In response to national concerns a decade ago, driven by research that showed that higher education was making little impact on students' development of broad competencies and critical thinking, the provost and president of Purdue University, a research university, instituted a program whose goals were to build on the accumulated knowledge on…

This position paper describes Indiana's research goals and efforts to develop a student-centered, industry-referenced approach to performance based vocational education (PBVE) programs and curricula. The introductory section traces the state's efforts to establish priorities and systematically develop performance based programs and describes…