Wyoming community colleges provide dynamic lifelong learning environments through higher education, workforce development, innovative partnerships, and civic and global engagement that lead to responsible citizenship and economic, social, and cultural prosperity. Planning for the future of Wyoming's community colleges and fulfilling the mission of…

Futures research is gaining increased prominence in educational research and development (Tesar, 2021), and particularly now as we emerge from the global COVID-19 pandemic, which has provided a lever for change and an opportunity for innovation in learning, teaching and assessment (Hall et al., 2020; Jandric et al., 2022; Tesar, 2020). Designing…

Lifelong education has proven to be a significant challenge in the policy arena. The combination of formal education and labor-centered institutions has pressed the development of different mechanisms to understand the role of human capital accumulation in socioeconomic mobility and organizational performance. While the narratives of lifelong…

Public higher education leaders have entered 2024 aided by tailwinds of fiscal stability in many states and a strong national economy, but some challenges of the post-pandemic era remain, including strengthening the value proposition of higher education, building public trust, and meeting changing economic and workforce needs. This paper presents…

There is a purported shortage of employable labor in the tech workforce, yet Black, Indigenous, Women of Color (BIWOC) in urban centers struggle to find and sustain roles in "high-tech." The tech ecosystem is a CIS-gendered, white male heterosexual space that perpetuates and "ideal worker norm" (Kachchaf et al., 2015), which…

In 2024, state legislators introduced hundreds of bills that would affect data collection, access, and use across early education, K-12, postsecondary, and the workforce. As in 2023, legislators continued to introduce and enact legislation governing cross-agency data systems. These policies are the most important step toward making statewide…

This study investigates the associations between institutional and labor market contexts and first-time community college enrollment patterns across racial and gender lines from 2017 to 2021. The findings demonstrate that the COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated existing racial and gendered disparities in community college access, particularly affecting…

Introduction: Over the past decade, informaticists expressed dissatisfaction with their training, feeling unprepared for the demands of their role. To address this, we developed the Tiered Skills Acquisition Model (TSAM) program in 2023 to improve the onboarding process of new hires. The goal in evaluating TSAM was to assess its effectiveness and…

Since 2016, the biennial "Early Childhood Workforce Index" has tracked the status of Early childhood educators (ECE) workforce policies in order to identify promising practices for improving early educator jobs and changes over time. This fourth edition includes new analyses as well as updated policy recommendations. Highlights include:…

Purpose: Following the outcry of several employers that many higher education (HE) graduates do not possess employability skills and therefore are not employable, the purpose of this paper, therefore, is to examine what the labour market (LM) actually demands from the higher education institutions (HEIs) and how the demands of the LM can be met by…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to understand the concept of graduate work readiness (GWR) from a stakeholder perspective. The research attempts to pull together the various multidisciplinary themes from the literature into a comprehensive analysis of the relationship between graduates and the labour market, considering the international…

The combination of technological unemployment and oversupply of graduates has increased competition in the labour markets. Postgraduates have been noted to hold more than one job and in some cases apply for jobs meant for undergraduates. Could this imply that post graduates have created more overall unemployment than undergraduates have, in the…

This article examines how teachers unions affect teachers' well-being under various legal institutions. Using a district-teacher matched data set, this study identifies the union effects by three approaches. First, I contrast teacher outcomes across different state laws toward unions. Second, I compare the union-nonunion differentials within the…

The aim of this essay is to give hope to those who are in the middle of struggles relating to personal experiences associated with sexual/gendered harassment. In it, Kanako W. Ide inquires into the moral conditions around speaking out publicly about such incidents through critical analysis of the social norms of gender and economy. Jane Roland…

A 'new' workplace landscape in the higher education sector leads to employees questioning their fit within the current organisation. This paper presents the findings of an organisational climate study within a South African Higher Education Institution and highlights multi-generational perspectives. The theoretical contribution of this paper is a…