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Occupations related to science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) are generally associated with high pay and contribute to the development of new technology. Continued growth is expected for STEM occupations, which would provide STEM-educated workers with additional labour market opportunities. However, less is known about the extent to which STEM graduates enter into and remain in STEM occupations in Canada. This study uses data from the 2006 and 2016 longitudinal census files to examine the occupational pathways of women and men with postsecondary credentials in STEM fields. Generally, male STEM graduates were more likely than female STEM graduates to be employed in a STEM occupation. The occupational pathways of male and female STEM graduates also differed. Among STEM graduates who were employed in a STEM occupation in 2006, women were more likely than men to have moved to a non-STEM occupation by 2016. Younger STEM graduates were more likely to exit a STEM occupation than older graduates, and men and women with college-level STEM credentials were more likely to leave a STEM occupation than their counterparts with a bachelor's degree. Some differences in the occupational mobility of men and women with STEM credentials were associated with their field of study. For example, men who studied mathematics or computer and information sciences were less likely than their counterparts who studied engineering or engineering technology to exit a STEM occupation between 2006 and 2016. However, there was no statistically significant difference in the likelihood of leaving a STEM occupation among women who had studied in these two fields. Lastly, the wage growth of male and female STEM graduates who persisted in a STEM occupation between 2006 and 2016 was not significantly different from the wage growth of their counterparts who had moved from a STEM occupation to a non-STEM occupation. [This study was funded by the Department for Women and Gender Equality.]

Traditionally, four-year bachelor's degree programs have been available only at universities. More recently, they have been offered at some community colleges--particularly in Ontario, Alberta and British Columbia. Using linked administrative postsecondary graduate and personal income tax data, this study finds that college bachelor's degree (CBD) holders earn about 12% more per year, on average, than university bachelor's degree (UBD) holders two years after graduation. Almost all of this gap can be explained by the different field of study choices made by the two groups of students. Compared with their university counterparts, CBD holders were more likely to take programs in business, management and public administration or health and related fields (fields generally associated with higher-than-average earnings), and less likely to take education, humanities or social and behavioural sciences and non-professional law programs (fields generally associated with lower-than-average earnings). The remainder of the earnings gap could be explained by the fact that CBD holders were more than two years older than UBD holders, on average. The study also showed that UBD holders registered faster earnings growth between two and five years after graduation and were more likely to enroll in graduate studies than their counterparts from colleges. Moreover, CBD programs were generally concentrated in colleges that were situated near a university and associated with above-average earnings (compared with other colleges) among their diploma holders.

More than half of community college courses are taught by part-time faculty, and the reliance on part-time faculty to teach developmental education courses and gateway math and English courses is even more prevalent. Drawing on data from six community colleges, this study estimates the effects of part-time faculty versus full-time faculty on students' current and subsequent course outcomes in developmental and gateway courses, using course fixed effects and propensity score matching to minimize bias arising from student self-sorting across and within courses. While students with part-time instructors have better outcomes in their current course and similar pass rates in the next course in the sequence, they are 3 to 5 percentage points less likely to enroll in that subsequent course. The negative effects on subsequent enrollment are driven by results in math courses. Notably, the estimated effects do not change substantially after controlling for instructors' demographic characteristics and degree attainment, but the size of the estimated effects is reduced by up to 40% when the analytic model accounts for course scheduling. Results of a survey on faculty professional experiences at the six colleges in the study suggest that part-time faculty had less institutional knowledge than full-time faculty did about both academic and nonacademic services. Given that part-time faculty did not have negative effects on the pass rates of students who did enroll in subsequent courses, it appears more likely that inferior working conditions for part-time faculty, rather than inferior instructional practices, are driving the negative effects on students' subsequent course enrollment.

Indiana, Oklahoma, and Washington have programs designed to address college enrollment and completion gaps by offering a promise of state-based college financial aid to low-income middle school students in exchange for making a pledge to do well in high school, be a good citizen, not be convicted of a felony, and apply for financial aid to college. Using a triple-difference specification, we find that Washington's College Bound Scholarship shifted enrollment from out-of-state to in-state colleges at which the scholarship could be used. While we find suggestive evidence that the program increased the likelihood of attending a postsecondary institution and attaining a bachelor's degree within five years of high school, we discuss why the program might be more successful if it did not require students to sign a pledge.

