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This report presents a holistic approach to understanding and comparing vocational education and training (VET) systems. The approach has been developed jointly by a group of interdisciplinary VET researchers over a 5-year period as part of Cedefop's research on the future of VET and has been reviewed several times. The framework introduces 50 dimensions for analysing VET systems, as well as parts of them, structured according to three overlapping main perspectives: epistemological and pedagogical, education system, and socioeconomic or labour market. The framework is particularly suited to 'clearing the ground' for policy work and provides a model for how research can support policy. This model can be flexibly adapted and applied in any comparative research or international policy learning activity related to VET. [The research was carried out by a consortium led by 3s Unternehmungsberatung (Austria). The consortium includes Ockham IPS (the Netherlands) and the Fondazione Giacomo Brodolino (Italy). The German Federal Institute of Vocational Education and Training (BIBB) supports the project as sub-contractor. For "The Changing Nature and Role of Vocational Education and Training in Europe. Volume 1: Conceptions of Vocational Education and Training--An Analytical Framework. Cedefop Research Paper. No 63," see ED586251.]

Protecting all people from the harmful effects of environmental exposures relies on the coordinated efforts of scientific researchers, regulatory agencies, legislators, and the public. Environmental justice addresses the disproportionate impact that harmful environmental exposures have on individuals and communities who are minoritized and marginalized. It has long been known that environmental problems disproportionately impact these groups; however, addressing these problems has been impeded by structural racism and other biases. Developing effective interventions to eliminate these disparities requires a more diverse and inclusive modern workforce produced by a bottom-up approach beginning with education and professional development of the next generation of researchers. The most effective approaches to addressing inequities rely on active input from impacted populations to ensure cultural and social acceptance and adoption of interventions. Credibly pursuing these efforts in a sustainable, inclusive manner will require a concerted shift in workforce demography. One potential strategy to address these workforce disparities features academic-industry partnerships with targeted professional development programs aimed at minoritized and underserved populations. [This paper was supported by strategic funds from the University Collaboration Office at RTI International and North Carolina Central University.]

University-based scientific research has long been argued to be a central source of commercial innovation and economic growth. Yet at the same time, there have been long-held concerns that many university-based discoveries never realize their potential social benefits. Looking across universities, research and commercialization activities such as start-up formation vary tremendously -- variation that could reflect the composition and orientation of faculty research, university-level factors such as patenting and licensing efforts, or broader place-based factors such as location in a technology cluster. We take a first step towards unpacking this heterogeneity in university commercialization by analyzing how the propensity of academic research to spill over to commercial innovation changes when academics move across universities. Our estimates suggest that at least 15-25% of geographic variation in commercial spillovers from university-based research is attributable to place-specific factors. [Funding for this research was received from Harvard Business School's Division of Research and Doctoral Programs, Harvard Economics' SUPER Program.]

This occasional paper is the fourth in a series on the National Quality Framework (NQF). This paper offers detailed insights into education and care service quality ratings for Quality Area 3 (physical environment) of the National Quality Standard (NQS). The focus is on ensuring the physical environment of a service is safe, suitable and provides a rich and diverse range of experiences that promote children's learning and development. This paper begins with an overview of the physical environment standards and what these aim to achieve, highlighting contemporary research and theory behind sustainable environments promoting children's learning. It then outlines the operational requirements of the National Law and National Regulations for the physical environment, with a particular focus on the requirements specific to different service types. The paper also describes how service approval requirements in the National Law apply to the physical environment, and how providers may seek waivers for certain legislated requirements. The paper is intended to be of interest to people who deliver education and care services, families, people who provide training and professional development services to the sector, and to officers in the state and territory regulatory authorities that regulate education and care services.

Capitalizing on the findings in our preceding study of a purely theoretical model, this paper aims to empirically examine whether and to what extent public universities' institutional missions have transformed in recent years in the States of California and New York by quantifying a degree of functional diversification of universities. We focus on research funding and productivity, and public service activities, and have developed a Concentration Equality Index (CEI) to help in this analysis. We then apply the CEI over time to a selected group of public university-system campuses within the State University of New York (SUNY) system, the City University of New York (CUNY), and the California State University (CSU) and the University of California (UC) systems. Among our findings: a select group of CSU campuses which all have roles at teaching-intensive schools, have gained increasingly versatile roles with rapidly expanded spending capacity in research and public service. These focal shifts resulted in some CSU campuses transforming into "UC-like universities", that is, a trend toward an institution with multi-functional operations of equally weighted instruction, research, and public service. In contrast, several campuses of both SUNY and CUNY systems have come to place varied weights on chosen missions rather than evening out their roles in instruction, research, and public service.

