Governors plays a central role in ensuring that public educational institutions provide students with the knowledge and abilities required for a successful life and career. The systemic use of data from education and labor markets informs governors and other policymakers of the effectiveness and efficiency of their existing postsecondary systems…

Do "generic" skills such as critical thinking and written communication matter in the workplace? A recent study indicates that, in addition to a student's major in college and the selectivity of an institution, better performance on an assessment of critical-thinking and written-communication skills is associated with higher rates of…

This dissertation contains three essays on the economics of education and innovation. In the first essay, I study the effects of increased access to higher education by examining a dramatic 1961 Italian reform that increased university enrollment in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) fields by more than 200 percent in a few years.…

Vocational education has a historical legacy of being low-status and aimed at producing skilled workers. Students with low marks in comprehensive school are still often guided to the vocational educational track. In this article we examine how mathematics teaching in a vocational educational context is framed (henceforth VET). Therefore, our aim…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to ascertain the status of recent Korean four-year college students' acquisition of vocational qualification certificates (hereinafter "certificates" or "qualifications"), the factors that influence certificate acquisition, and the resulting employment and wage effects.…

The gradual commodification of higher education in the context of an increased focus on graduate employability attributes together with evolving labour markets is creating challenges for universities and students alike. For universities, there has been significant investment in careers services and, through institution-wide initiatives,…

The purpose of this study was to explore how technical skills taught and learned in Florida engineering and engineering technology-themed career academies fit technical skills desired by local employers in technology and manufacturing. The analysis utilized the narratives of 70 students and four teachers from career academies at four high schools…

This study investigated the first-person accounts of eight international counseling graduates (ICGs) upon re-entry to their home country to work after earning a university counseling degree from a program accredited by the Counsel for Accreditation and Counseling Related Educational Programs (CACREP) in the United States. An assumption of the…

When higher education goes wrong, once-hopeful students can be saddled with debt, no degree, fewer resources and less will to pursue education in the future. Costs, debt and earnings vary greatly depending on the type of institution running the program. Career training programs at for-profit institutions, also known as proprietary schools, have…

There is growing recognition that there are many career-enhancing pathways through four-year and community colleges. Nevertheless, many students leave high school without the skills needed to complete the most demanding academic pathways, nor realistic plans for completing alternative pathways that are far more likely to lead to desirable…

In 2016, "New Rules: Policies to Strengthen and Scale the Game Changers" was published. In a sea of policy briefs and white papers, policymakers still lacked the tools they needed to do effective college completion work. Since the first version of this resource was published, a lot has changed: (1) After years of efforts to raise…

High school students and teachers in two countries (US and Israel) were interviewed to ascertain their perspectives about their Project Based Learning (PBL) experiences. Perspectives were evaluated to determine to what degree PBL approaches were based on the eight essential elements of PBL and whether PBL courses contributed effectively to…

Obtaining a tertiary degree no longer guarantees entry to the best occupational positions in today's labour market. Success is no longer about "more" education, but about "better" education for university graduates. This study aims to understand whether university prestige in Korea accounts for occupational outcomes in both…

Professional collaboration is an important aspect of any field. It allows for individuals to share ideas and be part of a team. The TPSR Alliance has been a space for such professional collaborations where members have been able to both benefit from and contribute to it by sharing research and practices revolving around developing responsible…

This study explored gaps between industry expectations and perceptions of engineering graduates' skill sets in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. This study measured the importance that managers of engineers placed on 36 skills relevant to engineers. Also measured was managers' satisfaction with engineering graduates' skill sets.…