Beyond Completion Challenge

The event will bring employers and educators together to discuss the importance of integrated work experiences that help students apply their learning, connect with employers and develop marketable skills.

Deborah Santiago’s parents always made clear she and her three siblings would go to college.

At a time of falling enrollments and low student confidence in the value of their education, we need to do everything we can to deliver a valuable, quality experience for our next generation of workers, leaders, and citizens.

Grant competition seeks to connect learning with employment for first-generation students, those who struggle to afford education, and students of color. .main-content__header-area .header-image .text-box { max-width: 100% !important; text-align: center; }

A college or university can be deemed a “Hispanic Serving Institution” if at least a quarter of its students are Latino. But Deborah Santiago, co-founder and CEO of Excelencia in Education, says serving Latino students is about more than just enrolling them. It’s about supporting their journey through college graduation and into the workforce. Deborah and I discuss the Seal of Excelencia, and along the way we learn about her own journey growing up in a military family and pursuing her education as a first-generation college student.

Roslyn Clark Artis grew up in southern West Virginia, the only African American in her graduating class. The daughter of a coal miner, she dreamed of becoming a lawyer and applied to every public university in her home state, hoping to find an affordable route to college.

$25 million grant from Strada Education Network taps the collective experience and insights of HBCU leaders to scale experiential learning and leadership development within the college experience .main-content__header-area .header-image .text-box { max-width: 100% !important; text-align: center; }

New organization will allow each constituent part to focus on mission delivery, gaining operating efficiencies by leveraging support services from Strada

An annual convening of leaders from across the education-to-career ecosystem. Now in its 47th year, the CAEL Annual Conference is widely known as the leading place for leaders to connect and network with industry experts from postsecondary education, workforce and economic development, and industry.

Surveys and interviews with 2020, 2021 high school graduates who postponed their education plans due to COVID-19 also show advising, financial assistance, career relevance are important to bringing students back to campus.

The declines in postsecondary education enrollment made headlines throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, but what does that mean for the students behind those statistics?

Most people agree we need to improve economic mobility in this country. How to do that is another question entirely. Join Strada Education Network’s Ruth Watkins as she talks to educators, employers, and innovators about their best ideas for the future of education and work.

Report also finds that more respondents rate shorter nondegree programs as worth the cost than longer ones

Nondegree credentials have been growing rapidly for decades. Questions about their quality and value, however, remain.

Disrupted high school graduates cited stress, anxiety, and uncertainty as having the greatest influence on their decision to delay further education — and they say guidance, affordability, and connections to career would help them re-engage.

Recent high school graduates share why their education plans were disrupted, and what types of support could bring them back

Combination to Create a Leading Labor Market Analytics Company

From its onset in early 2020, the Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic has upended life across the world, leading to uncertainty around health, work, finances, education, and a host of other issues.

Strada Education Network’s latest survey finds that 32 percent of adults whose education plans were disrupted by COVID-19 are no longer enrolled or planning to enroll, up from 10 percent last spring

Will Pandemic-Disrupted Learners Return to School?

Insights from National Experts

Recruiting, hiring, and training improvements are here to stay, employer survey says

This career exploration and readiness program’s formula for learner success combines social capital, self-discovery to launch career pathways for first-gen grads

Just half of college alumni feel it was worth it to take out loans to attend college, with even lower levels of satisfaction from Black and Latino alumni about their loans.

Over the past 15 years, the number of student loan recipients has increased by 51 percent and the debt associated with those loans has more than doubled. More Americans are borrowing more money to go to college.

Strada Education Network’s latest Public Viewpoint research finds that fewer than 4 in 10 Black alumni and less than half of Latino alumni feel that it was worth taking out their student loans—but strong career support boosts their assessment.

We asked alumni nationwide who had borrowed money to go to school if their loans were worth it.

Growing up in San Francisco, Ebony Beckwith attended an academically selective high school where most of her classmates were university-bound. She opted for a different path, heading directly into the workforce while winding through several community colleges before realizing she needed that four-year degree to reach her career goals.

