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Discussion Paper
Partnerships between Community Development Financial Institutions and Workforce Development Organizations
Inability to secure capital to improve worker skills or expand training programs can prevent growth in a local economy. This paper presents the role CDFIs can play to fill a need for financing in the workforce development sector. While the transactions presented in this paper are unique, they highlight the importance of partnerships between the two industries. Shared missions and an overlapping client base between CDFIs and workforce development practitioners creates a natural pairing for collaboration. In addition, CDFIs are uniquely able to serve as test beds for innovation because of their ...
Working Paper
Disinvesting in the future?: a comprehensive examination of the effects of state appropriations for public higher education
In aggregate, state appropriations are the largest revenue source for public higher education in the United States. However, these appropriations have significantly declined over past decades, drawing serious concerns about the potential negative impact on schools and students. This paper provides a more comprehensive study of the effects of state appropriations than previous research, while explicitly exploring and testing the heterogeneity of the effects by institutional type. It finds strong evidence of the negative effects of state appropriation cuts in the areas of tuition and fees, ...
Monograph
All Eyes on Texas: Community colleges focus on preparing the workforce of tomorrow
This report examines how Texas community colleges can fulfill their unique mission through measures including additional funding, greater outreach with business and recognition that many students seek specific skills training.
Journal Article
El Paso educator promotes student career gateway via community colleges
William Serrata is president of the El Paso County Community College District and a member of the board of directors for the Dallas Fed’s El Paso Branch. He is past chair of the Texas Association of Community Colleges. He discusses the unique, postpandemic challenges that community colleges face.
Discussion Paper
The Changing Higher Education Landscape
The past decade and a half has seen dramatic changes in the higher education landscape, characterized by significant growth in enrollment. This growth has been concentrated mostly in for-profit schools, where enrollment skyrocketed in the first decade of the period, nearly quadrupling between 2000 and 2011. The post-2011 period has been marked by an abatement of this growth. These patterns have strong implications not only for the higher education market but also for the labor force and the economy more broadly. Therefore, it is essential to understand the evolution of the different sectors ...
Discussion Paper
The Changing Role of Community-College and For-Profit-College Borrowers in the Student Loan Market
In the first post in this series, we characterized the rapid transformation of the higher education market over the 2000-2015 period, a transformation that was led by explosive growth of the for-profit sector of higher education. In the second post, we found that most of this growth was driven by nontraditional students entering these institutions. Given this growth and the marked change in student composition, it is important to understand what impact these patterns might have on student loan originations, student loan volume, and the borrower pool in the various sectors of higher education. ...
Discussion Paper
Who Falters at Student Loan Payback Time?
This is the final post in a four-part series examining the evolution of enrollment, student loans, graduation and default in the higher education market over the course of the past fifteen years. In the first post, we found a marked increase in enrollment of 35 percent between 2000 and 2015, led mostly by the for-profit sector?which increased enrollment by 177 percent. The second post showed that these new enrollees were quite different from the traditional enrollees. Yesterday?s post demonstrated an unprecedented increase in loan origination amounts during this period?nearly tripling between ...
Journal Article
Upfront: New
Journal Article
District Digest: Community Colleges as Anchor Institutions in Rural Areas
The Fifth Federal Reserve District — comprising Maryland, North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia, most of West Virginia, and Washington, D.C. — is home to 122 public two-year institutions that have a wide range of both traditional academic and technical programs. More than half of these community colleges are located in rural counties. The 66 rural community colleges, like the private and public four-year institutions of higher education in rural areas, play an anchor institution role in their communities. But this role is not always accounted for in the formulas that federal, state, ...
Journal Article
Upfront: New from the Richmond Fed’s Regional Matters blog
Multiple blog posts.