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Currently, there is great interest across Ontario in the expansion of pathway programs between colleges and universities. Through strategic partnerships, two Ontario-based postsecondary institutions (a college and a university) have developed innovative and effective pathway programs that facilitate the transition of students between institutions for the completion of degrees, diplomas, and certificates. These programs support the training of highly qualified, market-ready graduates. This paper reports on a mixed-methods study of the successes and challenges of a particular Ontario college and university pathway program, with a focus on the Bachelor of Commerce Pathway program.

Preliminary results indicate that pathway students were more academically successful than their traditional university student counterparts but did experience a number of challenges in transitioning from college into university. Principal challenges included inefficient communication between program administrators, academic advisors, and students; lack of orientation activities for pathway students; lack of college student preparedness in communication and critical thinking skills; and difficulties experienced by college students integrating into the social-cultural life of the university.

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Education and training play a key role for Europe's strategy for smart, sustainable and inclusive growth, 'Europe 2020'. To unlock the full potential of education as a driver for growth and jobs, Member States must pursue reforms to boost both the performance and efficiency of their education systems. This report is a new analytical tool that provides the empirical evidence to underpin this reform agenda. It supports the Commission Communication 'Rethinking education', and is part of a package of staff working documents that elaborate on the education dimension of 'Europe 2020'. It is also integral to a larger initiative bringing existing [European Union] EU-level cooperation in education and training ('ET 2020') in line with Europe 2020 objectives. Key findings of the 'Education and training monitor 2012' are: (1) education is part of the solution to tackle the impact of the crisis, but only if investment is efficient; (2) efforts to combat early school leaving must be increased as a matter of urgency; (3) action to widen participation in tertiary education now needs to be more targeted; (4) improving early childhood education and care must continue to be a priority; (5) inequalities in achievement of basic skills must be tackled; (6) providing relevant skills: a new EU benchmark for language competences; (7) embedding ICT and open educational resources (OER) in teaching and learning can combat the digital divide; (8) entrepreneurship education should be prioritised; (9) a recent trend is that the learning mobility of young people is increasing across Europe; (10) participation in adult learning is stagnating and must be urgently addressed; and (11) significant effort is required to reach the employability benchmark by 2020.

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In recent years governments have legitimated neoliberal educational policy reforms such as the internationalization and commercialization of education through mobilizing the discourses of globalization and the knowledge economy. In Australia, for instance, a raft of policy initiatives over the last two and a half decades (beginning in the early 1990s) targeted full-fee paying international students prompting a surge in international student enrolments and a burgeoning private vocational education and training (VET) sector for international students. Drawing on a study of situated realities influencing international students in private VET providers in Melbourne, Australia, this chapter analyzes, from training managers' and quality assurance auditors' perspectives, the impact of international student mobility on the private VET sector. This chapter also utilises the notion of social structure as systems of human relations amongst social positions to examine how international student mobility has led to shifts in VET manager and quality assurance auditors' perceptions and practices outside the boundaries of the education sector, particularly how private VET providers and international students are represented. In this instance by reforming the VET sector, governments change conventional characteristics through which people relate and the relationships that bind them with intended and unintended consequences. The findings suggest that whilst VET policy posits an easy and ready association between the needs of capital and the development of the workforce, this association is highly contestable and problematic as it can lead to negative student learning outcomes.

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The enrollment and transfer behaviors of college students are diverse. As a result, college students travel various pathways to the baccalaureate degree. The purpose of this qualitative study was to better understand the lived experience of students who entered higher education through an associate of applied science (AAS) program and then continued in higher education to earn a bachelor of applied science (BAS) degree. To explore this phenomenon, eight participants completed two in-depth interviews regarding their lived experience as students on this educational pathway. Five structures emerged from the data to frame the participants’ experiences on the AAS to BAS pathway: disengagement, doubt, knowledge of something different, significant relationships, and transformation. These five structures interacted in discrete ways to characterize the participants’ experiences as pushing through disillusionment related to education, the profession, and self. The participants’ moving through three dimensions of disillusionment along the pathway formed the meaning and the essence of the phenomenon, dogged determinism. The findings elaborate on the themes that contributed to heating up, or raising the educational aspirations of these career-technical students.