There is considerable interest in the impact of policy alternatives to race-based affirmative action (AA) on under-represented minority (URM) university enrollment. Widely-implemented alternatives include percent plans, which guarantee admission to top high school students, and holistic review, in which applications are evaluated on a comprehensive set of merits. This study estimates each policy's URM enrollment effect at the University of California (UC). Difference-in-difference estimates show that AA increased annual UC URM enrollment by more than 700 students (12%), and by more than 60% at the Berkeley and UCLA campuses. Three years after UC's AA program ended in 1998, UC guaranteed admission to the top 4 percent of students from each California high school under its Eligibility in the Local Context program. Extrapolation from a regression discontinuity design shows that ELC increased total URM enrollment among applicants annually by about 250, or 3.5%, primarily at three UC campuses. ELC largely ceased impacting UC enrollment after a 2012 reform, but triple-difference estimates show that several campuses' simultaneous switches to holistic review prevented URM enrollment decline. Six UC campuses have implemented holistic review, with an event study suggesting that each implementation increased URM enrollment at that campus by about 10%, though some enrollees were pulled from other UC campuses. While AA had a larger effect on URM enrollment than percent plans or holistic review, the latter policies have substantively mitigated URM enrollment declines at some UC campuses following AA's prohibition. [The author received additional financial support for this study from the Institute for Research on Labor and Employment.]

Driven by a shift in the political economy towards knowledge and information, and by the emergence of mass higher education, the historic central value of the liberal arts to the contemporary university is endangered. This essay presents an analysis of the current status of the university and asserts the value of the liberal arts to the covenant that sustains it. A history of the origin of the contemporary university, along with its dependence upon the liberal arts, is outlined. Finally, a definition of the liberal arts for the contemporary university is proposed, along with suggestions for models that could incorporate it. The argument concludes with a plea for anchoring university life in commitment to a modern understanding of the value of the liberal arts for faculty, students, and society.

The author discusses valid and reliable ways to assign grades in an academic course in any discipline. "Validity" means the accuracy of a grade's reflection of student learning and achievement. "Reliability" concerns the degree of random error that might be present and affect validity. First the author defines a grade as a measure of achievement, then identifies problems with existing grading practices and outlines principles that lead to valid grading. Grading criteria, which should be carefully and thoughtfully selected, are reviewed and categorized as "highly recommended," "controversial," and "inappropriate." Whichever grading method instructors choose should accurately measure their students' achievement, because a grade represents a contract between instructor and student that accurately reflects a particular level of learning. Finally, the author discusses grade inflation.

Traditionally, teacher salaries have been determined solely by experience and educational attainment. This has led to chronic shortages of teachers in particular subject areas, such as math, science and special education. We study the first long-running statewide program to differentiate teacher pay based on subject area, Georgia's bonus system for math and science teachers. Using a difference-in-differences strategy, we find the bonuses reduce teacher attrition by 18 to 28 percent. However, we find no evidence the program increases the probability that education majors become secondary math or science teachers upon graduation or alters specific major choices within the education field.

I examine a new generation of Career and Technical Education (CTE) models that has shifted from isolated courses to sequences of study that integrate academics and skills in specific career areas. I use data for a competitive grant administered by the California Department of Education (CDE) that incentives K-12 school districts to partner with community colleges and businesses to increase the career readiness levels of high school students. This study provides causal estimates of receiving large grants (i.e., up to 15 million dollars) to create aligned pathways by leveraging a natural experiment that occurs at the margin of grant receipt. Per pupil CTE expenditures increased by 21.7 percent at school districts that received the grant compared to unsuccessful applicants. Furthermore, dropout rates declined by 23 percent in districts receiving grants. The reduction in dropout rates appears to be concentrated for females and 11th grade students. The impacts for females may be related to design choices by grant applicants to focus on creating career pathways in traditionally female dominated sectors (e.g. health care support). The cost of preventing a single student from dropping out from this intervention is approximately 18,000 dollars compared to the present discounted value of a high school diploma of 300,000 dollars.

It has been well-documented that postsecondary graduates, on average, earn considerably more than others. Consequently, increasing postsecondary enrollment among youth from lower-income families--through targeted student aid or community outreach programs--may constitute an effective mechanism for promoting upward income mobility. However, there currently exists no evidence of the benefits of a postsecondary education (PSE) for youth from lower-income families per se. Using postsecondary administrative records and income tax records, this study bridges this information gap by estimating the association between earnings and PSE by level of parental income among a cohort of Ontario postsecondary graduates and a comparison group of Ontario youth who did not enroll in a postsecondary institution. The results suggest that the estimated earnings premiums associated with PSE are large and positive for youth from families across the income distribution. In relative terms, the premium is considerably larger for youth from the bottom income quintile than for their counterparts from the top income quintile. Supplementary analyses suggest that these results are not likely due to biases arising from omitted cognitive and noncognitive skills, or to differences in the choice of field of study between youth from different levels of parental income. [This project was funded by the Higher Education Quality Council of Ontario (HEQCO).]

