Meeting the demand for college educated workers is a multi-faceted endeavor, but recent research shows a student’s high school experience to be a critical contributing factor to college “persistence,” staying in classes to achieve a credential. As the Center for Public Education found, offerings in mathematics, advanced placement courses and academic advising were are large contributors to future college success. There are many surprising findings in this report, but perhaps the most striking is that we were not forced to look at the extremes of socioeconomic status and academic achievement in order to see major differences in first year persistence. Rather we examined students in the. Read More.

Michelin’s recent announcement that their newest plant will be located in South Carolina contradicts the predictions from many analysts that U.S. manufacturing can’t compete with cheaper production from places like China or Mexico. As the Wall Street Journal reports , relationships between factories and schools are helping reeducate employees to fill demand for newer production jobs. The area’s manufacturers have built a symbiosis between factory and school. Walking through GE’s gas-turbine plane some months back, I asked the factory manager how she coped with the nation’s shortage of engineers. “We don’t have a shortage,” she said. She gets plenty from Clemson. Read More.