By Shayna Strom and Mark Schmitt

This report originally appeared on TCF.org

Work, once a matter of years of commitment to a single trade, career track, or even one employer, has in recent years undergone a radical transformation. From measuring work in units of decades, all pointed toward an engraved watch at retirement, we have swung far in the other direction, toward a world in which work will sometimes consist of brief transactions with multiple clients, customers, or employers. …

By Tariq Habash & Bob Shireman

This report first appeared on tcf.org.

When students go to college, they are confronted with a flurry of paperwork — applications, financial aid forms, housing forms, and so on — all of which seems pretty routine. Increasingly, however, some schools have been including an additional form hidden in that stack of innocuous documents that is quite unlike the others: an enrollment contract.

Not generally found in traditional higher education, these enrollment contracts — formal, legalistic agreements — include language that spells out the options each signee has in a range of situations, ones that probably appear purely hypothetical to most enrollees. One can forgive students — intent on a journey that they hope will change their lives in wonderful ways — for signing everything put in front of them, as quickly as they would click “agree” to the terms and conditions of an online app. …

By Bob Shireman

This post originally appeared on The Century Foundation’s website

Today in the United States, more than a third of adults have a college degree, compared to fewer than five percent of adults at the time of World War II, representing a dramatic change in what people do when they reach adulthood.1This year alone nearly two million people in the United States will earn their bachelor’s degrees.2 …

By Margaret Mattes

This post originally appeared on TCF.org.

It is a credit to the State of New York that in 2005, when Trump University first started marketing itself, state officials cried foul, demanding that the company — which was based in New York — cease and desist. New York’s insistence on protecting its residents against misrepresentation was an important preventative measure — and that’s why it is so disturbing that the state agency responsible for protecting students is now poised to sign away its right to take action against a new threat: out-of-state online schools.

Right now, New York State education commissioner MaryEllen Elia is moving toward approving an interstate compact — the State Authorization Reciprocity Agreement, or SARA — that would allow schools based in other states to enroll New York residents online without abiding by New York’s standards. …

By Andy Stettner

This post originally appeared on TCF.org.

Today’s Department of Labor report shows the job market continues to improve, and the sustained growth appears now to be expanding opportunity to those typically at the lower rungs of the job ladder.

Jobs grew by 242,000 in February, bringing monthly average job growth in 2016 to 211,000 after revisions. While manufacturing jobs continue to appear vulnerable, dropping by 16,000 jobs in February in the face of dampening global demand, recession fears are not supported by jobs data.The headline is real but still meek wage growth, with wages actually down by three cents in February, and the annual growth rate dipping to 2.2%. …

By Tariq Habash

This post originally appeared on TCF.org.

For at least the past decade, many for-profit colleges have been using lies and manipulation to recruit students. The victims are mostly from low-income neighborhoods, targeted because the federal government will provide the maximum amount of student loans and grants to those students. Seeking that money, these colleges set their tuition high, but only offer a low-quality education in return. Many students drop out, or, if they do graduate, are not prepared to compete for well-paying jobs — and all are saddled with troublesome levels of student debt.

Much of this scandalous abuse of students and taxpayers could have been avoided if regulators and law enforcement agencies were aware sooner of this exploitation. Why did it take so long for concrete evidence to surface? …

By Halley Potter and Kimberly Quick, with Elizabeth Davies

This report first appeared on The Century Foundation’s website.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Students in racially and socioeconomically integrated schools experience academic, cognitive, and social benefits that are not available to students in racially isolated, high-poverty environments. A large body of research going back five decades underscores the improved experiences that integrated schools provide. And yet, more than sixty years after Brown v. Board of Education, American public schools are still highly segregated by both race and class. …

By Amy Stuart Wells, Lauren Fox, and Diana Cordova-Cobo

This report originally appeared on TCF.org

FOREWORD

By Richard D. Kahlenberg

After decades in the political wilderness, school integration seems poised to make a serious comeback as an education reform strategy.

Sixty-two years ago, Brown v. Board of Education held that separate schools for black and white students are inherently unequal. Fifty years ago, the evidence in the congressionally authorized Coleman Report put a twist onBrown, suggesting that socioeconomic school integration could increase academic achievement more than any other school strategy. But when racial school desegregation began to be seriously pursued in the early 1970s, the implementation was often clumsy. Federal judges ordered school children to travel across town to attend schools to achieve racial balance, giving parents no say in the matter. …