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Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to develop a thinking model to recommend to the vocational education institutions for planning their educational business in the face of marketization. Design/methodology/approach: The systems approach is adopted for developing the model. It is not only used for the conceptualization of the principles of systems, but also applied as the technique for reviewing and proposing where and in what direction the institutions should improve their business plan to meet the transformational change. Findings: The current objective and strategy of the institutions are found to be necessary, but not sufficient for meeting the real challenge of marketization. The model recommends the vocational education planners to focus on the new objective of satisfying individuals' working needs and improve the process of course design to enhance the competitiveness of the institutions in the open market. Practical implications: The proposed new dimension of business planning has two implications for vocational education practitioners. First, course design should start with taking the individuals' perspective to decide how their working needs can be met. Second, it is necessary to explore new methods for collecting, interpreting and incorporating the voices of working needs into the design of contents and features. Originality/value: The thinking model offers an objective and rational approach to vocational education planners and practitioners for formulating a holistic business plan to meet new challenges. It is hoped that the recommendations will assist the institutions to perform their changing roles in the new economy of the society and to achieve long-term success in the dynamic environment. (Contains 3 figures.)

The article discusses the concept of high-impact practices (HIPs) in education and the potential for expanding the list of recognized HIPs beyond the current 11 practices. The author argues that there are other educational experiences that can deliver similarly impactful learning experiences to students and that including additional experiences as HIPs would broaden access to impactful learning opportunities. The article also highlights the importance of equitable access to HIPs and suggests leveraging co-curricular and extracurricular activities as potential hubs for implementing additional HIPs. The author emphasizes the need for a coordinated and expansive approach to HIPs to attract more participants and improve outcomes for a diverse population of students. [Extracted from the article]

The global cumulative photovoltaic (PV) installed capacity is now over 1 TW. While this is an impressive amount of PV growth, it contributes less than 3% of total electricity generation and, therefore, requires significantly more PV to decarbonize the electricity sector completely. In order to achieve this decarbonization sustainably, all factors must be considered, including the extraction and purification of abundant materials. Based on conservative and ambitious future PV production scenarios and learning rate (LR) for material consumption reduction, the material demands for the future are projected. The concept of LR is applied to estimate the reduced material consumption based on the "maturity" of PV technology or the cumulative installed PV capacity. Herein, it is suggested that abundant materials like copper, concrete, and aluminum may face shortages if PV production follows the broad electrification scenario. Steel, in comparison, likely does not encounter any material shortages. Nevertheless, the work here demonstrates that the demand for even abundant materials should be minimized to decarbonize energy usage and mitigate climate change sustainably. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]