In just the last 18 months, Massachusetts has seen the closure of small private liberal arts colleges Mount Ida and Newbury Colleges. The pressures on these types of institutions include technological disruption, changing student demands, and ever-escalating costs. To address this, the Massachusetts Board of Higher Education (BHE) and Department of Higher Education (DHE) have proposed creating a new state agency, called the Office of Student Protection (OSP), that would be granted unilateral authority to order colleges to notify students and other stakeholders by December 1st of any academic year where a meaningful risk exists that the college cannot complete the current school year and the next one. Under the proposal, OSP would be empowered to order a December 1st notification even if the college has a current satisfactory Financial Responsibility Composite Score from the U.S. Department of Education, qualifying its students to receive federal financial aid and loans, and even if the college is currently accredited by the U.S. DOE's approved regional accrediting agency, the New England Commission of Higher Education (NECHE). On March 6, 2019, Governor Baker filed Senate Bill 2183, which proposes giving BHE authority to request information from private higher education institutions "to accurately and fairly determine the institution's financial condition and to monitor such condition over time" and "to impose sanctions on institutions that do not comply in a timely manner." The legislation also proposes giving BHE authority to compel higher education institutions "to prepare and submit to [BHE], for its approval, a contingency closure plan which shall include a process for providing enrolled and admitted students and staff with timely notification of the institution's financial condition" and "arrangements for enabling students to complete their programs of study" if BHE identifies the institution as having liabilities or risks that may result in imminent closure or jeopardize the institution's ability to fulfill its obligations to current and admitted students. Under the proposed legislation, such contingency closure plans would be subject to BHE approval. The proposed legislation would exempt information submitted by institutions of higher education at BHE's request from the Massachusetts public records law. The proposed legislation also directs BHE to establish regulations interpreting and applying this new section of law, following consultation with representatives of public and private colleges and universities. The stated goal of BHE's proposal is to protect students from sudden, unexpected closings such as what happened with Mount Ida College. According to BHE and DHE, their proposal would provide an earlier warning of potential college closures than has historically been provided by USDOE and NECHE. In this report, Pioneer Institute identifies 10 serious problems with the BHE/DHE proposal.

IDEA's Teaching Essentials (TE) is a useful tool for gathering student feedback on how frequently an instructor exhibits each of seven behaviors that correlate most highly with student perceptions of course and teaching excellence. TE is appropriate for instructors who desire quick, sound student feedback on (a) displaying personal interest in students and their learning, (b) finding ways to help students answer their own questions, (c) demonstrating the importance and significance of the subject matter, (d) making it clear how each topic fit into the course, (e) explaining course material clearly and concisely, (f) introducing stimulating ideas about the subject, and (g) inspiring students to set and achieve goals which really challenge them. TE's survey items are based on Chickering and Gamson's "Seven Principles for Good Practice in Undergraduate Education" (1987), and they align with Hativa's (2014) essential dimensions of effective teaching. Thus the instrument enjoys both empirical and theoretical support.

Internships for college students are widely promoted as a "high-impact" practice, yet the academic literature is limited by terminological imprecision, lack of data on intern demographics, and insufficient attention to the impacts of program format on student academic and developmental outcomes. In this mixed-methods study we analyze survey (n=1,129) and focus group (n=57) data from students in three diverse U.S. colleges by using inductive thematic analysis, chi-square, and hierarchical linear modeling to document intern characteristics, access-related problems, program structure, and impacts on student outcomes. Results indicate that internship participation varied significantly by race, institution, enrollment status, and academic program, and that 64% of students who did not take an internship had desired to do so but could not due to scheduling conflicts with work, insufficient pay, and lack of placements in their disciplines. Students also reported high degrees of supervisor support, supervisor mentoring, and relationship between internships and academic programs--all program features that were significant predictors of students' satisfaction with internships and perceived value for their career development. Based on these results, we propose a processual model for studying internships, and we discuss implications for career advisors, faculty, and postsecondary leaders. Specifically, we urge employers, colleges and universities to ensure equitable access to internships for all students, to screen employer hosts for mentoring quality and capacity, and to recognize internships can be simultaneously a positive transformative experience for students and a vehicle for reproducing inequality.

