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The purpose of this paper is to expand knowledge beyond quality and assessment practices in the Asia-Pacific region to develop a profile about the nature of learning domains and degree qualifications. Given [Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation's] APEC's focus on education as a catalyst for economic development and better life standards, this paper evaluates the learning outcomes used throughout the region for a focus on workforce development and capacity building.

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For numerous reasons, it can be difficult for foster youth to succeed in postsecondary education. This chapter offers insight into state‐level policies and programs, community college programs dedicating to supporting foster youth, and a framework for creating a structured support system to increase student success.

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Investigating issues associated with and strategies for enhancing the standing of vocational education necessarily involves engaging with a range of perspectives, insights and suggestions. This includes those who organise and implement educational experiences, those who enact them, and also those who directly influence the decision-making of young people, as well as those young people themselves. Of course, such a venture means capturing and comparing, contrasting and evaluating those perspectives. As insights and perspectives need to be captured in some detail, qualitative approaches to data gathering and analysis are essential. On the other, quantitative analysis is required to identify patterns across cohorts of informants and analyse their weightings and rankings. Accordingly, this chapter sets out the rationale for and approaches adopted in an investigation about enhancing the status of vocational education and the occupations it serves in Queensland, Australia.

The investigation comprised an initial round of focus groups and interviews with school-age students, teachers and parents, students in vocational education institutions and their teachers (Phase 1). A careful analysis of focus group data, interview transcripts and surveys gathered through these interviews were then used to develop a survey that was administered nationally (Phase 2). That survey extended the scope of the study and the range of informants and provided a platform for quantitative analysis and comparisons of perspectives and suggestions of distinct cohorts of informants. Then, in Phase 3, suggestions about enhancing the status of vocational education were identified through a series of focus groups with school administrators and teachers. Weighting to sets of suggestions about what government, industry, schools, and teachers might do to offer well informed and impartial advice and engage with information about potential postschool pathways were analysed.

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This study considers the economic impact of Canada's post-secondary education institutions. Through their operations, these institutions generate over $55 billion in value added. Indirect effects may amount to over $20 billion. These institutions also develop human capital, and university research influences the economy through intellectual capital creation. Most university research focuses on academic-specific measures of performance. College research tends to focus on practical solutions to business and economic problems. Canadian studies of the economic impact of post-secondary education (PSE) institutions face a common challenge: establishing a causal link between a post-secondary institution's activities and value added in the broader economy. A national economy is highly complex and many factors determine why some economies do better than others. Those two factors make it very difficult to determine where the value of the PSE institution ends and value in the economy begins.

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Adapting campuses, classes, and processes to better serve Hispanic students will be a crucial step toward meeting national attainment goals. Since fall 2000, the number of Hispanic students in public colleges has effectively doubled. However, due to a Congressional ban on a student-level data system, the federal government is flying blind when it comes to knowing how millions of Hispanic college students are faring. This report examines how the data systems of two states, Texas and California, provide important insights into the measure of student success and the different challenges facing institutions of higher education.

In California, community colleges and state universities have seen steady increases in retention rates and credit accumulation rates of Hispanic students over the past decade. In Texas, community colleges and four-year institutions have seen substantial increases in enrollment, yet notable decreases in two-year persistence rates, among Hispanic students between 2000 and 2012. The report recommends: (1) using data to help colleges start conversations about their results and serve as a jumping-off point to deeper dives within their own administrative data; (2) tracking outcomes for students beyond the traditional first-time full-time cohort; (3) explicitly including Hispanic students in strategic planning for higher education; (4) providing opportunities for students to earn college credit while still in high school; and (5) overturning the ban that prohibits creating a federal student unit record system.

