From career decision-making influences to education and workforce data governance to the impact of loans on community college student outcomes, the following publications address topics of relevance to CTE.
Adding Skills to the AA: The American Enterprise Institute has published research and recommendations on how community colleges can make associate of arts (AA) degrees more marketable. The report describes how the AA as a terminal degree typically has less labor market value than career and technical associate degrees. One way to improve the labor market success of AA graduates is to add skills to program curricula in occupation-specific software, business and management, and sales. Community colleges can also use their connections to local employers to increase awareness of skills needed and provide students with employment options.
Career Decision-making Influences: Data analysis from the National Center on Education Statistics confirms prior research demonstrating that students are primarily influenced in making postsecondary and career decision by family members and by themselves, far more than by teachers, counselors, friends, employers or recruiters.
College Student Career Readiness: Only one-third of more than 32,000 postsecondary students surveyed by Gallup and Strada Education NetworkSM are confident that they will graduate with the skills and knowledge to be successful in the job market (34 percent) or in the workplace (36 percent). Only slightly more than half believe their college major will lead to a good job. In addition:
- Confidence in job prospects is higher among STEM students (62 percent), following by students in education, social work and criminal justice (58); business (51); and liberal arts (40).
- 39 percent have never visited their institution’s career services resources.
- First-generation, older and minority students rate career services and advisors as more helpful.
Washington State CTE: An audit of Washington secondary CTE programs found that the most-highly-enrolled program areas need to more strongly align with high-wage, high-demand occupational areas. The audit identified areas of improvement, including career guidance, employer engagement, review processes for using labor market data and dual-credit expansion.
Loans Lead to Better Outcomes: A recent experiment found that community college students randomly offered a loan and who subsequently borrowed had higher GPAs and earned more credits—a 30-percent increase in both cases—than students offered a loan for $0.
Data Governance: The Data Quality Campaign has provided state leaders with a roadmap for cross-agency governance of state longitudinal data systems, including recommendations on vision and mission, composition and membership, roles and responsibilities, data decisions, committee processes and sustainability. Examples are included from Kentucky, Maryland, Minnesota, Mississippi, Utah and Washington.
Problem-solving Skills: U.S. 15-year-olds performed higher than average on the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) collaborative problem-solving assessment. Students in 10 systems scored higher than U.S. students: Singapore, Japan, Hong Kong, South Korea, Canada, Estonia, Finland, Macau, New Zealand and Australia.
Comments