Over half of the students enrolled in public higher education are enrolled in community colleges. For decades, community colleges have provided an avenue for students to transfer to four-year institutions and pursue a bachelor's degree in addition to providing a critical avenue for upward mobility for historically underserved student populations.…

As Mississippi prepares to support the statewide postsecondary attainment goal, understanding the returns to higher education is crucial to determining where to invest resources. Ithaka S+R has partnered with the Woodward Hines Education Foundation to provide Mississippi policymakers, advocates, and legislators with information they need to make…

In the post-World War II period, workers with a high school diploma or less were able to attain jobs with middle-class wages in American industry. Good jobs were available in manufacturing and other blue-collar industries that employed large numbers of high school-educated workers. But as automation, globalization, and related phenomena have led…

This issue brief summarizes the economic conditions in rural communities since the Great Recession and highlights the educational attainment of rural men. It then describes the barriers to attending college that rural men face and these promising efforts that Hinds Community College and the Louisiana Community and Technical College System (LCTCS)…

Internships are widely perceived as a "high-impact practice" that opens the doors of opportunity for college students, yet little is known about obstacles to participation. Instead, educators and employers too often view participation as unproblematic, with many postsecondary institutions beginning to mandate internships for graduation…

This article reports on a skills gap problem experienced in New England states where the economy has improved, but economic opportunity and skills gaps contribute to slower growth in employment, income, and social mobility. The article suggests ways to overcome this gap by building stronger bridges between education and employment…

Overall, too few students are completing two-year college. Those who complete are still starting off unequally. About one-third of students earning academic degrees do not transfer, but rather go directly to work and find their degree has little value in the labor market. Research suggests they could have benefitted from having marketable skills…

The face of the American landscape is overwhelmingly metropolitan, making metro areas important spaces for philanthropy to explicitly consider when crafting postsecondary funding strategies. This is the case for two primary reasons. First, metropolitan areas are drivers of economic activity and innovation. Second, four out of every five…

As the U.S. economy slowly rebounds, the nation's community colleges are focused on putting Americans back to work. Across the country, training programs in emerging career fields, including nuclear, wind, and clean coal production, vie for the attention of job seekers in search of a more secure financial future. But these shiny new careers aren't…

The U.S. automotive industry has always been a cyclical business, but its near-collapse in 2008-09 and the subsequent bankruptcy of two of the three largest domestic automakers was more than a cyclical downturn. As light vehicle sales and production slowly recover, the industry has started to hire again, though with caution. In an industry known…

In 2008, the Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity (DCEO), Bureau of Energy and Recycling, funded a pilot project creating a network of Sustainability Centers. The pilot project demonstrated that networked campus sustainability centers are an efficient mechanism to reach consumers, business, and industry. All 48 community…

This article offers some updates on the share of the higher education institutions in the billion-worth stimulus package and how institutions were assisted through this funding. Since the $787 billion stimulus package, formally known as the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act (ARRA), was signed into law in 2009, an estimated $50 billion to $75…

In February 2009, Macomb Community College held an unusual student "graduation" in a suburban office building. There were 25 "graduates"--all males, many of whom had 10 to 15 years of experience as auto body designers working for original equipment manufacturers (OEM's) and their suppliers in the Detroit metropolitan area. They…

The Mid-South Region of Alabama, Arkansas, Louisiana, and Mississippi as a long history of pervasive poverty and educational underachievement. According to the U.S. Census Bureau (2008), the poverty level of residents in the Mid-South Region is higher than the national average. Consequently, many of the region's best and brightest students of all…

In the 1960s an increasing number of Native Americans began to express the need for an Indian college or university. Three major developments of the decade inspired them. The first was the rise of Indian activism in the 1960s. The second major development was the package of socioeconomic reforms of the Great Society, inaugurated by President…