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Home  /  News  /  Why Is Education Important? The Power Of An Educated Society

Why Is Education Important? The Power Of An Educated Society

Looking for an answer to the question of why is education important? We address this query with a focus on how education can transform society through the way we interact with our environment. 

Whether you are a student, a parent, or someone who values educational attainment, you may be wondering how education can provide quality life to a society beyond the obvious answer of acquiring knowledge and economic growth. Continue reading as we discuss the importance of education not just for individuals but for society as a whole. 

Harness the power of education to build a more sustainable modern society with a degree from  Unity Environmental University .

How Education Is Power: The Importance Of Education In Society

Why is education so important? Nelson Mandela famously said, “Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.” An educated society is better equipped to tackle the challenges that face modern America, including:

• Climate change
• Social justice
• Economic inequality

Education is not just about learning to read and do math operations. Of course, gaining knowledge and practical skills is part of it, but education is also about values and critical thinking. It’s about finding our place in society in a meaningful way. 

Environmental Stewardship

A  study from 2022 found that people who belong to an environmental stewardship organization, such as the Leave No Trace Center for Outdoor Ethics, are likely to have a higher education level than those who do not. This suggests that quality education can foster a sense of responsibility towards the environment.

With the effects of climate change becoming increasingly alarming, this particular importance of education is vital to the health, safety, and longevity of our society. Higher learning institutions can further encourage environmental stewardship by adopting a  framework of sustainability science .

The Economic Benefits Of Education

Higher education can lead to better job opportunities and higher income. On average, a  person with a bachelor’s degree will make $765,000 more  in their lifetime than someone with no degree. Even with the rising costs of tuition, investment in higher education pays off in the long run. In 2020, the return on investment (ROI) for a college degree was estimated to be  13.5% to 35.9% . 

Green jobs  like environmental science technicians and solar panel installers  have high demand projections for the next decade. Therefore, degrees that will prepare you for one of these careers will likely yield a high ROI. And, many of these jobs only require an  associate’s degree or certificate , which means lower overall education costs. 

Unity  helps students maximize their ROI with real-world experience in the field as an integral part of every degree program. 

10 Reasons Why School Is Important

Education is not just an individual pursuit but also a societal one.  In compiling these reasons, we focused on the question, “How does education benefit society?” Overall, higher education has the power to transform:

• Individuals’ sense of self
• Interpersonal relationships
• Social communities
• Professional communities

Cognitive Development

Neuroscience research  has proven that the brain is a muscle that can retain its neuroplasticity throughout life. However, like other muscles, it must receive continual exercise to remain strong. Higher education allows people of any age to improve their higher-level cognitive abilities like problem-solving and decision-making. This can make many parts of life feel more manageable and help society run smoothly. 

Emotional Intelligence

Emotional intelligence is key to workplace success.  Studies  show that people with emotional intelligence exhibit more:

• Self-awareness
• Willingness to try new things
• Innovative thinking
• Active listening
• Collaboration skills
• Problem-solving abilities

By attending higher education institutions that value these soft skills, students can improve their emotional intelligence as part of their career development in college.

Technological Literacy

Many careers in today’s job market use advanced technology. To prepare for these jobs, young people likely won’t have access to these technologies to practice on their own. That’s part of why so many STEM career paths require degrees. It’s essential to gain technical knowledge and skills through a certified program to safely use certain technologies. And, educated scientists are  more likely to make new technological discoveries .

Cultural Awareness

Education exposes individuals to different cultures and perspectives. Being around people who are different has the powerful ability to foster acceptance. Acceptance benefits society as a whole. It increases innovation and empathy. 

College also gives students an opportunity to practice feeling comfortable in situations where there are people of different races, genders, sexualities, and abilities. Students can gain an understanding of how to act respectfully among different types of people, which is an important skill for the workplace. This will only become more vital as our world continues to become more globalized.

Ethical and Moral Development

Another reason why school is important is that it promotes ethical and moral development. Many schools require students to take an ethics course in their general education curriculum. However, schools can also encourage character development throughout their programs by using effective pedagogical strategies including:

• Class debates and discussions
• Historical case studies
• Group projects

Unity’s distance learning programs  include an ethical decision-making class in our core curriculum. 

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Communication Skills

Effective written and verbal communication skills are key for personal and professional success. Higher education programs usually include at least one communication course in their general education requirements. Often the focus in these classes is on writing skills, but students can also use college as an opportunity to hone their presentation and public speaking skills. Courses such as  Multimedia Communication for Environmental Professionals  provide many opportunities for this. 

Civic Engagement

According to a  Gallup survey , people with higher education degrees are:

• More likely to participate in civic activities such as voting and volunteering
• Less likely to commit crimes
• More likely to get involved in their local communities

All these individual acts add up to make a big difference in society. An educated electorate is less likely to be swayed by unethical politicians and, instead, make choices that benefit themselves and their community. Because they are more involved, they are also more likely to hold elected officials accountable.

Financial Stability

The right degree can significantly expand your career opportunities and improve your long-term earning potential. Not all degrees provide the same level of financial stability, so it’s important to research expected salary offers after graduation and job demand outlook predictions for your desired field. Consider the return on investment for a degree from an affordable private school such as  Unity Environmental University .

Environmental Awareness

We have already discussed why education is important for environmental stewardship. Education can also lead to better environmental practices in the business world. By building empathy through character education and ethics courses, institutions can train future business leaders to emphasize human rights and sustainability over profits. All types and sizes of businesses can incorporate sustainable practices, but awareness of the issues and solutions is the first step.

Lifelong Learning

The reasons why education is important discussed so far focus on institutional education. However, education can happen anywhere. Attending a university that values all kinds of learning will set students up with the foundation to become lifelong learners.  Research  demonstrates that lifelong learners tend to be healthier and more fulfilled throughout their lives. When societies emphasize the importance of education, they can boost their overall prosperity.

The Role Of Unity Environmental University In Society

Environmentally conscious education is extremely valuable and should be accessible to all.   Unity Environmental University  offers tuition prices that are comparable to public universities, and financial aid is available to those who qualify. Courses last five weeks so that students can focus on only one class at a time. This ensures all learners are set up for academic success. 

Unity believes in supporting students holistically to maximize the power of education. This includes mental health services,  experiential learning opportunities , and  job placement assistance . Students in our  hybrid programs  can take classes at several field stations throughout Maine and enjoy the beautiful nature surrounding the campus for outdoor recreation.

Sustainable Initiatives

Some highlights from Unity Environmental University’s many sustainable initiatives:

• All programs include at least one sustainability learning outcome
• All research courses are focused on sustainability research
• Reduced building energy use by 25% across campus
• 100% of food waste is recycled into energy 
• Campus features a  net-zero LEED Platinum-certified classroom/office building

While many schools value sustainability, Unity stands out because  everything  we do is about sustainability. We also recognize our responsibility to model how a sustainable business can operate in a manner that’s fiscally viable and socially responsible.

Make An Impact At Unity Environmental University

While the phrase ‘education is power’ may sound cliche, it is also resoundingly true. Higher education has the power to transform individuals and societies. Unity Environmental University understands its power to make a positive impact on the world. That’s why we were the first university to divest from fossil fuels. 

This year, we celebrated our  largest incoming class ever , showing that students want an education system that aligns with their values. In addition to our commitment to sustainability, we offer flexibility to students with start dates all year round for our  online degree programs .

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The Benefits of Online School and Online Tutoring

Learn about the benefits of online learning and understand how online education benefits working students. Explore examples and see how online tutoring works.

Written by Sasha Blakeley

Benefits of Online Learning

Online learning is becoming increasingly common across the educational landscape of the United States and the world. Its increased popularity has been due in part to necessity, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic, and in part to its convenience and versatility. Online learning is not for everyone, but it can provide a great deal of much-needed flexibility for those who have specific educational needs. Some online programs allow students to learn at their own pace and others can provide access to curricula that might otherwise be inaccessible. Another major benefit to online learning is that it often costs less than in-person education, particularly at the college level. Some institutions even offer free online courses . The decision of whether to pursue in-person or online education is a complex one that many students are grappling with. To fully understand the benefits of online learning, it is important to start by getting a good grasp of exactly what online learning is and how it works.

What is Online Learning?

Online learning is any form of education that takes place via the internet. It is also called distance learning or remote learning. Typically, students enroll in online courses that last anywhere from a few days to several years and then they complete their assignments exclusively or at least primarily in an online environment. That can mean working on a computer at home, but it can also mean completing coursework while traveling or from a computer at a public library or other space. Online courses can be taken just for fun, or they can confer high school or college credit when successfully completed. At the college level, online learning is one of the leading alternatives to a traditional four-year degree. There are many pros of online learning as well as cons and each student will have to determine for themselves if online learning is the best choice.

An example of an online learning setup could be a college student completing a bachelor's degree online. They could complete a degree in English literature in an entirely remote setting. Each semester, they would select courses just like in-person students do. The courses would either have set class times or might be asynchronous, meaning that professors upload the course content and students can engage with it in their own time. The student would complete required readings, write and submit essays, and contribute to online discussions to complete the course objectives.

College exams can be administered online as well, usually using webcam technology to ensure that students are not cheating. At the end of the degree, provided they completed all their courses and exams with sufficiently high grades, the student would receive a Bachelor of Arts degree.

Types of Online Learning

Online learning can take many forms. Some organizations offer individual courses that students can take for fun, for a certificate, or for college credit. Some colleges and universities offer fully online degrees at the associate's, bachelor's, master's, and even doctoral levels. Others offer hybrid programs that are completed partially online and partially in person. As previously noted, online classes can either take place at a specific time each day or week, or they can be asynchronous with varying degrees of self-pacing.

Online learning is also possible for high school students. Some school districts offer online programs, and some parents who homeschool their children rely heavily on online resources to supplement the curriculum. Some students who attend in-person high schools elect to take one or more courses online if they cannot fit them into a regular schedule or if they are not offered at a specific school. Online learning is a broad category that can apply in various ways to the different learning needs of varying age groups.

How Common Is Online Learning?

Online learning has seen massive growth in the past decade as pedagogical theory engages increasingly with the digital world. The platforms that offer online learning services have become more refined, making it easier for people to find online programs that fit their needs. For most of its history, online learning has essentially been a voluntary option that students could choose to pursue instead of working in a more traditional setting. However, starting in 2020, online learning became much more widespread. School closures due to COVID-19 forced educators around the world to rapidly adapt their curricula to online formats so that students from preschool to college could continue their education during quarantines and lockdowns. In some parts of the world, online learning is still the primary educational structure nearly three years after the pandemic began.

Research on the impact of COVID-19 on student learning is ongoing, but there is strong evidence that the rapid switch to online teaching was not particularly successful when it came to maintaining students' academic success levels. Many students experienced learning loss during COVID-19 and not all of them have yet recovered from that loss even with the return to in-person classes.

Online learning can be effective, but it appears to work much better when educators have ample time to craft an online curriculum and when students are in a position to engage effectively with the material. In other words, online learning has many benefits, but it cannot and should not replace in-person learning; its benefits are largely dependent on context. It also works best for students who actively choose it without being pushed into it. Some students genuinely thrive in in-person social environments and find it harder to focus on online work, while others are the reverse. For parents of elementary and high school students, it is worth carefully considering all options before jumping into an online learning curriculum.

Online Tutoring

Online tutoring is a subset of online learning that pairs individual students with tutors. Tutoring is a process wherein an expert in a particular subject offers targeted support to a student to help them manage their school work. Tutors often specialize in particular subjects and academic levels. They can meet with students in person, but there is an online equivalent. When tutoring online, tutors are matched with students either through an online learning or tutoring company or privately. The student and tutor will typically meet once or twice a week (though schedules can vary) for around an hour each session. During that time, tutors will work with students on particular homework problems, assignments, or lessons that they are finding difficult to manage.

