With increasingly interconnected educational and employment ecosystems, credential innovations are trailblazing multiple pathways to professions at a pivotal moment of rapid change. In the current state of credential proliferation, the quest for simultaneous improvement of quality and value reflects heightened cross-sector interests, while at the same time the quest for concurrent enhancement of access and success remains. With the evolving educational models, technologies, and organizations, credential innovations will continue to serve as powerful catalysts in realizing the great promise for inclusive pathways to professions. The Handbook of Research on Credential Innovations for Inclusive Pathways to Professions surveys the state of credential innovations, examines trends and issues, and explores models and strategies with case studies across sectors and disciplines. The 21 chapters are organized in three sections. Section I, Credential Innovations Amid Evolving Ecosystems, features a powerful array of change theories-in-action with topics ranging from conceptual re-visioning to organizational restructuring and programmatic reengineering within evolving ecosystems. Section II, Credential Innovations and Propositions Across Sectors, spotlights diverse approaches to and propositions of credentials within complex socio-economic landscapes across education, business, and technology industries. Section III, Credential Innovation Models and Strategies, showcases institutional innovations ranging from model developments, pedagogical approaches, and personalized engagements to outcome measurements and strategies for sustainable implementation. Lessons learned and implications are explored to share promising practices, inform current development, and influence future policies toward inclusive excellence in education and the workplace.

Many argue that the conventional high school transcript has become irrelevant to today’s best practices in teaching, learning, and assessment. With more and more school leaders turning to alternate, competency-based approaches for learning, crediting and transcripts can follow suit by drawing on badging, micro-crediting, digital portfolios of student work, and other emerging tools. Reinventing Crediting for Competency-Based Education explores the need for this transformation while detailing the implementation of promising models, particularly the Mastery Transcript Consortium. Written by an experienced consultant and former school leader, this book will assist school and district administrators in making a forward-thinking crediting and transcript system work for their students’ futures.

"Upward mobility through the path of higher education has been an article of faith for generations of working-class, low-income, and immigrant college students. While we know this path usually entails financial sacrifices and hard work, very little attention has been paid to the deep personal compromises such students have to make as they enter worlds vastly different from their own. Measuring the true cost of higher education for those from disadvantaged backgrounds, Moving Up without Losing Your Way looks at the ethical dilemmas of upward mobility--the broken ties with family and friends, the severed connections with former communities, and the loss of identity--faced by students as they strive to earn a successful place in society"--Dust jacket.

This report uses data from the National Longitudinal Study of the High School Class of 1972 and the High School & Beyond/Sophomores Study to summarize information on what is studied, where, and by whom, in the nation's colleges, community colleges, and postsecondary trade schools. Section 1 describes how the data is based on that which the taxonomy of courses and analyses of course-taking, credits, grades, degrees, etc., were constructed and edited. Section 2, "Degrees, Majors, Credits, and Time," presents the long-term educational attainment of the two cohorts of students (classes of 1972 and 1982). Section 3, "The Changing Shape of Delivered Knowledge," presents the taxonomy of courses, and includes the most common course titles in over 1,000 course categories, as well as enrollment trends by course category. Section 4 examines all credits earned by the two cohorts and identifies which courses account for most of those credits to yield an empirical "core curriculum." Section 5 provides data on proportions of students studying given subject categories; trend data is included for the past two decades. Finally, Section 6 provides data concerning such issues as trends in grade inflation and which courses students fail at high rates. The conclusion offers suggestions for further analysis of these data bases. (Contains 43 references.) (DB)

In spite of soaring tuition costs, more and more students go to college every year. A bachelor’s degree is now required for entry into a growing number of professions. And some parents begin planning for the expense of sending their kids to college when they’re born. Almost everyone strives to go, but almost no one asks the fundamental question posed by Academically Adrift: are undergraduates really learning anything once they get there? For a large proportion of students, Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa’s answer to that question is a definitive no. Their extensive research draws on survey responses, transcript data, and, for the first time, the state-of-the-art Collegiate Learning Assessment, a standardized test administered to students in their first semester and then again at the end of their second year. According to their analysis of more than 2,300 undergraduates at twenty-four institutions, 45 percent of these students demonstrate no significant improvement in a range of skills—including critical thinking, complex reasoning, and writing—during their first two years of college. As troubling as their findings are, Arum and Roksa argue that for many faculty and administrators they will come as no surprise—instead, they are the expected result of a student body distracted by socializing or working and an institutional culture that puts undergraduate learning close to the bottom of the priority list. Academically Adrift holds sobering lessons for students, faculty, administrators, policy makers, and parents—all of whom are implicated in promoting or at least ignoring contemporary campus culture. Higher education faces crises on a number of fronts, but Arum and Roksa’s report that colleges are failing at their most basic mission will demand the attention of us all.

