--for workers whose skills are upgraded, for companies seeking a competitive edge, and for the nation in overall productivity. However, workers in other countries are better trained than most…

This paper sketches several successful community economic development programs that have implications for rural education. Case studies are used to discuss community characteristics that contribute to development success. In Virginia, a Community Certification Program offers statewide business recruitment services to communities that meet program…

This study documents land ownership patterns in the Appalachian region and analyzes their impact on rural communities. Representing the most comprehensive such study to date, the project was initiated by Appalachian residents in 1978 to examine whether and how land ownership patterns, especially corporate and absentee ownership, underlie or…

The conference brought Southern state and local leaders together to discuss ways to revitalize depressed rural areas and to improve citizens' quality of life. Papers discussed: (1) goals for rural educational improvement; (2) human resource barriers to community and economic development in the South; (3) survey results indicating that Alabama…

Organized in three parts, this paper examines rationales for introducing computers into schools and universities in African countries and compares these rationales with those being advanced in industrial countries. Part 1 asks whether developing countries in Africa need computers and why, and supplies some answers. Part 2 looks critically and in…

U.S. industry and the U.S workplace are changing. More highly skilled jobs are replacing unskilled and semiskilled jobs, and more jobs require higher-order thinking skills. At the same time, the education system is failing to educate young people to fill those jobs in the future. Although a higher percentage of students graduate than ever before,…

This document, the 1987-89 statewide (Indiana) performance report, addresses 14 objectives that the state, through its educational institutions, strived to achieve. The report is organized around the strategic directions adopted by the State Commission for Higher Education as part of its work plan for 1987-90. The objectives successfully achieved…

Food security means access by all people at all times to enough food for an active and healthy life. Available data suggest that more than 700 million people in the developing world lack the food necessary for such a life. No problem of underdevelopment may be more serious or have such important implications for the long-term growth of low-income…

In the late 1970s both jobs and population were growing more rapidly outside metropolitan areas. As a group, nonmetropolitan counties not adjacent to a metropolitan area experienced a faster rate of employment growth than metropolitan areas between 1975-79. Even in rural counties (no urban place of 2,500 or more) not adjacent to a metropolitan…

Research indicates that the education of Philippine women pays off in the economic growth of the country. Previous research which examined women's contribution to national income in six countries indicated that levels of educational attainment and levels of per capita national income were positively or moderately associated in five of the…

In times of economic recession, dollars for job training and job placement programs grow scarcer, and those that are available tend to go to middle-class workers who are displaced or temporarily unemployed. The structurally unemployed--primarily the poor, the less educated, and minority youth--find it harder to compete for the needed training, and…

Canada's Official Development Assistance (ODA) program is discussed, along with the contributions that universities can offer. Issues include: (1) the rationale and goals for Third World aid programs; (2) priority projects and areas of the world; (3) whether political and economic interests should be reflected in aid programs; (4) decision-making…

Urban universities have a definite role to play within the context of strategic economic development. Coordination between state and local government, the private sector, and the academic community can lead to effective partnerships to formulate and implement economic development plans. Declining university enrollments and fewer dollars available…

This journal issue contains a series of papers concerned with exploring the role that adult education can play in developing communities. The first paper, "Major Challenges and Prospect of Adult Education for the Year 2000" (T. M. Sakya), provides an overview of adult education in Asia and the Pacific, emphasizing the vastness of the…

During the period from 1949 to 1984, industry's share in the national economy of the Peoples' Republic of China rose from 30 percent to 60 percent. Despite raising literacy over the same period from 20 percent to over 75 percent, the Chinese educational system has failed to keep pace with the economy's rapidly expanding need for trained…