In online tutoring, tutors and students might use a variety of different technologies. They might meet over a video call or a phone call, or they might communicate exclusively through text. Many tutors use digital whiteboards so that they can explain content to their students in a clear way. Tutors can be invaluable resources for students who are studying online, particularly because online learning often involves less direct contact between teachers and students; it may be challenging for students to have all of their questions answered promptly in online classrooms, especially if there are many students in the class. It is important to keep in mind that tutors are not teachers. They are educational support workers who can make a big difference in students' learning, but they are not meant to teach new content from scratch.

Examples of Tutors

Students and tutors can set up varying systems that benefit both of them, depending on the subject matter and the academic level of the student. Online tutors can be a great asset even for elementary school students, whether they are attending in-person or online school. For young students, online tutors might use a variety of visuals during online tutoring to help maintain engagement. They might guide young students through online math games or might play collaborative drawing games on a whiteboard to communicate relevant information. In early grades, online tutors may be best suited to provide general academic assistance in multiple subjects or might help students with a specific subject like grammar.

For high school students, tutors almost always specialize in just one or two subjects. Students who are struggling with the high school curriculum, either online or in-person, might benefit from an hour a week of extra support. Teenagers may prefer text-based tutoring solutions, though video chats are still a great option. Tutoring has many benefits , but it always works best when students are engaged and are doing their best to work with the tutor rather than against them, so high school students should ideally have some input on the online tutoring that they receive. College students can also work with online tutors, often to help them complete assignments and essays. Some college-level online tutors also help students improve their study skills or time management skills.

Benefits of Online Schools

There are many benefits of online schools for students of all ages. Each student's experiences will vary, and some elements of online learning that are advantageous for some students could be disadvantageous for others. However, the enduring and increasing popularity of online learning, especially outside of the context of the pandemic, speaks to the fact that this system does work well for many learners. Some of the most commonly discussed benefits of online schools include:

• The ability to work from anywhere at any time
• Self-paced learning
• Better access to education for students with disabilities
• Access to programs that are not available locally
• Reduced costs compared to in-person classes
• An opportunity for students to take initiative in their education

The fact that students can be anywhere in the world is a big bonus for online students, especially those who want to access programs not hosted locally or those who want to travel. Not all online learning is self-paced, but much of it is, and that element is very rarely present in in-person classes. For students with disabilities who might find physical campuses inaccessible, online learning can be a high-quality alternative. Costs vary from one online learning program to the next, but online programs are typically cheaper than their traditional counterparts. Finally, because online learning is often more self-paced, students can rise to the challenge of taking charge of their own education, which can help build important skills like time management and self-motivation.

Online Learning in Elementary and High School

Students in elementary and high school do not tend to use online learning platforms as much as their college-level counterparts. Some students benefit from online learning from a young age if they are homeschooled and want to have access to a wider range of educational materials. Others might struggle in brick-and-mortar classrooms because they are bullied, because they have difficulty integrating socially and behaviorally, or because they have other needs that are not being met in the classroom. While those problems should not always be solved by online learning, online school can be a helpful alternative for some students. Similarly, students whose parents move around a lot can retain a sense of stability in education by doing online programs instead of regularly switching schools.

Online Learning in College

College is where online learning tends to work particularly well. Many colleges, from community colleges to prestigious universities, are offering courses or whole degrees online. Because of the flexibility of online courses, some students can even take courses from multiple institutions and then transfer those credits to their college of choice . As many students are aware, college tuition in the United States is very high and continuing to rise. Online college does not require students to pay for residential housing, a meal plan, or other costs associated with on-campus learning. Online degrees also tend to have lower tuition. That can be a huge benefit for students who are not financially able to attend traditional colleges, particularly given the fact that there are scholarships and financial aid resources available specifically for online college students.

One important caveat for online learning at the college level is that some fields of study function much better in an online format than others. Courses that are reading-heavy and require students to write essays and complete individual assignments are often easy to adapt to an online environment. Degrees in history , computer science, mathematics , and political science are all well-suited to an online environment, and students who complete these degrees are less likely to feel that they are missing out on the experiences that their in-person counterparts are having.

On the other hand, more hands-on degrees like bench sciences , photography, performance-based degrees, and education are less likely to translate well to an online environment. Students who are considering whether online education is right for them should think carefully about what they want to study and what they are hoping to gain from their college experience.

How Online Education Benefits Working Students

One of the most significant advantages of online learning is the way that online education benefits working students. Online classes are less likely to be held at set times during the day, making it easier for students to complete work shifts around their college courses. The fact that online courses can be completed from anywhere also means that relocation is not necessary and students can keep their jobs while also accessing all of the advantages of online education. It can be much easier to manage one's time when an entire college degree can fit in a laptop bag. Students can complete work at home, on a public transit commute, or even on a lunch break. Working through college is becoming a necessity for more and more students as costs rise and online degrees can help provide a workable solution.

Examples of Students Taking Online Courses

A student who wants to attend college full-time but needs to work to afford tuition could have a full-time or part-time job while completing an online degree. Being enrolled in a college program might even give students an edge as they apply for new jobs. If they do end up working on a job that is remote and can be completed from a laptop, it may be even easier to combine work with school without having to worry about commute times.

An older student who has spent several years in the workforce but wants to earn a degree is likely to benefit from online learning because they would not have to disrupt their current work schedule. Asynchronous or part-time programs may be best for students in this position. Even if it takes longer to earn a degree in the long term, working toward one's academic goals is still a very good use of time.

Students who are parents or caregivers are also likely to benefit from online learning options. Travel to and from campus and a set classroom schedule can be difficult to manage for parents of young children or those who are caring for others. The flexibility to complete work from home and to set a varying schedule can make student caregivers much more likely to manage to complete their online work in a timely manner. Online college degrees are often offered on either a full-time or a part-time basis, so students can take just a few courses a semester or even take a break if needed and still ultimately get the degree that they are hoping for.

What can you do with an education degree?

Our essential guide to what you will learn on an education course, the subjects you'll need to study to obtain a place on a degree programme and the jobs that will be open to you once you graduate.

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What can you do with an education degree? 

As expected, many students of education degrees wish to enter a career teaching children or adults. However, not everyone chooses to become a teacher. As you complete your degree, you may find that other aspects of education interest you more. Or perhaps you may want to work in civil service or business. Education degrees teach many skills from communication and management skills to lateral thinking and coping with stress. 

There are many jobs for education graduates to choose from including: 

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• Nursery teacher 
• Secondary school teacher 
• Teaching English as a second language 
• Academic advisor 
• Career counsellor 
• University recruiter 
• Education programme manager 
• Curriculum specialist 
• Education consultant 
• Adult education instructor 
• Community outreach coordinator 

What is education? 

Education is the study of the process of receiving and giving systematic instruction. As a degree, it mixes a theoretical grounding in the history, anthropology, sociology and economics of education, psychology and human development, and applied courses on teaching methods.

Different degrees may specialise in areas such as early childhood education, health and physical education, primary teaching, secondary teaching or secondary teaching/vocational education. They can also allow you to specialise in teaching a specific subject matter.

An education degree will give you a set of key, transferable skills such as an ability to work and communicate with children, effective oral and written communication, information and communication technology savviness, research and analytical skills, problem-solving skills, teamwork ability, self-management, organisation and time management skills.

In addition, the course will help you design curricula, plan lessons, target the learning capability of students and create healthy and dynamic learning environments.

What might you find on an education degree?

The course will mix theoretical and applied courses. Below are a few examples of different strands of education degrees. 

In sociology, you will learn about how socio-economic and political factors can affect educational institutions and children’s development around the world, and may also think about inclusive education.

In history, you will study the changes educational institutions have gone through in the past and the role they play in national development, as well as the idea of what it means to be educated.

In philosophy, you will ask fundamental questions such as what is knowledge, what it means to teach and to learn, what is character and how can you shape it, what is the purpose of education etc.

In the psychology of education you will focus on child development from early ages through to adolescence by examining language, attachment, thought and social interactions. You may also have a comparative module on international education.

In the applied part of the course, you will do modules on general pedagogy, inclusive approaches to provision for disability, multimedia production, informal learning methods, student-led learning, classroom dynamics, play and pedagogy, cultural and linguistic integration of immigrant students.

Explore the best universities for education degrees

What should i study to do an education degree .

No specific subjects are required to study education at university. If your plan is to go into teaching, you will however need to do the subjects you intend to specialise in.

A background in the humanities such as literature, history, philosophy or politics, and social sciences such as anthropology, economics, sociology and psychology will prepare you well for the degree giving you a foundation in analytical and critical thinking, and writing and presentation skills.

Student experience of studying education

Teaching abroad can help earn some money and bolster the CV Student teacher: learning how to teach in a prison

What do people go on to do with an education degree? 

An education degree is perfect if you enjoy the immediacy of working with young people and helping them develop their critical thinking and character.

Graduates often end up as teachers in primary or secondary school, sometimes working as special educational needs teachers.

Still focusing on individual children’s formation, others develop careers as youth workers, careers advisers, teaching assistants or speech therapists.

But studying education is also good if you are interested in macro-scale projects and systems. You can join other graduates in becoming a community education officer, an education administrator or a museum education officer. You can also work in adult education and training, curriculum design, education projects, education policy making and educational NGOs.

If you are interested in the creative industries, alumni have in the past joined television production, cartoon production, or have gone to become writers, artists, photographers, filmmakers among others. 

Education is a safe option even if you decide to change direction and go into other industries where strong analytical and communication skills are valued such as the civil service, marketing, PR, advertising, consultancy.

What can you do with a politics degree? What can you do with a languages degree? What can you do with a history degree? What can you do with a philosophy degree? What can you do with an English Literature degree? What can you do with an art degree? What can you do with a chemical engineering degree?

Famous people who studied education  

Notable alumni of education degrees are; Sesame Street creator Joan Ganz Cooney; Canadian politician and 25th Premier of Ontario Kathleen O’Day Wynne; Olympic silver medal winner Lacey Nymeyer; national director of education in the Philippines Minori Nagatomo; global head of human resources at Harcourt Education Michael E. Pilnick; President of Disney-ABC Television Group Anne Sweeney; educator Nínive Clements Calegari; photographer Edward Burtynsky; and UNESC O regional coordinator Moritz Bilagher.

However, there are many other noteworthy education alumni who are involved in grassroots projects, schools, community centres and universities who are as worthy of praise.

Read more:  Best universities for education degrees

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The Benefits of Online Learning: 8 Advantages of Online Degrees

Earning a master’s degree online can seem daunting. Prospective students often wonder, “ Is the experience online the same as on campus? ” and, “ Will the format fit my lifestyle? ” Roughly 8.5 million students  in the United States are now enrolled in at least one online course, though, and that number is growing due to the flexibility and benefits of virtual learning.

Below, explore what online courses entail, eight key benefits, and get the advice you need to determine if online learning is right for you.

What Is Online Learning Like?

An online course requires just as much work as an in-person format. However, online courses afford you more flexibility,  since it doesn’t matter where or when you fulfill the requirements as long as you meet your deadlines and communicate with your instructor and peers.

Each week, your instructor typically expects you to take the following actions on your own:

• Review the learning objectives
• Complete the assigned readings
• Submit assignments
• Go through the lecture materials
• Participate in the discussion boards

You are probably experienced at independently completing the first three actions from previous in-person courses. Learning from an online lecture might take some getting used to, but as long as you hit your deadlines, the time and location you submit your assignments is entirely up to you.

Learn More: How to Be a Successful Online Learner

Is Online Learning Better?