This paper summarises factors and emerging trends for higher education following from the disruption caused by the coronavirus pandemic and the responses of providers and governments. It is framed as a provocation to stimulate discussion about futures for higher education in Australia and beyond following the immediate COVID-19 disruption. While the evolving response to the pandemic makes prediction fraught, to provide concrete indication of the trajectory of many trends this paper draws on research into and past experience of similar economic, political and social 'shocks' to the provision of higher education in advanced economies. It examines how the coronavirus pandemic is magnifying existing pressures for universities and how it is providing new possibilities. The first section summarises ten trends and their associated drivers. Based on a PESTEL analysis, it includes codes for each item to signal the associated key factors contributing to the trend, including (P)olitical, (Ec)onomic, (S)ociocultural, (T)echnological, (L)egal and (En)vironmental. For each trend, we outline several implications for higher education provision in Australia. The second section synthesises these implications into a range of outcomes and questions.

Decolonisation is rapidly becoming a familiar term in higher education institutions. Students and activist groups have helped decolonisation move onto the national agenda, backed by recent worldwide events surrounding the Black Lives Matter movement. Despite its newfound popularity, there is still substantial disagreement and misunderstanding about what 'decolonisation' actually entails. Using testimony from 16 interview respondents across academia, activism and policy, this report addresses the common misconceptions about decolonisation and recommends a series of practical steps towards its implementation. The recommendations include: (1) Get educated about decolonisation and end its conflation with equality, diversity and inclusion initiatives; (2) Reprioritise: decolonisation is both pedagogically necessary and academically rigorous; (3) Fund Black, Asian & Minority Ethnic (BAME) research; (4) Tackle discrimination, hostility and unconscious bias; and (5) Institutionalise decolonisation: create departmental roles and engage students. The findings of "Miseducation" demonstrate that decolonisation is both a vital and a beneficial next step for our universities. [Foreword written by Iyiola Solanke.]

Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Universities across Europe are calling for a more student-centred, inclusive university environment bringing together all actors of the university community, while also implementing measures to achieve such a cultural shift. Members of the EUA [European University Association] Learning & Teaching Thematic Peer Groups are -- each based on their own perspective and experience -- advocating for such a shift because it is seen as a necessity. This paper highlights common and overarching conclusions and considerations present in the work and reports of these Thematic Peer Groups, while also drawing on other studies and reports concerned with learning and teaching.

Strategic planning plays an important but sometimes controversial role in higher education. This paper examines how strategic planning works in Chinese universities, using Peking University as a case study. This essay discusses the rationale for why Peking University (PKU) decided to pursue status as a world-class university along with objectives and value of its various strategic plans beginning in the 1990s. These plans have had four main roles at Peking University: as a means to periodically alter the development path or "roadmap" of the university; as a method to gain or "accelerate resources" largely from government; as a way to communicate with the business community, alumni and other stakeholders regarding the aspirations and needs of the university; and as a tool to engage central government leaders in the future of the university.

In this paper the author explores how colleges whose primary mission is undergraduate education can strategically allocate resources in a way that reduces costs and prioritizes teaching and learning. He starts from a provocative thought-experiment--what would it cost to educate undergraduates at a hypothetical college built from scratch?--and uses the exercise to identify areas that are ripe for cost savings. Rather than focusing only on the conspicuous, big-ticket items that tend to dominate debates about college costs, the author argues that the real levers for increasing efficiency include rethinking student-faculty ratios, eliminating under-enrolled programs, and trimming unnecessary administrative positions. This paper also outlines how policymakers can create incentives for undergraduate colleges to pursue reforms that will make them more cost-effective. (Contains 6 tables and 19 endnotes.)

This paper examines strategies for interpreting and reporting estimates of intervention effects for subgroups of a study sample. Specifically, the paper considers: why and how subgroup findings are important for applied research, the importance of pre-specifying sub- groups before analyses are conducted, the importance of using existing theory and prior research to distinguish between subgroups for whom study findings are confirmatory (hypothesis testing), as opposed to exploratory (hypothesis generating), and the conditions under which study findings should be considered confirmatory based on their pre-specification and pattern of statistical significance for the full sample, its subgroups, and their differences. These issues are illustrated by empirical examples from past work by the authors. (Contains 5 footnotes and 5 tables.) [This paper was also supported by funding from Judith Hispanic Fund for Methodological Innovation in Social Policy Research at MDRC.]