The Canadian literature on postsecondary access has identified many of its key determinants including parental education and income, academic performance, and sex. However, relatively little work has investigated the independent role of disability in postsecondary enrollment. This study fills that gap by estimating the relationship between mental health and neurodevelopmental conditions diagnosed in childhood (available from the National Longitudinal Survey of Children and Youth [NLSCY]) and postsecondary enrollment during early adulthood (available from the tax credits on the T1 Family File [T1FF]). The study is possible as a result of the recent linkage between the NLSCY and T1FF. The findings suggest that 77% of youth who were not diagnosed with any long-term health condition in their school years (the comparison group) enrolled in postsecondary education (PSE) by their early 20s. In contrast, 60% of youth diagnosed with a neurodevelopmental condition (NDC) enrolled in PSE in the same time frame (a gap of 17 percentage points), while only 48% of youth diagnosed with a mental health condition (MHC) enrolled in PSE (a gap of 29 percentage points compared with youth in the comparison group). Youth diagnosed with both an NDC and an MHC were even less likely to enroll, with only 36% going on to PSE (41 percentage points behind youth in the comparison group). Differences in sex, academic performance and family background (e.g., parental income and education) explain only about one-third of these gaps. Among the MHCs, the most common diagnosis was Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). Youth with an ADHD diagnosis were less likely to pursue PSE than youth diagnosed with other types of MHCs such as emotional, psychological or nervous difficulties. These findings suggest that youth diagnosed with NDCs and MHCs in their school years face barriers to enrolling in PSE that are distinct from those confronting other youth.

Education Leadership Data Analytics (ELDA) is an emerging domain that is centered at the intersection of education leadership, the use of evidence-based improvement cycles in schools to promote instructional improvement, and education data science. ELDA practitioners work collaboratively with school and district leaders and teachers to analyze, pattern, and visualize previously unknown patterns and information from the vast sets of data collected by schooling organizations, and then integrate findings in easy to understand language and digital tools into collaborative and community-building evidence-based improvement cycles with stakeholders. In June of 2018, over 100 participants gathered for the Education Leadership Data Analytics Summit at Teachers College, Columbia University in New York City, including researchers, practitioners, policymakers, and funders. This report provides a summary of the central issues, themes, and recommendations for the future of the field that emerged from the discussions at the ELDA Summit event. These issues include building capacity in the field through incentivizing researcher practitioner partnerships, and providing conference and networking opportunities, professional development, certification, and ultimately degree programs to train ELDA researchers and practitioners. Additionally, a central focus of the ELDA field is equity, data security and privacy, in concert with open and FAIR data standards to develop and share de-identified data and tools across contexts. We conclude the report with a blueprint of possible skills and competencies needed for ELDA practitioner training and professional development and provide recommendations for next steps to help grow the field.

"Gamification" is often (incorrectly) assumed to mean using games in the classroom, but its primary purpose is to integrate differentiated strategies of motivation and engagement into a number of activities, including teaching and learning. The authors synthesize research and practice in the field of gamification (also called gamified, or gameful, learning) in education, with particular attention to how the mechanics of games (e.g., action points, quests, dynamic difficulty adjustment, blockchains) can be integrated into course design and assessment, even without turning on a computer, and why instructors might want to, even if they are not gamers themselves.

The University of Southern California (USC) transformed its undergraduate education program by making it a top priority in its strategic plans for the last two decades. The undergraduate experience was thoroughly studied and findings were used to determine what needed to be changed to improve the educational experience for students in and outside of the classroom. The institution has spent over $1.5B to hire new faculty to teach undergraduates, construct new residential colleges and renovate older ones (all led by tenured faculty), and build a new health center, campus center, and spaces in the USC College and professional schools dedicated to undergraduate academic programs, support services, and co-curricular programs. The key to the transformation was leadership provided by its late President Steven B. Sample and the university leaders he recruited to take on this big challenge. The team was focused and empowered to make administrative and academic changes, in concert with deans and faculty leaders, and given resources to turn thoughts, dreams and hopes into reality. The results are clear and demonstrate that institutions can improve undergraduate education by making it a high priority, allocating resources to recruit and hire outstanding faculty, and expand and improve programs, activities and facilities that directly serve undergraduates.

Although writing is well established as a high-impact educational practice, scaling that practice is challenging. Writing is a mode of engaged learning, and teaching it requires providing careful attention informed by expertise. These conditions are labor-intensive and expensive, even as public universities are hardly awash in funds. Writing skills develop over time as a function of encountering challenges and being coached on addressing them. What counts as "good" writing varies according to context, target readership, and purpose. Students need to build a repertory of strategies and experiences, along with the executive functions to know when to access what. They acquire this repertory by writing: doing it, not simply being told about it, and receiving feedback and advice. Technologies cannot currently or foreseeably provide feedback of sufficient quality to solve problems of scale. Writing Across the Curriculum programs can supplement first year writing courses, even replace some of them--but only if accompanied by sustained professional development that includes thorough knowledge of effective writing pedagogies, knowledge bolstered by existing research, theory, and best practices. New faculty models that feature full-time, benefited continuing lecturers or teaching professors exist at many universities, private and public; these models are more cost-effective than tenure-line faculty owing to enrollments. Even when they're more expensive than adjuncts, these models' return in quality is profound. The bottom line is that, even with cost ceilings, it's possible to scale quality writing instruction, however incrementally. At least minimally, this requires faculty writing specialists who can work directly with disciplinary faculty and who can ensure that anyone teaching writing is doing so in well-designed courses, using effective and efficient pedagogies. Writing centers are vital in supporting these efforts. Permanent, professional writing faculties, in new kinds of faculty roles, offer the greatest promise, albeit at greater costs.