Online learning has become increasingly popular in the wake of COVID-19 pandemic. However, there have been some critiques regarding its effectiveness. It’s important to acknowledge that remote learning isn’t for everyone—several characteristics will determine students’ successful use of online learning platforms.

While online learning appeals to a variety of students with diverse learning styles, the ideal online student:

• Feels comfortable in an online environment
• Adapts learning styles to fit the virtual education format
• Possesses the self-discipline to effectively organize their schedule
• Is willing to participate in online discussions

Adjusting to an online learning model can be challenging at first, but there are numerous benefits once you adapt. No matter the reason you choose to pursue online education, earning an online degree can help prepare you for career advancement and demonstrate key skills to potential employers. Here’s an overview of eight top benefits of online learning. 

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Eight Benefits of Online Learning

1. added flexibility and self-paced learning.

Not many people have the ability to take time off from work to commit to a full-time graduate program, and others have jobs that require frequent travel. For those who still need to juggle working and going back to school, the flexibility of an asynchronous online program provides the opportunity to learn while still working and growing professionally.

By earning your master’s degree online, you can learn on your own schedule. Rather than leave the office early or skip family dinner to commute to campus, you’re able to log on at a time that doesn’t interfere with other commitments. That flexibility allows you to more easily balance work, life, and graduate school .

Additionally, students don’t always feel comfortable asking professors to repeat a point they made in their last lecture or dive into deeper detail on a specific topic. When learning online, you can revisit past material or pause the lecture to perform additional research or organize your notes. This added flexibility allows you to move through the course work at your own speed and get the most out of the program.

2. Preparation for an Online Workforce

Today’s workforce is largely remote, with 40.9 percent of employees either working virtually or on a hybrid basis. It’s also estimated that 16 percent of companies are fully remote, and approximately 32.6 million Americans will work remotely by 2025. For this reason, it’s important for professionals to prepare for the possibility of remote work and obtain the necessary skills to succeed in a virtual position.

Learning online is an excellent way for you to prepare for this shift toward the online workplace, since you’ll have practice managing your time without direct supervision and completing work in a timely manner.

3. Better Time Management

B ecause there are no set classroom times within an asynchronous online degree program, and students have the flexibility to create their own schedules, it’s up to the student to proactively reach out to faculty, complete assignments on time, and plan ahead.

Online classes keep you on a regular schedule of making and meeting deadlines, allowing you to practice managing your time and staying productive week-to-week. Employers often appreciate the time management skills needed to complete an online degree program and view these skills as a valuable asset in potential employees. 

Melanie Kasparian, associate director of assessment at Northeastern College of Professional Studies , shares tips on how to be a successful online learner. She recommends that students work consistently throughout the week, with a sample schedule that may look like this:

• Monday : Begin required readings, lectures, and multimedia.
• Tuesday : Continue reviewing materials.
• Wednesday : Post to the discussion forum and begin assignments.
• Thursday : Continue posting and working on assignments.
• Friday : Read and respond to posts and work on assignments.
• Saturday : Read and respond to posts and finish assignments.
• Sunday : Check your work and submit assignments.

“Working on the train, during a lunch break, or in the morning—there’s really no right time to study, as long as it fits your life,” Kasparian says.

4. Demonstrated Self-Motivation

By successfully earning your master’s degree online, you prove that you are self-motivated, able to manage time well, can tackle multiple tasks, set priorities, and are able to adapt to changing work conditions. 

Instructors expect students to be independent, to learn on their own, and to engage with the course material. Similarly, in the workforce, employers want you to be self-motivated, go after things that interest you, and seek new opportunities and ways of doing things. The more you put your heart into it—whether it’s learning online or challenging yourself at work—the more likely it is that you’ll succeed.  

5. Improved Virtual Communication and Collaboration

Learning to work with others in a virtual environment can make you a more effective leader . You’ll develop critical leadership skills by utilizing specialized knowledge, creating efficient processes, and making decisions about best communication practices, such as what should be discussed on a call or in writing. 

In an online program, you’ll also have the opportunity to:

• Participate in discussion boards with your classmates
• Communicate with professors via email
• Collaborate through various software programs

As the program progresses, you’ll get better at pitching your ideas and making strong, succinct, professional arguments through text.

Participating in discussion boards is a lot like participating on a virtual team. Communicating your ideas clearly, getting responses, and projecting a professional image are necessary skills in a virtual workplace. Instructors, just like managers, expect you to write respectful, thoughtful, and polite communications, respond to different perspectives, and build a rapport with your peers. Luckily, in an online program, you’ll refine this skill quickly.

6. A Broader, Global Perspective

Students in online programs come from across the U.S. and all over the world. This means that online students not only have the opportunity to network with people from around the globe , but can also broaden their perspectives and become more culturally aware .

Businesses are looking for employees who can innovate, and innovation often comes from stepping outside of your comfort zone and learning from people with different perspectives. If you’re interested in entrepreneurship, for example, hearing how other countries adopt certain technologies or approach specific industries can inspire new ideas or improve an existing concept you’ve been developing. 

Being exposed to new ideas from professionals in other countries may spark creativity of your own—creativity that can turn out to be valuable for your organization.

7. Refined Critical-thinking Skills

Online learning facilitates critical thinking by challenging you to think differently. Most employers are searching for professionals with the ability to think critically in their individual roles, and mastering this skill can set you apart.

Critical thinking plays a role in any type of education; however, online learning forces you to develop your critical thinking skills in ways that you might not have practiced in an in-person classroom. This sort of self-paced and self-motivated learning demonstrates to future employers that you have the ability to think critically and overcome any obstacles that might stand in your way.

8. New Technical Skills

An online degree also equips you with strong technical skills—a definite plus for any job seeker. As part of your coursework, you will likely need to utilize digital learning materials, get familiar with new tools and software, and troubleshoot common issues. After a program’s worth of technical hurdles, big and small, you should become relatively well versed in common collaboration tools, content management systems, and basic troubleshooting.

With more companies using virtual teams, it’s important to learn how to collaborate remotely. Your classmates will likely live in different time zones, which you need to learn how to adapt to and schedule around.

Embracing technology is also crucial. When you’re working on a group project, sharing files or status updates can become difficult via email, so you might need to utilize project management and communication tools such as:

• Zoom or Skype : These video conferencing software programs let you speak face-to-face with your peers.
• Dropbox : Share documents with your group and keep work in one place using the file hosting service.
• Slack : The messaging platform is helpful if you need to instant message in real-time or break off into smaller groups to work on a specific part of the project.
• Trello : The project management tool enables you and your team to create, assign, track, and prioritize to-dos.
• Basecamp : Another, slightly more robust, project management tool you can use to share messages and upload files.

Most companies today are using some combination of the software above or other similar tools. Experience with project management and familiarity with software like Basecamp can bolster your resumé. With an online degree experience, your future employer will know you’re comfortable learning new technologies, building a rapport virtually, tackling tasks proactively and independently, and navigating a computer and virtual workspace.

Is an Online Degree Right for You?

If you’re considering whether an online graduate degree is the right choice for you, be sure to consider the benefits online learning has to offer. For students who are faced with the challenge of balancing work, family, and education, an online master’s degree can be an ideal solution. Further, pursuing an online degree can prepare you for career advancement and showcase key skills to potential employers. 

By earning a master’s degree—no matter the format—you set yourself up to earn significantly more in your lifetime than bachelor’s degree holders. You’ll also gain access to more job options, given that the number of jobs that require a master’s degree is expected to increase by 17 percent between 2016 and 2026. Learning online builds on those benefits and helps prepare you for today’s globalized workforce.

Are you interested in earning your master’s degree online? Watch the webinar below to learn more about Northeastern’s online graduate experience.

Editor’s note: This article was originally published in April of 2016. It has since been updated for relevance and accuracy. 

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Benefits of Education Are Societal and Personal

Updated: December 7, 2023

Published: December 24, 2019

The benefits of education are many. Not only will you personally benefit from receiving education when it comes to income, career advancement , skill development, and employment opportunities, but your society and community receive benefits of education as well.

Societies with higher rates of degree completion and levels of education tend to be healthier, have higher rates of economic stability, lower crime, and greater equality . For more surprising benefits of education, read on.

Photo by  Pixabay  from  Pexels

Benefits of education are societal and personal.

Those who get an education have higher incomes, have more opportunities in their lives, and tend to be healthier. Societies benefit as well. Societies with high rates of education completion have lower crime, better overall health, and civic involvement.

Poverty Reduction

Lack of access to education is considered the root of poverty. Not getting an education can lead to a cycle of poverty. However, access to education can mean getting out of that cycle .

1. Healthier Lifestyle

People with better education tend to live longer and have healthier lifestyles. According to research , people with higher education have a one-third lower risk of heart disease. Degree holders are also less likely to smoke and more likely to get regular exercise .

2. Experimentation and Diversity are a Benefit of Education:

A personal benefit to getting an education is the opportunity to grow as an individual, experiment with what you are passionate about, and find yourself. You will be exposed to a diverse set of people and ideas which expand the mind.

Connecting Across Borders

The new world of digital education is helping those who get an education to connect across the globe with people from other cultures. Students can collaborate together across borders, increasing the cultural awareness and worldliness of the individuals.

3. Socializing and Networking are Personal Benefits of Education

Education provides students with the space and the opportunities to meet like-minded individuals, either on a peer or mentor basis. In school, students meet leaders in their field, top professionals, and make contacts through extracurricular activities as well.

4. Pursuing Your Passion

Photo by  burst  from  pexels.

When you feel passionate about something, you want to immerse yourself in that topic. Education gives you the space to do so. In addition, you may find new passions or new areas of interest within your field of study.

Sense of Accomplishment

Finishing any degree — whether it is a high school degree or higher education — is an accomplishment. Graduating gives students a huge sense of accomplishment and gives them the confidence needed to go out into the world and make something of themselves.

5. Personal Development of Skills

Students are required to go through many types of assignments, discussions, courses, and more during their time in education. Therefore, they end up with a wonderful skill set that translates into the workforce.

In addition, from extracurriculars, students learn arts, sports, and more that help them personally in life and to connect with others.

More Productivity

Those with an education have had more on their plate and succeeded through it. They know how to manage their time and talents and be productive. After graduation, students can carry that productive energy into the workforce.

Better Communication

Students are required to turn in written assignments, work in groups, participate in discussions, or present in front of others. This leads to excellent written communication , speaking skills , and group communication.

Critical Thinking Skills

People with an education can think, and think well. They are taught to ask questions, reflect, and analyze — all critical skills for later success.

Identification of Skills

Some have skills that they haven’t yet discovered, and haven’t had the opportunity to expand upon. Education stretches the mind, exposes students to new topics, and pushes students to do better. As a result, students may find skills they didn’t even know they had.

Greater Sense of Discipline

Students are given increasing amounts of responsibility with each year of education they complete. It is the student’s job to manage their time and create their own success, leading to self-discipline abilities for those who succeed.

6. More Employment is a Benefit of Education

Degree holders have access to more jobs. For graduates of bachelor’s programs or higher, the unemployment rate is cut in half .

7. Career Entry and Advancement

Photo by  godisable jacob  from  pexels.

College degrees prepare students for a career, or for advancement within their current field. Higher education gives the training and skills necessary for success in a specific area. In addition, many positions require a degree for entry. Some may not even look at a resume where the applicant has no degree.

8. Economic Growth

When an entire society is educated, productivity increases, average income increases, and unemployment decreases. This leads to the economic growth and stability of a society as a whole. It starts with education.

