Participation in adult education and training (AET) programs is increasingly important for people of all ages and is necessary to remain competitive in a world experiencing rapid technological advances. Lifelong learning activities are especially important for middle-aged and older adults who intend to work at older ages to ensure they have the…

This article challenges researchers and practitioners to reconsider the utility of insider/outsider constructs of the rural school superintendency. We draw on case studies of two diverse rural Rust Belt communities and the school superintendents to demonstrate the new demands placed on rural superintendents given changing social and economic…

This paper surveys six speeches made by National Education Association presidents at the Association's annual meetings in the years 1931, 1932, 1933, 2011, 2012, and 2013. I aim to show that, in times of economic woe, the charge given to educators, at least in assembly-style meetings, is laden with language which represents a particular…

Tom Wessel's view of interdependent local ecologies lays out a conceptual framework for human communities and corporations. His rich examples of biodiversity provide great metaphors for how competition and negative conditions can be transformed by natural cooperation and can lead to self-organized, self-managed natural communities that are…

This paper explores challenges higher education institutions face while ensuring one of the quality assurance criteria--meeting the demands of labour market. The relationship between labour market and higher education institutions becomes even more complicated during the periods of rapid changes in labour market caused by economic collisions. In…

This paper presents formal interactions between vocational education and training and the labour market in France, part of a large European study commissioned by the Centre for the Development of Vocational Training (Cedefop). The paper examines the nature of vocational education and training system, the feedback mechanisms and the…

The Great Recession from December 2007 to June 2009 is associated with a dramatic weakening of the labor market from which the labor market is now only slowly recovering. The unemployment rate remains stubbornly high and durations of unemployment are unprecedentedly long. I use data from the Displaced Workers Survey (DWS) from 1984-2010 to…

Children and youth vary in their developmental health due to differences in family economic security and exposure to toxic stress. The economic downturn has increased the challenges facing low-income children. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA) and the President's first budget made significant down-payments on investments in…

The number of U.S. teacher-librarians has greatly diminished despite advocacy efforts by stakeholders. This case study investigated the factors that led governing board members in a mid-sized urban high school district to retain certified teacher-librarian positions despite a major economic crisis. Themes constructed through the analysis were:…

The economic downturn that began in the United States in 2008 has influenced higher education in similar ways to retrenchment in the early 1970s. Institutional budget constraints have expedited long-term declines in the number of full-time, tenure track faculty positions available in many academic disciplines, especially the humanities. This…

(Purpose) The purpose of this study was to examine the correlation between certain characteristics of US states and their budgeting systems for higher education (HE), and to derive implications for Japanese HE budgeting policy from the results. (Methodology) The US's State Higher Education Executive Officers (SHEEO) conducted a 30-item…

Through discourse analysis the research will unearth the tension between the Theories of Human Capital (HCT) and the Work First Policy (WFP), Policies Informing Education (PIE), and Human Capital Development (HCD) as they relate to the labor market. The application of discourse analysis demonstrates how the tenants of HCT are missing components…

The purpose of this work is to provide higher education lobbyists with empirical evidence to support their arguments for better funding in today's tight budgetary times. This work explains two primary factors that contribute to the largely false impression of higher education's wastefulness which, unfortunately pervades both legislatures and the…

This study seeks to extend the literature on higher education enrollment patterns during times of recession by examining patterns of enrollment and successful course completion in one of the world's largest higher education systems--the California Community College system. The data are drawn from publicly available data sources on the web. CCC…

This paper was presented to a meeting of the Wellington Exchange, an international group of higher education officials, in December 2008. One of the topics of the meeting was around the issue of possible skills shortages emerging as a result of demographic trends, with the ageing of the population of developed countries. The paper argues that this…