The following essay details a debate between UC Berkeley and a Regent who made charges of discrimination against Asian American students that are similar to the current legal challenges facing Harvard University. The crux of such charges: on average, that one racial or ethnic group is more "qualified" than other groups, often underrepresented minorities, yet they have lower admissions rates. In 2004, Regent John Moores, convinced of discriminatory practices toward Asian-American students in the admissions process at Berkeley, did his own analysis of UC admissions data focused on SAT scores and that he publicized in the "LA Times" and other venues. Moores claimed his investigation provided clear evidence of discrimination. In the aftermath of California's Proposition 209 barring the use of race in admissions, Moores complained that Berkeley's adoption of a "holistic" review of applications reduced the importance of test scores by elevating subjective "measurements" that served as possibly illegal proxies for race and ethnicity. Conjuring memories of charges of discrimination in the 1980s by the Asian-American community regarding Berkeley's admissions processes, Moores asked, "How did the university get away with discriminating so blatantly against Asians?" For anti-affirmative action advocates, like Moores, standardized test scores were, and are, seen as the gold standard of academic ability since it is a "universal" measure unlike grades that are local assessments of abilities and subject to grade inflation. However, when compared to grades in high school, test scores have proven weak indicators of subsequent academic success at highly selective universities that must choose among a large pool of highly qualified students. Test scores also are not necessarily good measures for predicting the future engagement of students in the wide range of experiences and opportunities offered by major universities -- including public service, undergraduate research, and co-curricular activities. Anti-affirmative action advocates largely see admissions as a reward based on test scores and are not terribly concerned with the predictive validity of other admissions criteria. This essay concludes with a brief discussion of the similarities of Moores' analysis and charge of discrimination in admissions with that at Harvard, and the probable legal path toward a new Supreme Court decision on affirmative action.

Given the time and money invested in higher education by students, parents and governments, there is considerable interest in the economic outcomes of postsecondary graduates. Most assessments of recent graduates have focused on their short-term, early labour market results. As new entrants to the labour force, recent postsecondary graduates may be particularly vulnerable to the economic cycle. Consequently, comparisons of short-term outcomes across graduating cohorts may be highly dependent on prevailing economic conditions and may not reflect the longer-term returns on investments. This is the first study to compare the long-term labour market outcomes of two cohorts of young postsecondary graduates using linked census and tax data. Specifically, graduates who were 26 to 35 years old in 1991 were followed from 1991 to 2005 (when they were 40 to 49 years old) and compared with a similarly aged 2001 cohort, which was followed from 2001 to 2015. The results suggest that median cumulative earnings were higher among members of the more recent cohort of male and female postsecondary graduates. Increases were observed across all postsecondary levels and across most major disciplines where sample sizes were large enough to permit analysis. Also, no discipline registered a decline in cumulative earnings. Although the economic conditions faced by the 2001 cohort over the 15-year study period were generally more favourable, this cohort also registered higher earnings than the 1991 cohort during the latter portion of the period (i.e., when the 2001 cohort was faced with an economic recession). Furthermore, the initial labour market conditions upon graduation (an important determinant of career earnings) were similar for both cohorts. The improvements in long-term earnings for postsecondary graduates are important in light of the significant increase in the number of graduates over the period. However, the results also indicate that the number of years of union membership declined or remained steady across cohorts of male and female postsecondary graduates. Furthermore, while women with postsecondary qualifications registered increases in the number of years of employer-sponsored pension plan coverage, their male counterparts experienced mixed results depending on their level of postsecondary studies.