Higher Income as a Benefit of Education

Those with education beyond high school tend to have higher salaries than high school degree holders. Those with no degrees make the lowest salaries on average. For full-time workers in 2017, weekly average wages for those with no degree was $515, followed by high school graduates at $717, and $1,189 for bachelor’s degree holders. Those with graduate degrees made an average of $1,451.

9. Environmental Benefits

Climate change is a large part of the conversation today, and society needs to work together to find ways to reduce impact on the earth. Educated individuals that enter the workforce will put their knowledge of climate change into company policies, leading to increased sustainability.

10. Societal Benefits

Photo by  Archie Binamira  from  Pexels

A society that is well educated feels a higher sense of unity and trust within the community. Educated societies lift up the weak and bring a feeling of togetherness among all parts.

Promotes Equality and Empowerment

Education provides everyone with a sense of empowerment; the idea that they have the choice to change their own life and choose their path. Women with an education have better decision making capabilities and are more likely to take charge of their own lives.

Promotes Good Citizenship and Civic Involvement

Those with an education tend to be more aware of current political issues , and are more likely to vote . Higher degree holders are twice as likely to volunteer, and 3.5 times more likely to donate money than high school graduates.

Reduces Crime

Education teaches people the difference between right and wrong, and also exposes children and young adults to experiences of others. Understanding right and wrong and having empathy reduce tendency to commit crimes. Education of a society decreases overall arrests- just one year increase of average education levels of a state decrease state-wide arrests by 11%.

Reduces Gender-Based Violence

In communities with high rates of education for both genders, gender-based violence is lower . Educated persons are more likely to support gender equality, and are more likely to take efforts to stop and prevent gender-based or domestic violence. Communities that value education for both genders are less likely to have instances of terrorist attacks on girls schools.

Reduces Child Marriage

Girls with secondary or higher education are three times less likely to marry before the age of 18. Putting education first in a society allows for girls to be seen as people who can get an education and make their own decisions, rather than just a future wife and mother.

Reduces Maternal Death Rates

Maternal death rates drop significantly in societies with high education rates. Women with no education at all are 2.7 times as likely to die during birth as women with 12 years of education. Women with one to six years of education are twice as likely to suffer maternal mortality. This is because educated mothers are more likely to use health services, even in low socioeconomic settings. Lack of education is also a stressor for women during childbirth. The more stressors a woman has during pregnancy, the higher the likelihood for negative outcomes.

Benefits of Higher Education

Photo by  matthis volquardsen  from  pexels, 1. career preparation.

Some people know exactly what they want to do once they enter the workforce, and some people may need higher education to get to where they need to be. A college degree is a required prerequisite for a growing number of jobs. Even if you aren’t sure what you want to do after graduation, it is a great benefit to go to college. Higher education will help narrow your interest and refine your skill set, showing you exactly what you are good at and what field you may want to enter.

2. Broader Practical Benefits

Getting a higher education has some practical benefits too. When you look at income research , the evidence is clear that college graduates make much more than their high school degree counterparts. College grads tend to be healthier as well, with lower risk of heart disease , tendency towards healthy eating and exercise , smoke less and live longer . College graduates also tend to have higher rates of participation in political and community affairs, volunteerism and charitable donations.

3. Personal Development

Students go through a lot of personal development in college. Things such as critical thinking skills, time management, perseverance, communication, and presentation skills are all great assets not only for future work but for personal life as well. College grads get further in life, not just because of the degree they’ve earned, but the experiences they went through.

4. Pursuing a Passion and Desired Field

Pursuing your passion in the form of a college degree is the path that some people take and there is nothing wrong with that. If you really love music, studying music, then find a way to make a career out of it. College will help you get a deeper and more theoretical understanding of your passion and will also open your eyes to possible career paths and mentors.

5. Cognitive and Communication Skills

College students study hard and they study often. They are taught to think alternatively and creatively to solve a problem. As a result, college students have the high cognitive ability . Courses often require group work and presentations, resulting in better interpersonal communication skills for grads.

6. Social Experiences

Don’t forget that college isn’t all studying. The friends you make during college will be the friends you have for life. They can also act as a social net, lifting you up when you are down and encouraging you to do your best in your studies, your profession, and in your life. Learning to live with others and work well with others enhances your social skills as well.

Feeling convinced? There are so much more than just these benefits of education we have listed, and it’s not hard to find some that specifically benefit you and what you need in your life.

If you’re ready to take the next step in your education, check out all the higher education degrees offered by University of the People .

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8 Benefits of Learning Through MOOCs

Over the last year, many of us have had the opportunity to both work and learn through an online medium. Whether this was to learn a new skill, pursue a hobby, or earn money through online businesses, plenty of people have learned new valuable skills through it.

But, in what ways can the average person expect to learn online? There are hundreds of thousands of paid courses online that cover a wide variety of subjects. But with this, there is an alternative.

Massive Open Online Courses, or MOOCs for short, are classes that are offered online for free to a large group of people. They have seen a significant spike in popularity recently with the majority of people being confined indoors for the past year. As a college student myself, I find that the online nature of these courses provides the best environment to make me smart .

With the end of the COVID-19 era in sight, what benefits does one get through the use of MOOCs and what are some of the downsides to such a method? Here are eight benefits of learning through massive open online courses:

1. They Offer a Large Amount of Variety

To start, one significant benefit to MOOCs are their unparalleled variety at the moment. The online learning community has a massive amount of options when it comes to skills or hobbies to learn through MOOCs. For example, a person can learn the basics of programming through an interactive and supportive learning environment. These environments are very reminiscent of college online courses but are much more accessible to the average person.

2. The Courses Are Very Affordable

Another huge upside to MOOCs are their price. That price is zero for a majority of courses. One does not have to look far to find courses that have been offered by organizations or institutions that are at no cost to the students. This is made possible through the fact that so many people sign up for these courses that not much individual capital is needed to maintain them.

3. They Let College Students Experiment With Different Areas

For college students, the use of MOOCs could, potentially, revolutionize the way we pick and choose majors. With the availability of online courses the average college student now has the opportunity to take classes that would not be available to them without a high price. With many college students struggling to find major fields of study, MOOCs are a great option to dip your toes in the water to see if the field is for you.

4. The Courses Are Extremely High Quality

Speaking of college students, MOOCs also shine because of their high quality. These courses are made and maintained by highly experienced college professors who often teach specialized fields along with generalized areas. To be able to learn a skill or trade through a Harvard-quality course for free is an opportunity that no one should pass up.

5. They Are Easy to Access for All Learners

Their accessibility to many learners cannot be understated. With around 93% of all students having to make the transition to online learning in the last year, the techniques for delivering information have been perfected. These courses offered are super friendly to every type of learner. These courses understand if you can’t dedicate specific hours to learning due to work. They allow for students to learn at their own pace and convenience so there’s no rush to get through the coursework.

These courses are also accessible to anyone with an internet connection. Any person around the world can have access to potentially life-changing information. No matter who you are, you can benefit from the ease of access that comes from these sorts of courses.

6. There Are MOOCs for Many Different Languages

To piggyback off of ease of access a bit, the availability of these courses are extended to a wide variety of countries around the world. In the past, many of these courses were bound in English only, which excluded a great portion of people who don’t speak it. Now, there are equivalent courses that are the same but presented in different languages so all can experience it.

7. They Can Help Further Your Career

Many people lack the necessary education to find upward mobility in their field of work. With these courses; however, the common worker can shoot up the ladder easily. This is due to many courses offering certifications for completing the material. This is extremely helpful for areas like computer science and programming as you don’t have to waste a ton of time in school learning a broad sort of information. With this, you could master a programming language and jump into the workforce on it alone. Many companies like Google are adopting this sort of style of learning for their future employees.

8. They Have Tons of Positive Feedback

Lastly, the response from learners is mostly overwhelmingly positive . It isn’t hard to notice that most reviews have great things to say about the courses and have promo codes to help make the paid experiences more affordable. With the courses being tailored to students’ individual needs and support being a click away, it makes for a learning environment that anyone can learn through.

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• October 26, 2022
• Academic Advice

15 Benefits of Education That Can Impact Your Future

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While everyone might have a different definition of education, its importance remains undisputed. By receiving a systematic education, people gain knowledge and develop skills and character traits crucial for a certain standard of life.

While primary and secondary education is compulsory in most countries worldwide, that is not the case with tertiary schooling. Pursuing a college or university degree is a person’s choice based on needs, career preferences, and abilities. Whether a university education is a requirement for your preferred career or not, a college degree can significantly impact your future. If you are considering the various options, you may want to explore different type of degrees offered by educational institutions to align your choice with your needs, career preferences, and abilities.

15 Benefits of Education

Most people agree on the importance of education, but only a fraction of that is truly aware of the impact of education on our lives. Receiving an education has a significant impact not only on our quality of life but on our physical and psychological well-being. Below you will find 15 different benefits of education that can impact your life in the future.

1. Creating More Employment Opportunities

“Finding a job” is probably one of the most common reasons people choose to pursue a college degree, as we are all well aware of the difficulties of landing a good job. In most cases, tens of candidates are applying for the same position, and a college degree can help set you apart from others. In addition, a college education will create more employment opportunities as you will be qualified for more than low-paying and entry-level jobs.

2. Leading to Career Advancement

If you have already joined the workforce and love your job, you might think you don’t need to pursue a college or university education. We are here to tell you that a college degree can have other benefits than just landing you a job. By receiving higher education, you gain the knowledge and skills that will give you a competitive edge and allow you to advance your career in a chosen field.

3. Securing a Better Income

As previously mentioned, a college education can be grounds for career advancement. Advancement in your field comes in the form of a new job title and greater responsibilities—consequently, a higher salary and added benefits. You will also qualify for higher-paying entry-level jobs by getting a higher education degree. As a result, a higher wage can grant you financial stability and improve your quality of life.

4. Developing Critical-Thinking Skills 

Higher education equips you with the knowledge and essential skills necessary to join the workforce. One of the most vital skills you will develop when pursuing a college degree is the ability to think critically. Critical thinking skills are an advantage and sometimes even a requirement to succeed in your career. By developing critical-thinking skills, you can improve your work’s quality, solve problems, and prevent possible issues that might arise.

5. Improving Self-Discipline 

The amount of work that one has to put in to get a college degree is sometimes precisely what improves one’s self-discipline. When pursuing higher education, you have assignments that you must deliver on time and tests you must study for—all of which require self-discipline. Improved self-discipline will, in turn, help you in your future career by making you a reliable and hardworking team member.

6. Developing Cognitive And Communication Skills

Learning how to communicate with others is a highly valuable skill in the job market and one that will significantly contribute to your career success. Pursuing a university or college degree is a great way to further develop your cognitive and communication skills. During your studies, you will constantly be in contact and collaborate with colleagues and professors, giving you insight into a typical work environment.

7. Promoting Equality And Empowerment

One of the most important benefits of education is probably the promotion of equality and empowerment within society. Higher education can make people more open-minded in accepting others’ ideas and opinions regardless of race, gender, age, etc. In addition, education empowers people through expert knowledge and valuable skills and gives them the mental capacity to make decisions and create a life of their own independently.

8. Providing a Prosperous And Healthy Life

The list of highest-paying careers contains mostly professions that require a higher education degree. This is why one must pursue a college education to land a well-paying job. A high-paying job career has many benefits, including a comfortable life for you and your family, the respect and admiration of your family and friends, etc. Being financially secure will also contribute to your and your family’s overall happiness and quality of life.

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9. Instilling a Sense of Accomplishment

There are still advantages to a college or university degree, even if we were to take out the “landing a job” benefit. Another great benefit of pursuing a degree is the sense of accomplishment you gain when you obtain your degree. Feeling like you accomplished something important will, in turn, make you more confident in pursuing other things you want in life and getting them.

