Canada’s 2-year colleges stress job skills
Canada’s two-year colleges, which stress job training, don’t suffer from the inferiority complex that plagues U.S. community colleges, writes the Hechinger Report. Increasingly, young Canadians are choosing community colleges over universities or capping a bachelor’s degree with a vocational course at a two-year college. Canada is second in the world, after South Korea, in young [...]
CCs could become separate and unequal
A growing economic and social divide separates community colleges and four-year institutions, writes Richard Kahlenberg in the Chronicle of Higher Education. In this year’s State of the Union address, President Obama emphasized the role of education, and community colleges in particular, in creating equal opportunity, Kahlenberg writes. A coveted seat next to First Lady Michelle [...]
Adult ed, short-term students seek aid
Expand financial aid to part-time, non-credit students seeking job skills faculty and students told U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan at a town hall meeting at Tallahassee Community College last week, reports Community College Times. President Obama wants two-year colleges to help train an additional two million Americans for jobs. ”I can’t overstate how important the role [...]
The death of voc ed — and the middle class
The death of vocational education is hastening the demise of the middle class, argues Marc Tucker in Ed Week. Years ago, almost all the larger cities had selective vocational high schools whose graduates were virtually assured good jobs, Tucker writes. Employers made sure these schools had “competent instructors and up-to-date equipment,” so graduates would meet job [...]
Massachusetts will centralize CC control
Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick proposed centralizing the state’s community college system in his State of the Commonwealth address, reports the Boston Globe. Patrick highlighted the connection between the often overlooked schools and the unemployment problem. Encouraging more cooperation between schools and local employers, he said, would help the state’s 240,000 unemployed get the skills they need to [...]
The workforce development fantasy
President Obama focused on the workforce development mission of community colleges in his State of the Union Speech, calling on community colleges to train two million skilled workers for unfilled jobs. The next day, Education Secretary Arne Duncan flew to Florida to praise job training programs at Tallahassee Community College. Workforce development is the flavor of the [...]
Again, Obama touts community colleges
President Obama touted community colleges as “community career centers” in his State of the Union speech. He proposed training 2 million people for skilled jobs through business-college partnerships, not a new idea. Obama cited the experience of Jackie Bray, a single mom in North Carolina who was laid off from her job as a mechanic. [...]
Badges undercut colleges’ monopoly on credentials
Badges aren’t just for Boy Scouts — or video game enthusiasts — anymore, I write on U.S. News. The Mozilla Foundation, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation and the Humanities, Arts, Science, and Technology Advanced Collaboratory (HASTAC) have created a $2 million Digital Media and Learning Competition to encourage the development of digital badges that recognize lifelong learners’ [...]
Apple announces iPad text books
Apple will sell e-textbooks designed to run on iPads. Apple unveiled a new version of its iBooks digital book software that supports textbooks featuring quizzes, note-taking, study cards and other features like the ability to interact with a diagram of an ant. The service will launch with a small number of high-school titles from McGraw-Hill Cos., Pearson PLC and [...]
From jail to a job
Western Tidewater Regional Jail inmates are learning warehouse skills at a training center run by Paul D. Camp Community College in Virginia, reports the Virginia Pilot. “The overall goal is to get them jobs,” instructor Jeff Jacobs said. “To get them out of that rut they’re in.” The minimum-security inmates can earn a certificate in [...]