In the second edition of Leading Modern Learning, A Blueprint for Vision Driven Schools authors Jay McTighe and Greg Curtis offer the reader a fully rethought version of their blueprint for major education reform. More than a simple refresh, this new edition incorporates new insights, thinking, and experiences to refine approaches to, and tools for, implementing effective modern learning practices in a department, school, or district. With new Notes From the Field elements, McTighe and Curtis highlight key observations from their work with schools, including how to avoid potential missteps, misunderstandings, and time wasters that inhibit progress when implementing reform. .

KICK-START YOUR CAREER WITH THE RIGHT ON-CAMPUS EXPERIENCE! When it comes to getting the most out of college, the experiences you have outside the classroom are just as important as what you study. Colleges That Create Futures looks beyond the usual “best of” college lists to highlight 50 schools that empower students to discover practical, real-world applications for their talents and interests. The schools in this book feature distinctive research, internship, and hands-on learning programs—all the info you need to help find a college where you can parlay your passion into a successful post-college career. Inside, You'll Find: • In-depth profiles covering career services, internship support, student group activity, alumni satisfaction, noteworthy facilities and programs, and more • Candid assessments of each school’s academics from students, current faculty, and alumni • Unique hands-on learning opportunities for students across majors • Testimonials on career prep from alumni in business, education, law, and much more *************************** What makes Colleges That Create Futures important? You've seen the headlines—lately the news has been full of horror stories about how the college educational system has failed many recent grads who leave school with huge debt, no job prospects, and no experience in the working world. Colleges That Create Futures identifies schools that don't fall into this trap but instead prepare students for successful careers! How are the colleges selected? Schools are selected based on survey results on career services, grad school matriculation, internship support, student group and government activity, alumni activity and salaries, and noteworthy facilities and programs.

First published as The Years That Matter Most From best-selling author Paul Tough, an indelible and explosive book on the glaring injustices of higher education, including unfair admissions tests, entrenched racial barriers, and crushing student debt. Now updated and expanded for the pandemic era. When higher education works the way it’s supposed to, there is no better tool for social mobility—for lifting young people out of challenging circumstances and into the middle class and beyond. In reality, though, American colleges and universities have become the ultimate tool of social immobility—a system that secures a comfortable future for the children of the wealthy while throwing roadblocks in the way of students from struggling families. Combining vivid and powerful personal stories with deep, authoritative reporting, Paul Tough explains how we got into this mess and explores the innovative reforms that might get us out. Tough examines the systemic racism that pervades American higher education, shows exactly how the SATs give an unfair advantage to wealthy students, and guides readers from Ivy League seminar rooms to the welding shop at a rural community college. At every stop, he introduces us to young Americans yearning for a better life—and praying that a college education might help them get there. With a new preface and afterword by the author exposing how the coronavirus pandemic has shaken the higher education system anew.​

Only once did David Foster Wallace give a public talk on his views on life, during a commencement address given in 2005 at Kenyon College. The speech is reprinted for the first time in book form in THIS IS WATER. How does one keep from going through their comfortable, prosperous adult life unconsciously' How do we get ourselves out of the foreground of our thoughts and achieve compassion' The speech captures Wallace's electric intellect as well as his grace in attention to others. After his death, it became a treasured piece of writing reprinted in The Wall Street Journal and the London Times, commented on endlessly in blogs, and emailed from friend to friend. Writing with his one-of-a-kind blend of causal humor, exacting intellect, and practical philosophy, David Foster Wallace probes the challenges of daily living and offers advice that renews us with every reading.