Popular and academic common senses turn to education as the great equalizer in American life, a seemingly obvious pathway to creating a more just world. Education, which means not only a degree, but the social relations created through affiliation with formal study, is cherished as the pathway to secure a more just society. Yet the educational…

Ensuring that the federal investment in TAACCCT has a lasting legacy is important to community colleges and the nation. Exploring the notion of transformative change, this chapter describes research and development associated with the Transformative Change Initiative (TCI), including seven guiding principles to sustain and scale change in…

Inclusive Access provides a framework for digital course material delivered via the learning management system (LMS) day-one to students. This platform assists instructors with selecting current, quality, affordable material, and supports learning analytics by providing engagement data in Canvas. The University of Nebraska Provost office has…

Community colleges offer a variety of workforce-oriented programs intended to help students gain skills and knowledge for a specific career or occupation. Among these are short-term credentials, designed to teach students a specific skillset related to an occupation, often in response to local labor market needs. Types of short-term credentials…

During the 2019 General Session, the Legislature passed Senate Bill 166, "School Readiness Amendments," to improve the coordination and alignment of preschool programming. This report is provided to the Education Interim Committee as a summary of an evaluation of and the efficacy of both the high-quality school readiness grant programs.…

Every girl deserves a quality education and every country deserves gender equality. In December 2020, Global Partnership for Education (GPE) created the US $250 million Girls' Education Accelerator to transform girls' opportunities to go to school and learn. To secure funding, countries commit to ambitious action for gender equality by investing…

If the state of California finds the funds, the Cal Grant Reform Act--as enacted in the 2022 Budget Act--is to be implemented in 2024 to support hundreds of thousands of Californians in affording, accessing, and succeeding in higher education. Instead, the state has proposed adding more funding to the less equitable Middle Class Scholarship (MCS)…

Successful honors programs inspire and sustain a vibrant and committed faculty. This essay presents an established honors program which demonstrates, through varied faculty commitments over time, honors as a valuable asset in identifying, recruiting, supporting, and rewarding a strong, creative, loyal faculty that benefits the entire institution.…

In a survey of 1,016 afterschool program providers conducted between October 24 and November 30, 2022, 94% report that they are open, with majorities providing their students with academic supports, opportunities to connect with their peers, and time to build foundational skills. Although the above are positive signs pointing to a post-COVID…

Economists have long recognized the importance of human capital in economic growth. In this series of papers, I study how various institutions of human capital formation affected economic development in a variety of contexts prior to 1900. These include both formal institutions of human capital formation such as universities and informal…

Tennessee Colleges of Applied Technology (TCATs) are the primary providers of public postsecondary Career and Technical Education (CTE) opportunities in the state. The purpose of this study was to determine which student demographic and enrollment characteristics significantly correlated with the completion of a postsecondary certificate or…

Recently, enrollments at numerous American universities have been trending downward. This has led to an increasingly competitive atmosphere for attracting new students, creating the need to better understand why students ultimately attend their chosen institution. Prior research has explored factors that influence students to pursue agricultural…

TICAS partnered with higher education researcher Dr. Donald E. Heller to examine the "affordability gap" that students are facing when paying for college. The report uses federal data to determine the so-called "college affordability gap" in three states--California, Michigan, and New York--with a focus on students who are…

In an era in which public postsecondary institutions increasingly face budget constraints, the state residency of students has become an important factor in complex decisions on tuition-setting policies and enrollment management. This report examines the current trends and impact of out-of-state tuition premiums -- defined as the additional amount…

This report provides an update on the 2021 California Classified School Employee Teacher Credentialing Program and presents the 2023 Annual Report to the Legislature on the California Classified School Employee Teacher Credentialing Program (Classified Grant) as required by statute (Education Code §44393(f)). The 2021-22 state budget appropriated…