10. Spreading Awareness

Nowadays, technological advancement has made it possible for people to easily connect and communicate with virtually anyone anywhere in the world. This, of course, includes students in colleges and universities. Getting a college education will, directly and indirectly, expose students to different cultures around the world, thus increasing cultural awareness.

11. Enhancing Productivity

Getting a college degree is a lot of hard work, requiring self-discipline and good time-management skills . Pursuing and obtaining a college degree will improve these skills and qualities in a person. Such essential attributes and skills will make you a valuable employee and asset for the companies you work for as they help enhance your overall productivity.

12. Offering the Opportunity to Socialize And Network

Another way a college education will prepare you for your future career is through socializing and networking. When pursuing a college degree, you are surrounded by other students who will soon enter the same job market as you. Socializing or creating a network with them early on will be a great advantage when pursuing a career or seeking career advancement.

13. Pursuing a Passion

Pursuing a college or university degree in a field you are passionate about is a great way to land a fulfilling career. A college education will allow you to turn your passion into a stable job and income you need to live comfortably. In addition, the specialized knowledge you gain during your studies will help you plunge deeper into the things you love.

14. Opening Your Horizons

Pursuing higher education is a great way to open your horizons regarding knowledge, understanding, or experience. Whether it is the specialized knowledge and understanding you gain, the different things you experience, or the relationships you form, a college education will expose you to things you can’t find elsewhere.  

15. Contributing to the Community

Lastly, all the benefits of education mentioned above will make you a better member of society. By receiving higher education and landing a fulfilling and high-paying job, you can then turn your energy into giving back to the community and helping others. Educated people are aware of the role an individual must play in society for it to function well, so they do their part accordingly.

The Bottom Line

There are many ways higher education can impact your future as an individual and a community member. By pursuing a college education, one can become a financially stable, knowledgeable, skilled, and happy individual that will contribute to a better society.

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Why inclusive education is important for all students

Truly transformative education must be inclusive. The education we need in the 21st century should enable people of all genders, abilities, ethnicities, socioeconomic backgrounds and ages to develop the knowledge, skills and attitudes required for resilient and caring communities. In light of pandemics, climate crises, armed conflict and all challenges we face right now, transformative education that realizes every individual’s potential as part of society is critical to our health, sustainability, peace and happiness. 

To achieve that vision, we need to take action at a systemic level. If we are to get to the heart of tackling inequity, we need change to our education systems as a whole, including formal, non-formal and informal education spaces .

I grew up in the UK in the 1990s under a piece of legislation called Section 28 . This law sought to “ prohibit the promotion of homosexuality ” and those behind it spoke a lot about the wellbeing of children. However, this law did an immense amount of harm, as bullying based on narrow stereotypes of what it meant to be a girl or a boy became commonplace and teachers were disempowered from intervening. Education materials lacked a diversity of gender representation for fear of censure, and as a result, children weren’t given opportunities to develop understanding or empathy for people of diverse genders and sexualities. 

I have since found resonance with the term non-binary to describe my gender, but as an adolescent, what my peers saw was a disabled girl who did not fit the boxes of what was considered acceptable. Because of Section 28, any teacher’s attempts to intervene in the bullying were ineffective and, lacking any representation of others like me, I struggled to envisage my own future. Section 28 was repealed in late 2003; however, change in practice was slow, and I dropped out of formal education months later, struggling with my mental health. 

For cisgender (somebody whose gender identity matches their gender assigned at birth) and heterosexual girls and boys, the lack of representation was limiting to their imaginations and created pressure to follow certain paths. For LGBTQ+ young people, Section 28 was systemic violence leading to psychological, emotional and physical harm. Nobody is able to really learn to thrive whilst being forced to learn to survive. Psychological, emotional and physical safety are essential components of transformative education. 

After dropping out of secondary school, I found non-formal and informal education spaces that gave me the safety I needed to recover and the different kind of learning I needed to thrive. Through Guiding and Scouting activities, I found structured ways to develop not only knowledge, but also important skills in teamwork, leadership, cross-cultural understanding, advocacy and more. Through volunteering, I met adults who became my possibility models and enabled me to imagine not just one future but multiple possibilities of growing up and being part of a community. 

While I found those things through non-formal and informal education spaces (and we need to ensure those forms of education are invested in), we also need to create a formal education system that gives everyone the opportunity to aspire and thrive. 

My work now, with the Kite Trust , has two strands. The first is a youth work programme giving LGBTQ+ youth spaces to develop the confidence, self-esteem and peer connections that are still often lacking elsewhere. The second strand works with schools (as well as other service providers) to help them create those spaces themselves. We deliver the Rainbow Flag Award which takes a whole-school approach to inclusion. The underlying principle is that, if you want to ensure LGBTQ+ students are not being harmed by bullying, it goes far beyond responding to incidents as they occur. We work with schools to ensure that teachers are skilled in this area, that there is representation in the curriculum, that pastoral support in available to young people, that the school has adequate policies in place to ensure inclusion, that the wider community around the school are involved, and that (most importantly) students are given a meaningful voice. 

This initiative takes the school as the system we are working to change and focuses on LGBTQ+ inclusion, but the principles are transferable to thinking about how we create intersectional, inclusive education spaces in any community or across society as a whole. Those working in the system need to be knowledgeable in inclusive practices, the materials used and content covered needs to represent diverse and intersectional experiences and care needs to be a central ethos. All of these are enabled by inclusive policy making, and inclusive policy making is facilitated by the involvement of the full range of stakeholders, especially students themselves. 

If our communities and societies are to thrive in the face of tremendous challenges, we need to use these principles to ensure our education systems are fully inclusive. 

Pip Gardner (pronouns: They/them) is Chief Executive of the Kite Trust, and is a queer and trans activist with a focus on youth empowerment. They are based in the UK and were a member of the Generation Equality Youth Task Force from 2019-21. 

A Journey to the Stars

Isabel’s journey to pursue education in Indigenous Guatemala

School was a safe place: How education helped Nhial realize a dream 

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Getting To & Through College: The Benefits of Taking Advanced Coursework

Colleges are the pipeline to good jobs and the middle class, yet for many students of color and students from low-income backgrounds, a higher education degree remains out of reach. High college costs are a major factor, but a lack of access to advanced courses is another all-too-common barrier. Advanced courses — such as algebra, biology, chemistry, physics, and high-level English/writing, and history classes, among others — help prepare students for a range of intellectual and professional endeavors, and research suggests that students who take college-level courses — via Advanced Placement, dual-enrollment, or International Baccalaureate programs — in high school are more likely to graduate, go on to college, and earn a degree. Unfortunately, as a new Ed Trust report reveals, not all students have equitable access to such courses. Students of color and students from low-income backgrounds are less likely to attend schools that offer them and are assigned to advanced classes at lower rates than their peers.

It’s time to close that gap and expand access to advanced classes. Those who have taken them cite a host of benefits, ranging from increased confidence; greater academic engagement and college readiness; and the chance to explore subjects and get a head start on higher ed, potentially cutting college costs and time to degree. I spoke with several high-school alumni with advanced coursework experience — all students of color and/or students from low-income backgrounds — about the value of such courses and how taking them has impacted their scholarly lives. Here’s what they said.

At UPCS, honors classes are standard, and Advanced Placement and college-level courses were options, even if you weren’t an ‘A’ student, he said:

“I was not a high-performing student, but UPCS still gave me an opportunity to take advanced classes and also made sure that I kept up with the group,” even though “it was tough for me to speak English correctly and also to write it.”

Andre was tutored by his AP English teacher, Daniel St. Louis (now the school principal), “to make sure my English was on par with everybody else’s,” but his teacher didn’t cut him any slack.

“He had us read a book and write a report every single week, which really furthered my ability to read and write,” Andre recalled.

In addition to AP English literature, Andre took AP government and college algebra. That early exposure to challenging courses — as well as UPCS’s laser focus on equipping all of its students to finish high school and go on to higher ed — helped him see college as a viable next step and gave him a feel for what it would be like.

“It made the idea of college a lot less intimidating and allowed me to sample classes to get a sense of what I might be good at or would like to study later,” said Andre, noting that “without that opportunity, I probably wouldn’t have gone.”

But go he did. Andre earned a bachelor’s in business administration from Worcester State University in 2015.

While he did not score high enough on his AP exams to earn undergraduate credits at Worcester State, Andre did well enough on the Accuplacer test to skip the math prerequisite and qualify for more advanced courses. What’s more, he was ready for whatever writing challenges came his way: “When I went to Worcester State, my English classes weren’t that hard because I was already used to writing three to five pages a week,” said Andre.

Best of all, Andre completed his bachelor’s degree in just three years.

“I shave[d] off a year of school because I was so used to taking advanced classes at UPCS that I didn’t shy away from taking six classes per semester at Worcester State, instead of the traditional four-class-per-semester load,” said Andre, who not only maxxed out his course load every semester, but took two classes every summer.

Shortening his time to a degree helped Andre to graduate debt-free before going on to grad school. He earned a master’s in public administration from Clark University in 2016 and now works for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

As a result, Jessica transferred 48 credits. So while she is technically a freshman at the University of Dayton — a private Catholic school that requires all first-year students to take religion and philosophy — she has a head start on many of her peers and enough credits to be classified as a junior this spring.

“It’s pretty nice,” she said, “because I have most of my gen-eds out of the way: I’m not taking English or math [first] semester because Dayton accepted many of my credits. And I’m in an upper-level child psychology course.”

Jessica feels poised to do well in college, having developed the study and writing habits in high school that will give her an edge going forward : 

“It’s really good to have had that practice before college because once you get more freedom and there isn’t a teacher yelling at you to submit the coursework, it’s all on you,” Jessica said.

She also knows what to expect, since at “Big Red’” — as her former high school is known — community college professors “came into the school to teach us.” Her favorite was Professor Stone, who taught two history classes. “His expectations were similar to those of the professors I’ve had here,” Jessica said, “so I feel like my college transition has been a lot easier because of that.”

And having in-depth exposure to a variety of challenging subjects in high school helped Jessica choose her major:

“ I’m grateful that I was able to take AP chem and AP bio early on because I went through different phases of thinking about what I might want to do,” she recalled. “I thought about becoming a doctor, but as soon as I started taking chemistry, I realized this is not for me.”

At the prompting of her high school English teacher, who was one of the College Credit Plus teachers, she joined a mock trial program. “That’s when I decided that I wanted to go into law, which then led me to criminal justice, which is my major,” she said.

“Taking AP bio opened up a whole world for me,” said Bianka, who is Mexican American and a first-year pre-med student at UCLA. “If I had taken a regular bio course, it wouldn’t have been as engaging, because we wouldn’t have done as many labs, and I wouldn’t have known that I’m really passionate about science.”

Her AP biology teacher shared internship and volunteer opportunities with the class, which led

Bianka to volunteer at Martin Luther King Jr. hospital the summer after her junior year into her senior year and allowed her to see firsthand what the medical field was like:

“I worked in an outpatient center with cardiologists and also in the general surgery department, so I was in the operating room and was exposed to the medical field at an early age,” she recalled. “I never would have known how much doctors actually collaborate with each other had I not experienced it firsthand. I really like that teamwork environment.”

She also volunteered at health fairs in south Los Angeles — where she helped teach people to eat nutritiously and maintain a healthy lifestyle — and at Charles Drew University’s Saturday Science Academy, where she served as a teacher’s assistant and talked to elementary school students about science. The latter gave her an opportunity to interact with local college students and learn more about universities in the area:

“Most of my colleagues there were students at UCLA or USC, so that gave me a glimpse of college life. Many of them were pre-med and they answered my questions about college, helped me with the application process, and told me what UCLA has to offer — including the diversity of pre-med majors. That’s one of the biggest reasons I came here,” said Bianka, who is majoring in human biology and society, which marries health and social science.