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Ensuring that the education system works for pupils from all backgrounds is key to the Department [for] Education's aims. This document collates and contextualises available evidence on outcomes by ethnicity across the post-16 education system in England. Doing so allows for a rounded view of the data in proper context, and overall trends to emerge. This document primarily draws on Department for Education publications, and data releases by the University and Colleges Admissions Service (UCAS). Post-16 outcomes by ethnicity are studied in a wide range of sources, and this document does not seek to be an exhaustive account of key facts from that literature. This paper reports descriptive statistics only and does not attempt to assess the impact of various causes, such as cultural differences, geographic variation, or prior attainment.

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Higher level vocational education and training (VET) programs are facing rapid change and intensifying challenges. What type of training is needed to meet the needs of changing economies? How should the programs be funded? How should they be linked to academic and university programs? How can employers and unions be engaged? This report for Northern Ireland looks at these questions. It forms part of 'Skills beyond school', the OECD policy review of postsecondary VET. The contents are: Summary: strengths and challenges of postsecondary vocational education and training in Northern Ireland; The commentary on Northern Ireland and its place in the wider OECD study; The background: education and training in Northern Ireland; Postsecondary vocational education and training; Previous OECD analysis and recommendations; Strengths and challenges of the postsecondary VET system in Northern Ireland. Show less

This report was funded under the Evaluations and Investigations Program of the Commonwealth Tertiary Education Commission. It examines the current and future role of education in developing rural industries and communities. The research identified priority needs for education in rural areas with particular emphasis on the needs of rural women, practising primary producers and their employees, people living in small towns, and people in transition to and from primary production. The research also aimed to estimate the extent to which these needs were being met by the postsecondary education system. The contents are: Introduction; Adult education and needs assessment; Methods; Survey results (availability of information; rural women; primary producers and their employees; the transition out of farming; people in small towns); National goals and future change in rural Australia; Discussion: postsecondary education in rural Australia; Conclusions (rural women; primary producers and their employees; primary producers in transition out of the industry; people in small towns; general issues). References and appendices are included. Show less

Community colleges are often hailed as open-access institutions, and, arguably, no state has done more to ensure access than California. Unfortunately, community college completion rates are dismally low, in part because many students are underprepared for college-level work. In fact, tens of thousands of students in California are on probation, owing to poor grades or inadequate academic progress, or both, and face a high risk of not graduating. To date, little research has been done on how to help such students get back into good standing. As part of MDRC's multisite Opening Doors demonstration, Chaffey College, a large community college in Southern California, ran two versions of a program that was designed to improve outcomes among students who are on probation. Both versions offered a College Success course, taught by a college counselor, which provided basic information on study skills and the requirements of college. As part of the course, students were expected to visit the college's Success Centers - which were established at Chaffey in response to the school's recognition that many of its entering students were not prepared for college-level work, and where students could receive supplementary individualized or group instruction in math, reading, and writing. The original program, called Opening Doors, was a one-semester, voluntary program. The other version, called Enhanced Opening Doors in this report, was a two-semester program, in which students were told that they were required to take the College Success course. MDRC collaborated with the college to evaluate Opening Doors and Enhanced Opening Doors. Analyses suggest that the greater success of Enhanced Opening Doors might have been driven by the higher rate of participation in the College Success course. Only about half the original Opening Doors program group took the College Success course, compared with approximately three-fourths of the Enhanced Opening Doors program group. Following the study, Chaffey committed to institutionalizing a revised version of Enhanced Opening Doors to more fully implement and enforce the college's probation and dismissal policies, and built upon its experiences in the Opening Doors demonstration to develop a voluntary program, called Smart Start, for new students who are at risk of experiencing difficulties.

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The 'Post-16 education and labour market activities and outcomes of looked-after children (LEO)' report [available in VOCEDplus at TD/TNC 145.1039] showed children who were looked-after had far lower levels of participation in post-16 education and the labour market compared to their peers. This report builds on the findings and methods of that report to explore: (1) the post-secondary school outcomes of all children in need, including those looked-after, on protection plans, and other support plans (Section 1 and 2); and (2) how the outcomes of children looked-after vary by some aspects of their social care journey, such as age on entry to care, duration in care, if they had re-entered care, and by placement type (Section 3).

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