Invest now in community colleges to fuel economic opportunity

Talent Path’s Learn-and-Earn Model Bridges Skills Gap Between College and Career

Gerald Chertavian believes every young adult has potential and deserves a clear pathway to a great career, whether through college or directly into the workforce. And as founder and CEO of Year Up, he’s proving that with the appropriate training and employer support, it can take as little as one year for “opportunity youth” — 16- to 24-year-olds who are neither working nor in school — to move from poverty to a well-paid, in-demand career, often with a Fortune 500 company. 

Can the pandemic induce higher education to jump-start the future of learning?

Amid a pandemic crisis characterized by stay-at-home orders and travel restrictions, the leader of the career center at Stony Brook University describes its fallout with an unexpected word: freedom.

Bill Hansen to Step Down After Eight Years Leading Nonprofit Social Impact Organization

Expert panelists discuss the value of short-term programs, employer investments, and skills-based hiring

In the recovering economy, employers will play a central role as Americans look to reskill, upskill, and compete in the workforce. But what do people want and expect from employers’ hiring, advancement, and training practices? In this research we explore the public’s perceptions on skills-based hiring, preferences for employer-provided education and training benefits, and beliefs about who should fund education and training.

There’s no shortage of big, ambitious ideas for creating an education-workforce system that improves upward mobility for more people. Harvard education economist David Deming uses hard data to stress test those ideas and see what might work, and what probably won’t. We talk to him about what he’s learning and what he recommends we do right now to improve the value of education for an increasingly diverse workforce.

Strada Education Network’s latest Public Viewpoint research highlights widespread belief that when it comes to career, skills and experience should take precedence over formal credentials—and that Americans highly value employers who will support their education and career development.

Could the dislocations brought on by COVID-19 lead to a long-term upside? For this webinar, Strada’s Ben Wildavsky leads a discussion about the hybrid campus concept with expert panelists Cole Clark, managing director — higher education at Deloitte; Maurie McInnis, president, Stony Brook University; Jeff Selingo, higher education author; and Marni Baker Stein, provost, Western Governors University. The conversation was inspired by a new Deloitte report developed in partnership with Strada Education Network.

In her early 20s, Kiabeth Santos was well on her way to achieving her goal of becoming a nurse. She wanted to work in health care, and she loves working with people. But then life — as it often does — got in the way.

XULA President Reynold Verret on How His HBCU Helps Students Succeed

During COVID-19, many higher education institutions adopted a mix of face-to-face and online delivery of courses and services—creating an opportunity for a more permanent shift to a hybrid university.

Historically, the path to a college degree and upward mobility for Black students usually led through a Black college or university. Even today, with mainstream institutions welcoming many more racially diverse students, HBCUs remain a driving force in launching Black leaders, including Vice President Kamala Harris, a graduate of Howard University. To find out what HBCUs can teach the rest of higher ed about student success, we sit down with Reynold Verret, the child of Haitian political refugees who grew up to become president of Xavier University of Louisiana, a small HBCU that is the nation’s No. 1 producer of future Black doctors.

Preparing the Education-Workforce System for the 100-Year Career

University of Utah leader will drive Strada Education Network’s research, philanthropy, policy, and thought leadership on national stage.

In the not-so-distant future, workers will make dozens of career changes over a working life of 75 or even 100 years. Michelle Weise, an expert on the future of work and author of “Long Life Learning,” says human skills like communication, creativity, and teamwork will remain critical in an era when robots and automation take over routine jobs. What’s more, workers increasingly will need to learn new skills rather than assuming a degree early in life will carry them through.

In the earliest days of the pandemic, researchers at Strada Center for Education Consumer Insights realized leaders across our nation would need a real-time understanding of how people were experiencing, thinking about, and feeling about work and education. The research team launched a regular survey, Public Viewpoint, to make these insights widely available — ultimately including more than 25,000 survey participants over the course of 2020.

‘Lessons Earned’ Podcast Talks With JFF’s Michael Collins

Long before JFF’s Michael Collins became an education-workforce policy expert, he was a Black kid living in Hartford, Connecticut, bussed to school in the white suburbs. The experience, followed years later by a stint teaching low-income Latino students in Texas, drove home the racial and economic disparities he’s been working to solve ever since. In the midst of a pandemic disrupting education and work — especially for low-income people of color — we talk to Michael about how to equip people for jobs today without closing off opportunities to advance in jobs of the future.