Bianka said her high school AP courses not only made for a smoother college transition — she placed out of writing and math prerequisites, on account of her strong AP test scores, and described her first biology midterm exam as “not too hard” because she’d seen the material before in AP bio — but made her a more motivated and resilient student. She noted, for example, that while she scored well on her AP calculus exam, the subject didn’t always come naturally.

“AP calculus was one of the hardest and most intimidating courses I took in high school,” said Bianka, who was failing it at first. But thanks to after-school study sessions with her math teacher and peers who supported and encouraged one another, and a ton of hard work on her part, she pulled through and eventually come out ahead. “I feel like I gained a lot of confidence from those AP courses because they helped me realize that even though I might feel overwhelmed at times, I’m capable of succeeding,” she said.

  In fact, self-assurance and persistence in the face of adversity may be the biggest benefits of advanced courses, according to all those I interviewed.

“She taught me how to think critically, how to argue, how to formulate and communicate an effective argument — all things one needs to be a successful litigator, which is what I do,” he said.

  Ms. Midgely also held him and all her AP students to a higher standard, he recalled, noting that “she was conditioning us for success” and did not tolerate failure or any effort below 110%. To punctuate this point, he described the time he threw together a writing assignment on Pride and Prejudice at the last minute:

  “I’d forgotten to do it. So, when she told us to ‘pass up your papers’ and started collecting them, I wrote some foolishness down on a sheet of paper. She took it, pulled out her pen and wrote a zero on it and handed it back to me then and there. She was like, ‘Look, if you’re going to be in this AP class, this is not acceptable.’”

  Two things never happened again, Henry said: “One, I have never seen any teacher or professor do anything more ‘gangster’ than that to this day — and I’m in front of judges who throw people in jail every day. And two, I never went into a class or situation unprepared again.”

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Education Pays 2023 Presents Data on the Benefits of Education for Individuals and Society

College Board Communications

• March 17, 2023

Individuals with higher levels of education earn more, pay more taxes, and are more likely than others to be employed and to have job benefits such as retirement plans and health insurance. Adults with more education are also more likely to be engaged citizens and less likely to rely on public assistance, according to Education Pays 2023 , the latest report from the College Board’s Trends in Higher Education series.

Published since 2004, Education Pays: The Benefits of Higher Education for Individuals and Society documents differences in the earnings and employment patterns of U.S. adults with different levels of educational attainment. The report also establishes a correlation between education and health outcomes and community involvement. In addition to reporting median earnings by education level, this year’s report also documents variation in earnings by different characteristics such as gender, race/ethnicity, occupation, college major, state, and institutional sector. Education Pays rounds out the Trends in Higher Education series that includes Trends in College Pricing and Student Aid . These reports provide a foundation for evaluating public policies aimed at increasing educational opportunities.

Key findings from the report:

Participation and success in higher education.

• Gaps in enrollment rates persist across demographic groups. In 2000, 59% of Black and 48% of Hispanic individuals enrolled in college within one year of high school graduation, compared with 67% of White and 82% of Asian students. In 2020, enrollment rates were 57%, 62%, 68%, and 82% for Black, Hispanic, White, and Asian students, respectively. (Figure 1.1A)
• Since 1989, the college enrollment rate of recent female high school graduates has consistently exceeded that of recent male high school graduates. (Figure 1.2A)
• Within each PSAT/NMSQT ® quartile, college enrollment rates are higher for those from lower-challenge (greater educational opportunity) neighborhoods than those from higher-challenge (lower educational opportunity) neighborhoods. (Figure 1.3)
• While overall educational attainment has increased over time, college persistence and attainment patterns differ considerably across demographic groups. Between 1981 and 2021, the share of adults age 25 to 29 who held a bachelor’s degree more than doubled for Black individuals (from 12% to 28%) and almost tripled for Hispanic individuals (from 8% to 23%). The share with a bachelor’s degree increased from 25% to 45% for White individuals. (Figure 1.6A)
• In 2019, the percentage of adults age 25 and older with at least a bachelor’s degree ranged from 22% in West Virginia and Mississippi to 43% in Colorado, 45% in Massachusetts, and 60% in the District of Columbia. (Figure 1.7)

Earnings and Other Economic Benefits

• In 2021, median earnings of bachelor’s degree recipients age 25 and older with no advanced degree working full time were $29,000 higher than those of high school graduates ($73,300 vs. $44,300). Bachelor’s degree recipients paid an estimated $7,800 more in taxes and took home $21,200 more in after-tax income than high school graduates. (Figure 2.1)
• Although obtaining a college degree can mean forgone wages during a time when a student is also paying tuition, by age 34 the average bachelor’s degree recipient will have recouped those costs. Higher educational attainment is an investment that pays dividends over the course of a lifetime—even for students who accumulate some debt to obtain a degree. (Figure 2.2A)
• In 2021, among adults between the ages of 25 and 64, 67% of high school graduates, 71% of those with some college but no degree, 76% of those with an associate degree, and 83% of those with at least a bachelor’s degree were employed. (Figure 2.12)
• The unemployment rate for individuals age 25 and older with at least a bachelor’s degree has consistently been about half of the unemployment rate for high school graduates. (Figure 2.13A)
• In 2021, the unemployment rate for 25- to 34-year-olds with at least a bachelor’s degree was 3.3%, compared with 8.3% for high school graduates in the same age group. (Figure 2.13B)

Variation in Earnings

• The percentage of full-time year-round workers age 35 to 44 earning $100,000 or more in 2021 ranged from 4% of those without a high school diploma and 7% of high school graduates to 35% of those whose highest attainment was a bachelor’s degree and 49% of advanced degree holders. Among advanced degree holders, 24% earned $150,000 or more; this share was 14% among bachelor’s degree holders. (Figure 2.3)
• In 2018 and 2019, median earnings for early career bachelor’s degree recipients ranged from $34,000 a year for performing arts majors to $70,000 for computer science majors. For mid-career employees, median earnings ranged from $43,700 for early childhood education majors to $100,000 for computer science majors. (Figure 2.9)
• From 2016 to 2020, median earnings of bachelor’s degree recipients with no advanced degree working full time were $67,400 in the United States and ranged from $51,300 in Mississippi to $81,200 in New Jersey. (Figure 2.11)

Civic Engagement and Health

• Voting rates are higher among individuals with higher levels of education. In the 2020 presidential election, 77% of 25- to 44-year-old U.S. citizens with at least a bachelor’s degree voted, compared with 46% of high school graduates in the same age group. (Figure 2.18A)
• Among adults age 25 and older, 19% of those with a high school diploma volunteered in 2019, compared with 40% of those with a bachelor’s degree and 51% of those with an advanced degree. (Figure 2.19A)
• In 2020, 54% of 25- to 34-year-olds with at least a bachelor’s degree and 29% of high school graduates reported exercising vigorously at least once a week. (Figure 2.21)

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• v.15(4); Winter 2016

Collaborative Learning in Higher Education: Evoking Positive Interdependence

Karin scager.

† Department of Social Sciences, Utrecht University, 3508 TC Utrecht, The Netherlands

Johannes Boonstra

‡ Department of Biology, Utrecht University, 3584 CH Utrecht, The Netherlands

Ton Peeters

Jonne vulperhorst, fred wiegant.

This study focuses on factors increasing the effectiveness of collaborative learning. Results show that challenging, open, and complex group tasks that required the students to create something new and original evoked effective collaboration.

Collaborative learning is a widely used instructional method, but the learning potential of this instructional method is often underused in practice. Therefore, the importance of various factors underlying effective collaborative learning should be determined. In the current study, five different life sciences undergraduate courses with successful collaborative-learning results were selected. This study focuses on factors that increased the effectiveness of collaboration in these courses, according to the students. Nine focus group interviews were conducted and analyzed. Results show that factors evoking effective collaboration were student autonomy and self-regulatory behavior, combined with a challenging, open, and complex group task that required the students to create something new and original. The design factors of these courses fostered a sense of responsibility and of shared ownership of both the collaborative process and the end product of the group assignment. In addition, students reported the absence of any free riders in these group assignments. Interestingly, it was observed that students seemed to value their sense of achievement, their learning processes, and the products they were working on more than their grades. It is concluded that collaborative learning in higher education should be designed using challenging and relevant tasks that build shared ownership with students.

INTRODUCTION

Students may learn a lot from working in groups, but the learning potential of collaboration is underused in practice ( Johnson et al ., 2007 ), particularly in science education ( Nokes-Malach and Richey, 2015 ). Collaborative, cooperative, and team-based learning are usually considered to represent the same concept, although they are sometimes defined differently ( Kirschner, 2001 ); we consider these concepts comparable and use the term “collaboration” throughout the paper. In collaborative learning, students participate in small-group activities in which they share their knowledge and expertise. In these student-driven activities, the teacher usually acts as a facilitator ( Kirschner, 2001 ).

Several decades of empirical research have demonstrated the positive relationship between collaborative learning and student achievement, effort, persistence, and motivation (for reviews, see Slavin, 1990 ; Webb and Palinscar, 1996 ; Barron, 2000 ; Johnson et al ., 2007 ). Collaborative learning potentially promotes deep learning, in which students engage in high-quality social interaction, such as discussing contradictory information ( Visschers-Pleijers et al ., 2006 ). In science education, a deep-learning approach is crucial for understanding concepts and complex processes ( Van Boxtel, 2000 ). Understanding of these concepts involves a process of conceptual change, a process particularly activated in collaborative learning, whereby students interact by explaining to and questioning one another critically ( Van Boxtel et al ., 2000 ; Linton et al ., 2014 ). In previous papers, we have explored and emphasized the relevance of collaborative learning in undergraduate biology courses ( Wiegant et al ., 2012 , 2014 ). By comparing university student achievement in a biology course in individual and group settings, Linton et al . (2014) found that students in group settings achieved significantly better with respect to conceptual understanding in comparison with students in courses with an individual setting. Besides these cognitive benefits, collaborative learning provides social skills needed for future professional work in the field of science.

Just forming groups, however, does not automatically result in better learning and motivation ( Salomon and Globerson, 1989 ; Gillies, 2004 ; Khosa and Volet, 2013 ). In their study of university students’ preferences for collaborative learning, Raidal and Volet (2009) found an overwhelming preference for individual forms of learning. Students are hesitant about group work because of the occurrence of “free riders,” logistical issues, or interpersonal conflicts ( Livingstone and Lynch, 2000 ; Aggarwal and O’Brien, 2008 ; Pauli et al ., 2008 ; Shimazou and Aldrich, 2010 ; Hall and Buzwell, 2012 ). As a result, students might opt for a strategic approach by dividing the work and merely using a stapler to “integrate” their work into a group paper. Johnson and Johnson (1999) refer to groups showing this kind of superficial behavior as “pseudo learning groups.” In turn, the resulting lack of synthesis can be disappointing for teachers. Dividing work also implies that students lose the potential learning effect of collaborating, since the extent to which students benefit from working with other students depends on the quality of their interactions ( Van Boxtel et al ., 2000 ; King, 2002 ; Palinscar and Herrenkohl, 2002 ; Volet et al ., 2009 ). Insight into factors that facilitate collaborative learning is critical for understanding how collaboration can be used effectively in higher education. Therefore, in the present study, we explore factors that optimize the quality of collaboration, using examples of effective group work in five different life sciences courses.

