Vol. 10, No. 4 October 2008
New Issue Brief on Postsecondary Offerings and Credentials
"Postsecondary Career/Technical Education: Changes in the Number of Offering Institutions and Awarded Credentials From 1997 to 2006" examines trends from 1997 to 2006 in the number of subbaccalaureate postsecondary institutions offering programs in career/technical education (CTE), and the number of subbaccalaureate CTE credentials awarded by postsecondary institutions. Trends were examined by institutional sector, focusing on public 2-year institutions, for-profit less-than-2-year institutions, and for-profit 2-year institutions.
In 2006, these sectors collectively accounted for 87 percent of the less-than- 4-year institutions offering CTE and awarded 94 percent of all subbaccalaureate CTE credentials. Overall, the number of less-than-4-year institutions offering CTE increased 3 percent from 1997 to 2006, and the number of subbaccalaureate CTE credentials awarded increased 24 percent. Over this period, there was a shift in both CTE-offering institutions and CTE credentials, from public 2-year institutions to for-profit 2-year and less-than-2- year institutions. Although the number of credentials awarded grew faster among for-profit institutions than among public 2-year institutions, the latter still awarded most subbaccalaureate CTE credentials in 2006 (58 percent). For-profit 2-year and less-than-2-year institutions combined awarded 35 percent.
On September 23, 2008, the Chronicle of Higher Education created a news blog on its website highlighting this Issue Brief. The blog has a summary of, and links to, the Issue Brief and space for reader comments. View the summary and reader comments at: http://chronicle.com/news/article/?id=5202.
Data on CTE and Students with Disabilities
At its August meeting, the CTE Statistics Technical Review Panel expressed interest in learning more about the CTE participation of students with disabilities. In September, staff from NCES, IES (Institute of Education Sciences, NCES’s parent office), MPR Associates, Inc. and SRI International met to discuss how data from IES’s National Longitudinal Transition Study-2 (NLTS2) could be useful to the CTE Statistics program. The group proposed several ways we could use NLTS2 data to learn more about these students and agreed that this was an opportunity to learn about each other's work.
NLTS2 is the only national sample of special education students, tracking them from secondary school into adulthood. The study documents the in- and out-of-school experiences of 12,000 students who were between ages 13 and 16 when the study began in 2000. It focuses on such topics as high school coursework, extracurricular activities, academic performance, postsecondary education and training, independent living, and community participation. The study also collects student transcripts. The fifth and final wave of data will be available in 2010.
The CTE Statistics staff will continue to investigate how we can use this data set. A staff member will attend training on the data set in January 2009. For more information on NLTS2, see http://www.nlts2.org/.
CTES Website
The CTE Statistics team is looking into making the website changes suggested by the TRP, with the goal of redesigning the website to make it more useful and navigable. Changes suggested by the TRP included improving the search functionality, organizing web content by themes, representing findings graphically, linking to other CTE-related sites, and checking for consistency across the content (e.g., how variables are used).
CTE Statistics Staff Changes
Sharon Anderson of MPR Associates, who has directed the TRP since January, has accepted a position with the Postsecondary Studies Division at NCES. Emily Cataldi, Senior Research Associate at MPR, will assume responsibility for directing MPR’s CTE Statistics work at the end of October. Ms. Cataldi has extensive experience working with NCES Technical Review Panels and analyzing NCES data. She currently works on the Baccalaureate and Beyond Survey and has written reports on transitions to postsecondary education and the workforce.
We also have a new CTE Statistics team leader at ESSI. As Jing Chen turns to international assessment work, Stephanie Cronen, Principal Research Scientist at the American Institutes for Research, joins the team to provide general management and technical support. Dr. Cronen also will be responsible for the CTE Statistics website, including site redesign, maintenance, and improving response to user feedback. Her experience is in national survey support and conducting large scale evaluations.
Questions or comments about this publication? Contact Lisa Hudson at 202.502.7358 or Emily Cataldi at 515.270.8457.
