SSTI Digest

Preliminary findings from the Commission on the Future of Higher Education fault U.S. colleges and universities with wasteful spending and a reluctance to create innovative approaches to 21st century education. A recent document released by the commission calls for major changes in financial aid, higher education funding, K-12 outreach, and educational assessment.



When Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings launched the commission in September 2005, it was charged with developing a comprehensive strategy for postsecondary education that would make the most of national investment in higher ed. A series of shorter reports released earlier this year by Commission Chair Charles Miller made it clear that the commission's recommendations would require a major overhaul of financial aid programs and higher ed spending. The latest release is an early draft of the commission's final report, a version which still lacks conclusions but has already drawn public opposition from higher ed groups and several commission members.

Maine Gov. Mark Baldacci has unveiled a new handbook intended to help communities to capitalize upon their cultural resources to spur economic growth. Maine's Creative Economy Community Handbook: Maine State Government Resources for Communities offers advice for community leaders interested in building a creative and dynamic workforce. The guidelines it gives for designing a strategic plan could benefit communities across the country interested in similar initiatives.



The handbook is the result of two years of work by Maines Creative Economy Steering Committee following a 2004 conference on the future of the state economy. The study was requested after it was reported that the creative economy was generating $6.6 billion annually in cultural tourism dollars. The committee has drawn upon the work of Richard Florida, who has theorized that networks of educated and entrepreneurial citizens lead to dynamic local economies.

As the authors of the recent Swedish report, The Internationalization of Corporate R&D, pointed out, industrial R&D may increasingly be found concentrated around public and private research institutions with strong research capabilities related to the specific corporation's interests. As companies become increasing global in their structure, so, too, will the location of the research expertise that they draw on. State investments to strengthen university R&D capacity and expertise, then, could be a logical approach for regions to remain or become significant players for the knowledge economy. Fortunately, that's a fundamental approach for many state TBED strategies.

Proponents for a higher skilled workforce may be concerned with troubling new statistics regarding high school graduation rates. A new report from the EPE (Editorial Projects in Education) Research Center and Education Week shows that more than 30 percent of the nations ninth-graders fail to go on to graduate from public high schools. The report, Diplomas Count: An Essential Guide to Graduation Policy and Rates, details data on 2002-03 public high school graduation rates for all 50 states, the District of Columbia and the 50 largest school districts in the nation.



The graduation rates were calculated by using the Cumulative Promotion Index (CPI), which estimates the probability that a student in the ninth grade will complete high school on time with a regular diploma. The CPI rate depicts a four-step process a student must take in order to graduate: The first three steps include the completion of one grade to the next (i.e. 9-10, 10-11, 11-12) and the final step is the completion of grade 12 to graduation.