POTENTIAL FACTORS ENHANCING THE EFFECTIVENESS OF COLLABORATIVE LEARNING

Social interaction is crucial for effective collaboration ( Volet et al ., 2009 ). Learning outcomes of collaborative-learning groups have been found to depend on the quality of student discussions, including argumentation ( Teasley, 1995 ; Chinn et al ., 2000 ), explaining ideas to one another ( Veenman et al ., 2005 ), and incorporating and building on one another’s ideas ( Barron, 2003 ). These interactions with peers are assumed to promote students’ cognitive restructuring ( Webb, 2009 ). Explaining things to one another and discussing subject matter may lead to deeper understanding, to recognition of misconceptions, and to the strengthening of connections between new information and previously learned information ( Wittrock, 1990 ). The question of how to organize collaboration in a way that promotes these kinds of interactions is paramount.

Decades of research on group work have resulted in the identification of various factors that potentially enhance the effectiveness of collaboration. These factors can be differentiated as primary factors (design characteristics) and secondary or mediating factors (group-process characteristics). Regarding primary factors, groups need to be small (three to five students) to obtain meaningful interaction ( Lou et al ., 2001 ; Johnson et al ., 2007 ). With respect to group composition, mixed-ability groups have been found to increase performance for students of lower ability, but this composition does not necessarily benefit high-ability students ( Webb et al ., 2002 ). Equal participation, however, has been shown to be more important for students’ achievement than group composition, because students are more likely to use one another’s knowledge and skills fully when all students participate to the same extent ( Woolley et al ., 2015 ). Heterogeneity, with respect to diversity of perspectives and styles, has been found to increase learning, particularly in groups working on tasks that require creativity ( Kozhevnikov et al ., 2014 ). The nature of the task has been shown to be an important factor as well. Open and ill-structured tasks promote higher-level interaction and improve reasoning and applicative and evaluative thinking to a greater extent than closed tasks ( Gillies, 2014 ). In addition, complex tasks provoke deeper-level interactions than simple tasks ( Hertz-Lazarowitz, 1989 ).

Concerning secondary or intermediate factors affecting group work, positive interdependence theory is one of the best-founded theories explaining the quality of interaction in collaborative learning ( Slavin, 1990 ; Johnson and Johnson, 1999 , 2009 ; Gully et al ., 2002 ). According to this theory, collaboration is enhanced when positive interdependence exists among group members. This is achieved when students perceive the contribution of each individual to be essential for the group to succeed in completing the assigned activity ( Johnson and Johnson, 2009 ). Positive interdependence results in both individual accountability and promotive interaction. Individual accountability is defined as having feelings of responsibility for completing one’s own work and for facilitating the work of other group members. A sense of mutual accountability is necessary to avoid free riding ( Johnson and Johnson, 2009 ), which occurs when one or more group members are perceived by other members as failing to contribute their fair share to the group effort ( Aggarwal and O’Brien, 2008 ). Promotive interaction has been described as students encouraging and facilitating one another’s efforts to accomplish group goals, both with respect to group dynamics and the subject matter ( Johnson and Johnson, 2009 ).

Methods of inducing positive interdependence interaction are either reward or task based ( Johnson et al ., 2007 ). Reward-based interdependence structures the reward in such a way that students’ individual grades depend on the achievement of the whole team. According to Slavin (1991 , 1995 ), collaborative learning is rarely successful without group rewards. In higher education, however, findings on the effects of reward-based interdependence are inconclusive. The main concern is that rewards stimulate extrinsic motivation and may be detrimental to intrinsic motivation ( Parkinson and St. George, 2003 ). Intrinsically motivated students put effort into a task because they are interested in the task itself, while extrinsically motivated students are interested in the reward or grade ( Deci and Ryan, 2000 ). Strong incentives, such as grades, could steer student motivation toward the reward and subsequently reduce the task to being a means to an end. Serrano and Pons (2007) , however, found that using rewards (individual grades) created high positive interdependence in group work at a university level. They concluded that the reward structure did direct students’ motivation toward final grades, while the task still aroused the interest of the students. In contrast, Sears and Pai (2012) found that rewards were not crucial factors affecting group behavior. Their study showed that groups continued to work even after the reward was removed, whereas the efforts of students working individually decreased after the reward was removed.

In structured task-based interdependence, students are forced to exchange information; this can be achieved by assigning group members different roles, resources, or tasks (the “jigsaw” method) or by “scripting” the process, which involves giving students a set of instructions on how they should interact and collaborate ( Kagan, 1994 ; Dillenbourg, 2002 ). The effects of task structuring on collaborative learning are, however, not clear ( Fink, 2004 ; Hänze and Berger, 2007 ; Serrano and Pons, 2007 ). Hänze and Berger (2007) observed no differences in achievement between students who worked in jigsaw-structured groups and students who worked individually. In contrast, the observations of Brewer and Klein (2006) indicated that students in groups with given roles plus rewards interacted significantly more frequently than students in groups with given rewards only or in groups without structured interdependence factors. (Over)structuring interaction processes, on the other hand, could threaten intrinsic motivation and disturb natural interaction processes ( Dillenbourg, 2002 ). Although it is widely accepted that positive interdependence has been shown to be crucial in evoking social interaction, in practice, university students often tend to merely go through the motions and choose the solution requiring the least effort, which explains why positive interdependence often does not emerge ( Salomon and Globerson, 1989 ). Additional methods are necessary to encourage quality interactions that enhance learning. Moreover, the mixed results of university education studies concerning structuring interdependence—using either rewards or task structuring—do not solve the challenge of how to create interdependence without disturbing the intrinsic motivation of students. Forcing students to interact could endanger student autonomy and motivation, while merely putting students together has been shown to be ineffective.

THE CURRENT STUDY

Despite the considerable amount of research on collaborative learning, less is known about how to structure university-level group work in order to capitalize on the benefits of collaborative learning. The studies discussed earlier focused on primary and secondary education and are not fully applicable to higher education, because students in undergraduate classes may have different schedules and often have not met before. Moreover, group work of university students is mostly organized outside class hours in the absence of teachers. Furthermore, literature in this area may be limited in applicability, as many studies of factors affecting collaboration have used (quasi)experimental designs, in which outcomes of two or three designs were compared ( Johnson and Johnson, 2009 ). A restriction of this method is that only the hypothesized independent variables are studied, while other important factors contributing to effectiveness might be overlooked. In our study, we approached the theme retrospectively, investigating the learning of student groups known to have collaborated and achieved highly, according to their teachers. Rather than focusing on learning outcomes, we explored how group work in these courses was structured. Understanding the factors that facilitate students’ collaboration is critical to understanding how this approach to learning can be used more effectively in higher education. We explicitly focused on positive examples of effective collaborative learning, as best practices should be communicated to others ( Dewey, 1929 , p.11).

In the current study, we selected five different life sciences undergraduate courses that comprised successful group-work assignments. The specific question this study aimed to address was, according to the students, what factors increased collaboration in these courses? By uncovering the factors that make collaborative learning fruitful, we aim to provide useful guidelines for instructors implementing collaborative learning.

Participants

The present study involved focus group interviews with nine groups of second- and third-year students of five different undergraduate life sciences courses. We depended heavily on these focus group interviews to develop our understandings. They allowed us to gain insight into students’ perspectives, which is important because, to a large degree, students’ perspectives of instruction affect what they do and learn ( Shuell, 1996 ). Furthermore, the group exchanges of experiences and perspectives promoted breadth, as well as depth, in our understandings of the cognitive, behavioral, and situational factors contributing to the effectiveness of the collaboration. The particular courses were selected because they all implemented group work that, according to teacher assessments and student evaluations, was very effective. We approached the instructors of these courses with the request to ask their students to volunteer in focus group discussions. Students were willing to participate in these focus group discussions, although not all students were able to meet at the scheduled times. No specific reward was promised for participating in focus group discussions.

Between two and 10 students participated in each of the nine focus group interviews (see Table 1 ).

Course, number of focus group interviews, and students per interview

Course Descriptions

We focused on five courses that were all small-enrollment, upper-division courses in which 15–35 students participated per course. In all courses, collaborative activities occurred during class hours but also outside of class. In some courses, the out-of-class cooperative activities even exceeded the in-class activities.

Course A: The first course was part of a biology honors program. In this part of the program, groups of second-year bachelor’s students (12–19 students) were assigned the group task of writing a popular science book about a biology topic of their choice. Students had to perform all the activities necessary to produce the book. The project was strongly student-led, and students assigned themselves tasks necessary for finishing the project. The assignment comprised an entire academic year, starting in September and finishing in May/June as an extracurricular activity. More details of this course are described elsewhere ( Wiegant et al ., 2012 ).

Course B: Students in the immunology course, mostly third-year students, were assigned the task of writing, in groups of four, a short research project on an immunological topic. The assignment was structured in three parts: in part 1, groups designed a draft of their proposal; in part 2, the groups peer reviewed the draft of another group; and in part 3, the groups received the draft and comments of yet another group, which they had to finish and present. The assignment comprised approximately half of the course.

Course C: In the advanced cell biology course, three small teams of four or five students collaborated intensively during a semester of 15 weeks to formulate three PhD proposals within an overarching theme. Because the course was student-led, the teachers refrained from guiding the students in their decisions, instead taking a facilitating role by asking critical questions and providing feedback. As a result of the project, the teams presented and defended their research program and the three research proposals before a jury of experts. More details of this course are given elsewhere ( Wiegant et al ., 2011 , 2014 ; Scager et al ., 2014 ).

Course D: The objective of the molecular cell biology course was to learn to design a research project in groups of four. In this course, students were required to complete multiple assignments, such as reviewing a paper, developing a research proposal, designing experiments, and writing and defending their proposals. Groups met with their supervisor once a week and were supposed to keep the course coordinator informed on their progress. Final grades were based on individual (40%) and group (60%) components.

Course E: As a part of the pharmacy course, third-year students, in groups of four to six participants, were required to analyze the quality of a specific pharmacotherapy. The assignments were authentic and were provided by external commissioning companies. The group assignment counted for 70% of the final grade (50% group report and presentation; 20% individual reflection).

The interviews were semistructured and included two basic questions: 1) “What factors made group work effective in this course (as opposed to other experiences you have had)?” and 2) “What was the added value in this course of working in a group (as opposed to working individually)?” The addition of “as opposed to …” was aimed to encourage students’ thinking process; we did not ask students to elaborate on these opposing experiences. Interviewers stimulated and moderated discussions, ensuring depth as well as diversity. To focus and structure the interviews and to stimulate the sharing of discussion outcomes, we listed the answers to the two questions on a flip chart.

First, the intentions of the interview were clarified, followed by an explanation of the confidential nature of the interview. All students agreed and gave permission for the interviews to be audiotaped. All of the authors conducted one or more interviews, with the first author (K.S.) moderating them. The focus group interviews were held in or near the classroom associated with each of the specific courses. The interviews were ∼60 minutes each and were transcribed verbatim.

Detecting Factors That Facilitated Group Work.

Data were analyzed by the first and fourth authors (K.S. and J.V.) in three partially overlapping stages. Stage 1 comprised reading and rereading the transcripts to identify text units relevant to the subject of challenge. Given the aim of the focus group interviews, this meant ignoring small talk and sorting discussion units related to the two interview questions into focal issues. Stage 2 comprised identifying and coding themes related to the two main interview questions regarding 1) factors and 2) added value, using NVivo version 10 (a qualitative data-analysis computer software package). First, open coding was applied. The answers to both questions, however, evoked answers that pointed to intermediary variables affecting the outcomes of collaboration. For example, the question regarding factors brought forward the importance of the assignment being complex enough to make students feel mutually interdependent, while for the question regarding added value, students referred back to how the complexity of the assignment stimulated them to discuss, build on, and learn from one another’s ideas. The interactions provoked by the complexity of the task seemed to connect complexity with learning outcomes. Therefore, when axial coding was applied, we decided to develop three clusters of codes focused on the factors of effective collaboration, the mediating variables, and the added value of collaboration. Subsequently, selective coding was applied, wherein codes were clustered into larger sets informed by theory ( Braun and Clarke, 2006 ). Only factors that were mentioned in more than half of the focus groups were kept. This resulted in two sets of factors. The first set of factors related to the design of the group assignment (autonomy, group size, task design, and teacher expectations). The second set consisted of mediating variables related to the working processes of the groups (team and task regulation, promotive interaction, interdependence, responsibility, and mutual support and motivation).

