Trends to Watch: State by State

This website is a nifty addition to anyone's collection of environmental scanning tools:I

t’s no surprise to anyone that the world is changing. But the facts of just how the world is changing still have the power to startle—and elude us.

This is why the Pew Center on the States offers Trends to Watch, which seeks to help state policy makers, the media, and the general public follow the major trends that determine if states thrive—or not—and track where the 50 states stand relative to each trend.

The site will be updated continuously, and new data and analyses will be added as they become available and as new trends emerge across a wide range of public policy concerns, including economic competitiveness, education, the environment, the democratic process and government performance.

Can Colleges and Local Governments Work Together on the Sustainability Agenda?

This closing plenary panel was moderated by Jim Elder of the Campaign for Environmental Literacy and includes Harvey Rubin, the clerk of the courts from Miami-Date County, FL, Kevin Foy, mayor of Chapel Hill, NC, and Debra Rowe, a professor at Oakland Community College and president of the US Partnership for the Decade of Education for Sustainability:

Debra Rowe, a professor at Oakland Community College who is famously involved in countless sustainability organizations and efforts, said that many campus career offices don’t tell students about the sustainability jobs that city governments will need to fill in the future. Sustainability advocates, she said, should use that potential demand to push sustainability education on campus.

She also said that students should be engaged in projects and learning opportunities in local communities to improve their education. That kind of hands-on learning would not only help the local community but also provide more vital lessons for students.

“Cities can get students out of these dumb assignments where we have students jump through hoops,” she said.

Rowe has, with assistance from SCUP in its inception, creating a "Match.com" to match students seeking real-world challenges for credit with professors, and professors who want to offer such credit with cities and communities at playagreaterpart.org.

US Regional Accreditation Abroad: Lessons Learned

Jean Avnet Morse, President of the Middle States Commission on Higher Education, writes in International Higher Education about piloting its accreditation for non-US-style institutions incorporated abroad. One conclusion was "If profit for MSCHE were the motive, we would have been very disappointed." Others include:

There is no perfect solution for establishing international standards that address the issues of countries with different educational systems. US accreditors cannot achieve this goal alone. It may be useful for US regional accreditors to accredit institutions abroad in certain situations—especially for institutions that do not raise the types of difficult issues discussed earlier. US regional accreditors can also help to establish quality standards abroad by assuring that US-affiliated institutions abroad meet the same standards as domestic locations.

Accreditors might invest their time in projects with broader reach, such as ongoing international efforts by UNESCO, the World Bank, and others to create local quality-assurance systems that suit the needs of each country or region, while still operating within flexible international guidelines. Encouraging local review can produce systems that are accepted locally and that can also offer the quality assurance needed by institutions and students in other countries.

The MSCHE pilot project has been successful in identifying likely areas of similarity and differences among higher education institutions in various countries, and additional information will be gathered as the pilot project progresses. This important first step can serve as the foundation for international cooperation among quality-assurance agencies, and it can provide the agenda for addressing the most significant areas of difference.