This publication is the sixth in a series produced as part of the Cedefop project The changing nature and role of VET (2016-18). Based on analysis of developments over the past two decades (1995-2015), the report provides important insights into developments and change processes related to vocationally oriented education and training at higher levels (levels 5 to 8 of the European qualifications framework). Building on detailed national case studies, the report demonstrates the expansion and diversification of vocationally oriented education and training offered at higher levels in European countries and the variations in how countries use the higher levels: there is evidence for strengthening vocational principles at higher levels in various ways as well as for strengthening academic principles. It also covers current debates and potential future challenges, including juggling labour market demands and wider societal values, finding the right balance between academic and vocational principles, and achieving parity of esteem between academically oriented and vocationally oriented qualifications at higher levels, by improving awareness and visibility of the latter. [The research was carried out by a consortium led by 3s Unternehmensberatung GmbH, and includes the Danish Technological Institute, the Institute of Employment Research (University of Warwick), the Institute of International and Social Studies (Tallinn University) and Fondazione Giacomo Brodolini. The Federal Institute for Vocational Education and Training (BIBB) in Germany is supporting the project as a subcontractor.]

Estimates of school voucher impacts on educational attainment have yet to explore heterogeneities in socioeconomic status among disadvantaged minority students. We theorize reasons for these heterogeneities and then estimate experimentally the differential impacts of voucher offers on college enrollment and graduation rates for minority and non-immigrant students from moderately and severely disadvantaged backgrounds. The findings are obtained from a privately sponsored, lottery-based voucher intervention in New York City that began in 1997. College enrollment and degree attainment as of the fall of 2017 were obtained from the National Student Clearinghouse. We find no significant effects of offers on minority students from severely disadvantaged backgrounds but significant effects of six to eight percentage points on those from moderately disadvantaged households. Similar results are obtained for students born of non-immigrant mothers. Some policy implications are discussed. [Additional support for this research was provided by the Hubbard Family Foundation.]

Changes in the credentialing market have produced a complex, multilayered ecosystem with a demand for shorter credentials that are focused around job market competencies. Community colleges are well positioned to lead this emerging market for three reasons. (1) Their dual mission to offer both traditional degrees and workforce development programs provides a competitive advantage in piloting and implementing many of the new types of credentials, especially those that can be embedded into traditional degree programs. (2) They have a long history in awarding certificates, one type of shorter work-aligned credential that is experiencing a new emphasis in today's market. (3) They have an established infrastructure, content knowledge experts, and employer relationships that can support a broad array of shorter credentials with a solid level of quality assurance. To play a central, even leading role, in the new credentialing market, community colleges must build credentials that respond to four growing trends and imperatives: building competency and market-oriented programs, structuring credentials to facilitate lifelong learning, unbundling learning in traditional degrees, and recognizing the need for quality assurance.

The discipline of assessment has matured to the point where there is general agreement on best practices. However, the field has made little progress in developing a theoretical basis -- whether for assessment in general or for more specific dimensions of assessment as they emerge. Without a generalizable theory to work from, assessment professionals remain focused on the details of practice -- getting it done -- instead of turning their attention to systems thinking in the service of improving, revising, growing, or otherwise developing a field that is still far from perfect. In this article, the authors bring sociological theory to bear on learning outcomes assessment in order to understand its strengths and challenges from a systems point of view. Then, using this theoretical understanding, we propose an alternative method of assessment (Assessment 2.0) designed to supplement the assessment work already being done while at the same time avoiding its most difficult challenges. Assessment 2.0 is organic because it grows naturally from the professional judgment and experience of instructors rather than from the highly structured, linear procedure commonly followed in standard assessment practice.

Despite massive cuts in state funding over the past thirty years, the University of California has managed to keep enrollment on pace with growth in population. With California's population projected to grow 22.5 percent (from 40 to 49 million by 2040), that will no longer be the case, unless UC is able to find a new funding model. Informed by the historical analysis in the report "Approaching a Tipping Point: A History and Prospectus of Funding for the University of California", this essay revisits the options for funding UC from that report, including: reinvestment by California lawmakers and a proposed general bond measure for capital construction; increasing research funding to help subsidize teaching and public service programs; revising the indirect-cost agreement with the State of California; raising undergraduate tuition and fees for upper income students and establishing tuition pricing model tiered by student family income; explore differential fees by major; and reducing the percentage of UC undergraduate tuition income that is "returned-to-aid" in favor of increased fundraising for financial aid. All relate to two central questions: a) can UC afford to grow in its enrollment and academic programs with the state's population and needs? and b) how to identify new sources of revenue and pursue management efficiencies to reduce operating and capital costs? Without a substantial boost in income from the state or other sources, UC may be approaching a crossroads, where it continues to grow in enrollment without adequate funding, or where it instead chooses to halt or limit growth to focus on maintaining quality and productivity, but with serious consequences for California. Any significant state reinvestment will depend on the new California governor. Governors in the past have been key players in creating and building California's pioneering higher education system. A new governor should have ambitions for higher education that match those of Californians.

