A new Gallup-Purdue University survey takes a look, for the first time, at the relationship between the college experience and graduates’ lives. The study found that the type of institution matters little to a graduates’ workplace engagement and current well-being. More important was the support and experiences that a graduate had while in college. The survey showed that respondents were twice as likely to be engaged at work if they had an internship or extra-curricular in college where they were able to apply their classroom learning. Similar results were found if graduates reported having had a professor who excited them about learning and encouraged them. The report concludes that when colleges look to attract students they should consider “what students are doing in college and how they are experiencing it. Those elements — more than many others measured — have a profound relationship to a graduate’s life and career. Yet too few are experiencing them.”

High School Journal recently published a paper from researchers at the National Research Center for Career & Technical Education (NRCCTE) that attempts to create a more nuanced definition of CTE concentrators. Currently, CTE concentrators are defined generally as students who take 2-3 CTE courses out of a high school career. James R. Stone, director of NRCCTE, and his co-writers argue that although this satisfies accountability requirements, it may not truly illustrate how high school students use CTE courses. [NOTE: To access the entire paper, you will need an authorized log-in through a subscribing institution to use the MUSE website.]

On its blog this week, the Economic Policy Institute aired skepticism over media stories that claim there is a serious shortage of construction workers. EPI said the best proof of such a shortage would be in wages, and for residential construction, the evidence isn’t there. Though construction wages have risen over the past two years, they are still 4.2 percent lower than the 2009 levels. Check out this blog and EPI’s “Great Recession” feature, which is updated monthly as new employment data are released.

Andrea Zimmermann, State Policy Associate

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 8th, 2014 at 1:53 pm and is filed under Research. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.