The high school graduation rate has topped 80 percent for the first time in U.S. history — and if states can keep up their rapid pace of improvement, the rate could hit 90 percent by 2020, according to federal data released Monday. The improvement has been driven by steep gains among African-American and Hispanic students … Continue reading
A new study that followed a group of men and women for two decades reports that men who had finished high school by 1991 earned $206,000 more over those 20 years than men with no high school diploma. For women, the difference between the two groups was $161,000. The dollar figures are expressed in 2010 constant dollars to account for inflation Continue reading
The report, Spotlight on Science Learning: The High Cost of Dropping Science and Math, estimates that less than 50 per cent of high school students graduate with senior science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) courses, despite approximately 70 per cent of Canada’s top jobs requiring STEM education Continue reading
“It has become a truism and a rare example of political consensus: Educators, researchers, and policymakers across the political spectrum agree that America must send more of its young people to college and must find ways to help them graduate” writes Jay Sherwin in Make Me a Match: Helping Low-Income and First-Generation Students Make Good College Choices … Continue reading
In the U.S., the percentage of high school graduates by state ranges from 62 percent (Nevada) to 88 percent (Iowa), with an overall average of 78 percent. What about the 22 percent of young people who drop out of high school? What are their prospects? From a historical perspective, this chart shows the economic impact … Continue reading
Among America’s most celebrated entrepreneurs are college dropouts like Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and Michael Dell. But as it turns out, the country’s most frequent business founders are dropouts of a different kind: They dropped out of high school. That’s according to the latest numbers from the Kauffman Index of Entrepreneurial Activity, as … Continue reading
Frank Pena doesn’t have much time to chat, because he’s repairing a jet engine. The 24-year-old technician at Lockheed Martin is a big guy, but even he looks tiny compared with some of the engines—from the Air Force’s C-5 to the commercial 727—arrayed in the factory. Pena is here, and not flipping burgers at McDonalds, … Continue reading
“One of the most robust predictions about any teenager’s future is that dropping out of high school will increase the probability of a life marred by lengthy bouts of unemployment and poverty. Although a high-school certificate is a low rung on the education ladder, it is the crucial one if an individual is to have … Continue reading
The tenth Annual Education for All Global Monitoring Report shows that 12 percent of young people are dropping out of secondary schools in New York, and are left without vital foundation skills for work. This constitutes one fifth of young people aged 17-24 years being out of school and unemployed. These young people urgently need … Continue reading
Community colleges have long viewed job training as central to their mission, but the role has taken on added significance since the economic recession. Even with nearly 13 million Americans unemployed, some companies can’t find qualified candidates. As many as 3.5 million jobs are unfilled right now, many of them in the fields of information … Continue reading
When people talk about the value of a college degree, they mean different things. A report last year by Georgetown University’s Center on Education and the Workforce pegs the median value of a four-year bachelor’s degree at $2.3 million, which is the average earnings for a degree holder employed full-time from ages 25 to 64. … Continue reading
A research published in 1999 and funded in part by the U.S. Department of Education, compares the various credentials, their benefits in relation to employment, and their role in the lifelong learning patterns of career-focused individuals. Key points Studies verify that education beyond high school results in higher earnings. (a 5-15% rate of return in … Continue reading
While the U.S. job market is showing signs of improvement, one sizable group of workers has been falling further behind: high-school dropouts. Some 1.8 million more college graduates have found work since January 2010, when the recovery began producing jobs, but about 128,000 high-school dropouts lost work in the same period, according to the Labor … Continue reading
Two-fifths of high school students graduate prepared neither for traditional college nor for career training, according to a study from researchers at Johns Hopkins University and the University of Arizona. College-preparatory programming has expanded dramatically in the past decade, with participation in Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate more than tripling. Career-preparatory programs have evolved, as … Continue reading