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Back-and-forth enrollment at different institutions - student swirl - and concurrent enrollment at two or more institutions - double-dipping - have become common experiences for students in the United States. However, empirical studies explaining student mobility are rather rare. This study examines how student departures from and returns to a single institution are affected by college attendance elsewhere. The model presented here demonstrates that departure rates are higher for students concurrently attending another college. Return rates, on the other hand, are substantially lower for those students who attend other colleges after departure from the study institution. The effect of multi-institutional attendance differs by college type, with the effect of 4-year out-of-state institution attendance being most pronounced. The simultaneous analysis of departures and returns provides the study institution with a more accurate and complete picture of student mobility.

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The authors of this report note that the broad benefits of international student mobility are now well understood globally and learning abroad is a major focus of most higher education institutions' internationalisation strategies. Universities worldwide promote learning abroad as part of their internationalisation agenda that aims to help students enhance personal growth, intercultural skills, global outlooks and employability. International student mobility can broadly be divided into two categories. The first is students seeking fully degrees in foreign countries, or degree mobility. The second is intra-degree student mobility or learning abroad, where students include an international learning experience as part of their domestically delivered degree. It is this category of international learning mobility that is the focus of this report.

The report provides an overview of international learning abroad trends with a focus on intra-degree outbound mobility. It examines different policy approaches from around the world, including government and institutional policies and practices, that encourage more students' engagement in international experience during their higher education programs. Show less

The transition to upper-level course work of transferring students, predominantly students from two-year/community colleges, has been explored in recent education research literature. Yet, it has not been sufficiently explored whether and what academic support programs could be successful in supporting transfer students with the transfer process. This article demonstrates the success of an academic support program for a discipline-specific cohort of transfer students entering their junior year in a nursing program at a public university within the university system of Maryland. The study explored prior academic preparation, results of Nursing Entrance Test scores, and interventions provided by an academic support initiative. For a course in pathopharmacology, this collaborative environment - facilitated by successful peers based on Supplemental Instruction, workshops on accelerated learning techniques, and individual tutoring - indicates that participation in such a comprehensive program resulted in an overall higher grade point average at the end of the first semester. There was also a reduced rate of failure or drop out from 15 per cent to seven per cent in subsequent semesters. Overall, such an initiative could serve as a model for other institutions.

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This report presents the results of a survey of young Europeans that was conducted in April 2016 in the 28 Member States of the European Union (EU). The survey covered: youth and unemployment; knowledge of the EU and civic participation; the digital revolution; and sustainable development. Key findings include: 59 per cent of young people said their national education system was well adapted to the current world of work; a large majority of young Europeans did not want to study, undergo training or work in another EU country; 76 per cent of young people had not heard of the 'Youth guarantee', a scheme for combatting youth unemployment. Show less

There is mutual agreement about the need for internationalization in higher education. However, there is no consensus regarding the best practice. Universities offering cooperative and work-integrated education have a comparative advantage in providing their graduates with capabilities needed on the labor market. They face the challenge to develop an internationalization strategy that reflects the practice-orientation of their study programs. The key question is how to use the specific feature of dual education to expand globally. This paper analyzes the approach of Duale Hochschule Baden-Wuerttemberg (DHBW) as Germany's first university to integrate academic studies and work experience. It examines student exchanges, study-abroad internship tandems, short-term programs as well as the implementation of the DHBW model in other countries. The strengths and weaknesses of these approaches as well as their conformance with the objectives of the internationalization strategy are evaluated.

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School-based vocational training has been organised to support students' boundary crossing between school and work. Such training has the potential to engage students in relevant work-oriented schooling. Drawing on theories of boundary connections and symbolic resources, it is argued that school participants define and attribute quality to school-based vocational training based on their experiences and expectations of past, present, and future boundaries between school and work contexts. Empirical findings from an ethnographic study conducted at a Danish vocational school illustrate that students and teachers in some cases attribute negative qualities to school-based vocational training, whilst, in other cases, they find it difficult to define the boundaries between school and work, thus questioning the relevance and organisation of school-based vocational training in supporting students' boundary crossing between school and work. It is therefore argued that boundaries between school and work practices do not exist per se. Instead, more attention needs to be directed to the negotiations in which particular boundary connections between school and work practices are developed. This may have important consequences for the preparing of students for apprenticeship.

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