We use comprehensive data on student teaching placements from 14 teacher education programs (TEPs) in Washington State to explore the sorting of teacher candidates to the teachers who supervise their student teaching ("cooperating teachers") and the schools in which student teaching occurs. We find that, all else equal, teachers with more experience, higher degree levels, and higher value added in math are more likely to serve as cooperating teachers, as are schools with lower levels of historical teacher turnover but with more open positions the following year. We also find that teacher candidates are more likely to be placed with cooperating teachers of the same gender and race/ethnicity, and are more likely to work with cooperating teachers and in schools with administrators who graduated from the candidate's TEP.

We exploit within-teacher variation in the years that teachers host an apprentice ("student teacher") in Washington State to estimate the causal effect of these apprenticeships on student achievement, both during the apprenticeship and afterwards. The average causal effect of hosting a student teacher on student performance in the year of the apprenticeship is precisely estimated and indistinguishable from zero in both math and reading, though effects are large and negative in math when ineffective teachers host an apprentice. Hosting a student teacher is also found to have modest positive impacts on student math and reading achievement in a teacher's classroom in following years.

The paper studies the impact of financial aid on long-term educational attainment and labor market outcomes in Colombia. In 2014, the government launched a large-scale and generous student loan program called "Ser Pilo Paga." It offered full tuition coverage to students admitted to one of 33 government-certified high-quality universities known for superior test scores, graduation rates, and per-student spending. Notably, completing a bachelor's degree converted the loan into a grant. To qualify, students must score in the top 10% of the standardized high school exit exam and have below-median household wealth. Using RD and DD methodologies, we use nationwide administrative microdata linking all high school test takers, postsecondary attendees, and formal workers to estimate impacts up to eight years after high school. Financial aid improves college enrollment, quality, and attainment, particularly in STEM-related fields. The earnings gains are substantial, growing, and driven partly by high-quality universities improving students' skills, as demonstrated by their performance on Colombia's college graduation exam. A welfare analysis using the MVPF yields over $4.8 per dollar of government spending. Lastly, the program narrowed socioeconomic gaps in college attainment, skill development, and earnings among academically similar students without adversely affecting non-recipients, thereby promoting equity and efficiency.

Past work has documented significant occupational segregation between Black and white workers in the U.S. labor force. Little work, however, has examined racial occupational segregation in recent years or by levels of education and then at the intersection of education and race. In this paper, we contribute to this literature by calculating a dissimilarity index to examine racial occupational segregation between 1980 and 2019, comparing Black and white workers with and without bachelor's degrees and by developing a Monte Carlo simulation, where we compare the observed levels of segregation to predicted levels of racial occupational segregation by education under race-neutral conditions. First, we find that considerable racial occupation segregation in the labor market persists today regardless of educational attainment and that observed segregation is substantially higher than would be expected at random, conditional on educational attainment, gender, and geography. We compare the types of occupations in which Black and white workers are disproportionately situated, and we show that this segregation has significant consequences for wage inequality between Black and white workers with and without four-year degrees. Overall, our results show that racial occupational desegregation has stalled in the past two decades despite rising educational attainment amongst Black workers.

Does a school district that expands school choice provide better outcomes for students than a neighborhood-based assignment system? This paper studies the Zones of Choice (ZOC) program, a school choice initiative of the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) that created small high school markets in some neighborhoods but left attendance-zone boundaries in place throughout the rest of the district. We study market-level impacts of choice on student achievement and college enrollment using a differences-in-differences design. Student outcomes in ZOC markets increased markedly, narrowing achievement and college enrollment gaps between ZOC neighborhoods and the rest of the district. The effects of ZOC are larger for schools exposed to more competition, supporting the notion that competition is a key channel. Demand estimates suggest families place substantial weight on schools' academic quality, providing schools with competition-induced incentives to improve their effectiveness. The evidence demonstrates that public school choice programs have the potential to improve school quality and reduce neighborhood-based disparities in educational opportunity. [Funding was provided by the Center for Labor Economics.]

While the direct impacts of minimum wage changes on employment have received considerable attention, these policy changes have the potential to impact skill attainment by changing the opportunity cost of college enrollment. Using institutional data on college enrollment and program completion, we find that enrollment falls markedly among students at public two-year institutions in response to increases in the minimum wage. The largest enrollment effects are seen for those students who are enrolled in part-time courses of study at community colleges. The effect of minimum wage changes on credential attainment is limited to modest effects for women at the associate degree level, suggesting that the changes primarily impact the enrollment of students who are unlikely to have been diverted from degree attainment.

