Career/Tech Education

WASHINGTON -- A proposal by the U.S. Department of Education to assess the performance of vocational programs and most course offerings at for-profit institutions by linking the prices they charge to their graduates' salaries may have hit a wall Wednesday as concerns surfaced publicly that the department was reaching outside its statutory purview to place price controls on higher education.

Though the terms “college ready” and “career ready” have been used together in many education plans in recent years, a new paper from the Association for Career and Technical Education argues they are not the same.

Easing their way into awarding four-year degrees, some community colleges around the country have begun offering applied baccalaureate degrees with a technical, workforce-ready focus. Two-year colleges in Wisconsin, however, are lobbying the state system to let them offer a different kind of applied baccalaureate – one with a liberal arts focus and aimed at rural, place-bound adults.

In better times, Monroe Community College knew where its bread was buttered.

Rochester, N.Y.'s three major employers – the Eastman Kodak Company, the Xerox Corporation and Bausch & Lomb, all of which maintain major offices in the city – filled the college’s coffers, contracting it to train most of their workers.

WASHINGTON -- The United States economy is in serious danger from a growing mismatch between the skills that will be needed for jobs being created and the educational backgrounds (or lack thereof) of would-be workers. That is the conclusion of a mammoth analysis of jobs data being released today by the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce.

Career-minded college students (or their concerned and hovering parents) are always in search of surefire ways to make their résumés and transcripts stand out as they try to elbow out classmates for full-time jobs after graduation.