How do college students and postsecondary institutions react to changes in skill demand in the U.S. labor market? We quantify the magnitude and nature of response in the 4-year sector using a new measure of labor demand at the institution-major level that combines online job ads with geographic locations of alumni from a professional networking platform. Within a shift-share setup, we find that the 4-year sector responds. We estimate elasticities for undergraduate degrees and credits centered around 1.3, generally increasing with time horizon. Changes in non-tenure-track faculty allocations and the credits they teach partially mediate this overall response. We provide further evidence that the magnitude of the overall response depends on both student demand and institutional supply-side constraints. Our findings illuminate the nature of educational production in higher education and suggest that policy efforts that aim to align human capital investment with labor demand may struggle to achieve such goals if they target only one side of the market.

There is debate over whether Asian American students are admitted to selective colleges and universities at lower rates than white students with similar academic qualifications. However, there have been few empirical investigations of this issue, in large part due to a dearth of data. Here we present the results from analyzing 685,709 applications from Asian American and white students to a subset of selective U.S. institutions over five application cycles, beginning with the 2015-2016 cycle. The dataset does not include admissions decisions, and so we construct a proxy based in part on enrollment choices. Based on this proxy, we estimate the odds that Asian American applicants were admitted to at least one of the schools we consider were 28% lower than the odds for white students with similar test scores, grade-point averages, and extracurricular activities. The gap was particularly pronounced for students of South Asian descent (49% lower odds). We trace this pattern in part to two factors. First, many selective colleges openly give preference to the children of alumni, and we find that white applicants were substantially more likely to have such legacy status than Asian applicants, especially South Asian applicants. Second, after adjusting for observed student characteristics, the institutions we consider appear less likely to admit students from geographic regions with relatively high shares of applicants who are Asian. We hope these results inform ongoing discussions on the equity of college admissions policies.

It is timely to take stock of the wellbeing of educational research in Aotearoa New Zealand. The major Education Work Programme 2021 includes a Research, Evaluation and Development Strategy. Te Ara Paerangi--Future Pathways Green Paper has launched a major review of the design of public funding for research institutions and for research taking place in tertiary and other education institutions. This paper canvasses the recent history and current landscape of educational research funding and support in Aotearoa New Zealand. It draws on the author's extensive experience in this field, and the need to test the author's growing unease that educational research in this country is, overall, not in good shape.

This paper summarises the evolution of student contributions in Australia since 1989, exploring system redesigns that commenced in 1997, 2005 and 2021. Public and private benefits are recurring themes in setting student contributions, both as high-level justifications for government policy and in pricing specific disciplines. Professor Andrew Norton evaluates five different rationales used by successive Australian governments to satisfy competing policy and political considerations: course costs, private benefits, public benefits, increasing resources per student place, and incentivising course choices. Professor Norton argues that despite using student contributions to guide course choices being central to current funding policy it is never likely to be effective. Student contributions do, however, have practical consequences that seem to be given little consideration by the government. These include how long it takes to repay student debt, how much of that debt the government will eventually write off, and university incentives to enrol students. As the new government reviews the Job-ready Graduates policy, the paper provides a useful basis for discussion, offering lessons from history in what works and what does not, and guiding policymakers towards student contribution systems that minimise problems for students, government and universities.

With a view to identifying inclusive policies and good practices to respond to the many challenges that refugee students face to access higher education in their host country, this Policy Paper has conducted a review of available statistical data and literature. In addition, six selected countries with considerable refugee populations have been analysed more in-depth. They are: France, Ethiopia, Egypt, Germany, Norway, and Turkey. From this analysis, the paper presents inclusive policies and good practices from these countries and their higher education institutions by type of obstacle to accessing higher education. It concludes by presenting 15 recommendations on how host countries can support the access of refugees to their national systems, arguing strongly for an 'equality opportunity approach' in terms of national policies, and caring measures, at the level of higher education institutions. [This report was co-produced by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the UN Refugee Agency. It was made possible in part through funding from the Swedish International Development Agency (SIDA).]

A concern in higher education policy is that students are taking longer to graduate. One possible reason for this observation is an increase in off-campus labor market participation among college students. Financial aid may play a role in the labor/study choice of college students--as college becomes more affordable, students my substitute away from work and toward increased study. I use data from the National Postsecondary Student Aid Study (NPSAS) to exploit nonlinearity in the Pell Grant formula to estimate a regression kink and regression discontinuity designs. I find that conditional on receiving the minimum of $550, students reduce their labor supply by 0.4 hours per week, which translates to a 2.4 percent decrease in hours worked. Students who receive the average Pell Grant of $2,250 are 7.6 percentage points (or around 12 percent) less likely to work and, if working, supply 5.10 less hours per week, or around 30.67 percent reduction. I find Pell Grants do increase academic achievement, implying that students substitute study time for work.