Reliability and Validity.

Reliability is considered in terms of equivalence and internal consistency ( Sim and Wright, 2000 ). Reliability was ensured by intercoder consistency ( Burla et al ., 2008 ). Given the complexity and inhomogeneity of group discourse, agreement testing was constrained to core concepts or themes of substantive importance ( Kidd and Parshall, 2000 ). The equivalence of coding was addressed by selecting 20% of the data and comparing the coding of two secondary raters (10% each) for consistency, which yielded a kappa coefficient of 0.85. This strength of agreement is considered to be “nearly perfect” ( Everitt, 1996 ). Internal consistency was acquired by having one team member moderating all (but one) of the interviews ( Kidd and Parshall, 2000 ). The emergence of substantively similar viewpoints of the focus groups on the core issues across the five different courses supported content validity ( Kidd and Parshall, 2000 ). Furthermore, we assessed content validity by independent coding and by comparing this with theory in extant literature ( Morgan and Spanish, 1985 ; Torn and McNichol, 1998 ).

Factors That Contributed to the Effectiveness of the Collaboration

Eight factors were found to have a positive effect on the effectiveness of the collaboration. These factors are presented in Table 2 : 1) design factors: the design of the course and/or the assignment (the autonomy of the students, task characteristics, teacher expectations, and group size); and 2) process factors: the way students interacted and organized their work (team and task regulation, interdependence, promotive interaction, and mutual support and motivation).

Factors that contributed to the effectiveness of the collaboration

a “Source” refers to how many of the nine interviews the topic was discussed in; “reference” refers to the total number of times the topic was discussed.

Table 2 shows that autonomy and the density and complexity of the task were the factors most frequently mentioned by the students as contributing to the effectiveness of the collaboration. Team and task regulation, positive interdependence, and promotive interaction were perceived by students as the most important factors with respect to the way they processed the assignments. In the next section, we describe the results more elaborately, starting with the design features of these courses that are considered to enhance collaboration processes.

Design Factors

The autonomy the groups experienced was mentioned in all focus groups, indicating the importance of this factor to the effectiveness of collaboration. Autonomy was manifested in allowing student groups to choose their own topics (e.g., for their research plans) and giving them independence in organizing their processes. Statements such as “It was our own thing” occurred frequently in all nine focus group discussions. The references to “our thing” indicate that the students made choices as a group, which could have restricted individual feelings of autonomy. The students, however, did not seem to have experienced clear boundaries between individual and group autonomy. Even though their personal ideas may have been overruled by the team, they still felt autonomous, because they made decisions democratically. As one of the students said, “When you participate in the decision process it is easier to accept than when the decision is made by the teacher.”

Two features of the task were perceived as important contributors to the effectiveness of the group work. First, the density and complexity of the task was crucial. The group task needed to be extensive enough for the group members to really need one another’s contributions to finish in time and complex enough to require them to discuss their work and provide one another with feedback. Second, students perceived the relevance of the task at hand to be an important feature. The task relevance was found in different aspects, depending on the assignment. For the biology honors groups, for example, the process of writing a popular science book and getting it published increased their feelings of doing something significant. The cell biology and immunology groups emphasized the relevance of doing research, in terms of formulating a relevant proposal in the same way as it is done “in the real world.”

In terms of rewards , students emphasized that the inherent value of the end product, such as an article, a research proposal, or a book, stimulated them to achieve, which relates back to the perceived task relevance. As a student of the biology honors course said, “We have also had other group projects …, but that was taken less seriously, because you, well it was nice, but well, the result wouldn’t reach beyond the classroom, while in this project it will.” There were no grades involved in this particular course, which students appreciated, because they believed the end product to be more important than a grade. Also, in other groups, discussions about assessment were learning and/or reward oriented rather than grade oriented; for example, in one of the pharmacy groups it was said: “You are in a learning process, and I think sometimes that it is a shame that it should end in a grade—that creates a tension. And if things go wrong, that could be very beneficial for your learning, but it can also happen that you do not receive a high grade for it.”

In all of the interviews, students mentioned that it was crucial that the task was the core project in the course at that time, as students of the immunology course stated: “I think also because this is not something you do on the side, but this is the only thing we do at the moment, it is the main activity.” The fact that students’ final grades depended primarily on the group assignment was mentioned in some groups. Students emphasized that in previous experiences with group assignments they had not collaborated as intensively because their final grade did not depend largely on the team assignment.

Finally, group size was considered a factor stimulating collaboration in seven of the groups, specifically related to the level of responsibility students felt. Groups of three or four were believed to be optimal: “Otherwise, you get a sort of diffuse responsibility …, and with four you are clearly responsible for an important part of the process.”

Process Factors

The need for team and task regulation was mentioned most frequently in the focus group discussions as an important factor increasing the effectiveness of collaboration. Students divided tasks, appointed team leaders, and set their own deadlines. Organizing frequent face-to-face meetings was very helpful, according to students: “That we met each other physically, instead of doing everything by mail or chat, like in other projects. This works much better, if you can look each other in the eyes it is way faster and more efficient to manage and decide things …. It also increases the pressure, everybody prepares for a meeting.” The quote in Table 2 indicates the direct relation between the autonomy of the groups and their dedication to following their self-made group regulations.

As shown in Table 2 , students in all nine focus groups experienced a sense of positive interdependence in terms of needing one another in order to succeed and achieve their goal. The feeling of responsibility was discussed in six groups. The related issue of “uneven contribution” was discussed in all nine of the focus groups: students did experience differences in power and effort between team members. Interestingly, students did not perceive this as free riding. According to the students, some degree of uneven contribution is only natural; the students all did their best, but as the students said, “There weren’t students who contributed less; there were only students who contributed more.” According to the students, this uneven contribution was due to power differences, not to disinterest or laziness. Students showed empathy for their peers who contributed less: “The strong people might go too hard for the other people to be able to catch up.” This may have caused frustration in students who felt they were lagging behind, as one of them revealed: “You have that responsibility that drives you and then you feel the need to do more, but perhaps that is beyond your capabilities at that point.” Some of the groups discussed the issue of uneven contribution while working on their projects, but always, they stated, in an “understanding and respectful way.” Furthermore, students in all nine interviews mentioned the fact that the variety among students was useful and enhanced the discussions: “working in a group consisting of clones of yourself” would not be as interesting, one of the pharmacy groups stated.

All nine groups mentioned the need for promotive interaction several times, drawing attention to the need to discuss content to accomplish team goals. They mentioned several indicators of promotive interaction: discussions, exchange of information, and arguments, building on one another’s ideas, explaining to one another, providing and processing peer feedback, and asking one another critical questions. According to the students, these discussions enhanced their understanding, and they also learned how to discuss, voice their opinion, explain, listen to others, accept feedback, and reflect on their own work.

Last, but not least, students talked enthusiastically about the way they supported and motivated one another. There was explicit help and pep talks, and, perhaps even more importantly, implicit mutual inspiration effected by them perceiving the motivation of their peers.

Finally, we found one contextual factor (not included in Table 2 ) contributing to collaboration: the shared motivation of students to get the best out of the group assignment. Students mostly linked their having similar motivations to the fact that they were in their second or third year (four of the five courses were third-year courses). First, the students already knew one another: “When you are in your first year, you do not know each other, and some people are a bit insecure, so to say. But now we know each other, so we may scold each other all we can.” Furthermore, students suggested being equally motivated, because the unmotivated students had already left in previous years.

CONCLUSIONS AND DISCUSSION

The purpose of the current study was to find factors that enhance student collaboration. The collaboration processes (task and team regulation, mutual support and motivation, positive interaction) used by these students were distinctly effective. During these processes, positive interdependence was clearly present, supporting the notion that positive interdependence is a crucial factor affecting the effectiveness of collaboration ( Johnson and Johnson, 2009 ). Although the interview data do not allow causal relations between design factors and collaboration processes to be inferred, it seems reasonable to assume that positive interdependence was evoked by a combination of the nature of the task (autonomous, relevant, dense and complex, group rewards), the prominent placement of the group assignment within the course, and the group size.

The results indicate that positive interdependence was an important factor contributing to the effectiveness of collaboration. The positive effect of interdependence on student achievement has already been well documented (for reviews, see Slavin, 1990 ; Webb and Palinscar, 1996 ; Johnson et al ., 2007 ). Although we disassembled the factors contributing to collaboration in the analysis , we assume interdependence does not consist of a single factor but rather is constructed through the interaction between motivated students and design factors (the nature of the task and student autonomy). Furthermore, the fact that the final grade depended primarily on the group assignment can be expected to have contributed to students’ interdependence, which would concur with the findings of Slavin (1991) . Interestingly, however, these students seemed to value the learning process and the products they were working on more than their grades. Our finding, that a sense of achievement rather than a grade was of greater importance in motivating interdependence, contradicts findings of Slavin (1991) and Tsay and Brady (2010) . Tsay and Brady (2010) found that the degree of active participation of university students in collaborative groups was affected by the importance they attached to grades: students who perceived grades as highly important were more active collaborators.

The enthusiasm of the students when speaking of the way they supported and motivated one another and regulated the team and task processes indeed indicates the occurrence of strong self-regulatory processes. Although some structure was provided beforehand in all five courses (e.g., final deadlines), students were perceived to be autonomous in the planning and regulation of their work, which they said added to their motivation to follow their own rules and planning. This direct relationship between perceived autonomy and self-regulatory behavior is aligned with self-determination theory ( Deci and Ryan, 2000 ). According to Deci and Ryan (2000) , when teachers are supportive of student autonomy, students are motivated to internalize the regulation of their learning activities, whereas when teachers are controlling, self-regulated motivation is undermined. The self-regulatory social processes of these students, encouraged by the autonomy they were provided, were the most important factors increasing the effectiveness of their collaboration in these five cases.

Individual accountability is an important aspect within the theory of positive interdependence. Interestingly, instead of accountability, students used the word “responsibility.” The difference between responsibility and accountability is meaningful, because accountability is focused on the end result, or being answerable for your actions to relevant others, while responsibility is related to the task. Responsibility is viewed as having a higher level of autonomy and involves the ability to self-regulate actions free of external motivational pressure. In contrast, the accountable actor is subject to external oversight, regulation, and mechanisms of punishment ( Bivins, 2006 ). The term “responsibility” more appropriately fits the collaboration in these cases, as one of our participants illustrates: “You feel the responsibility to other people in your group, because as soon as soon as you drop the ball, the rest have to work harder.” This student does not refer to consequences externally imposed on him, but he feels responsibility toward others. The effect this has may be the same as when students are forced to be accountable because of reward- or task-based structures, as suggested by Johnson and Johnson (2009) ; however, the nature of the motivation is more intrinsically than extrinsically induced.

Related to the issue of accountability or responsibility is the problem of free riding, which is one of the main problems of group work in higher education ( Livingstone and Lynch, 2000 ; Aggarwal and O’Brien, 2008 ; Pauli et al ., 2008 ; Shimazou and Aldrich, 2010 ). In the interviews in which the issue of free riding came up, however, groups did not seem to have experienced the phenomenon. A putative explanation for the lack of free-riding behavior is the incidence of accountability ( Slavin, 1991 ; Johnson and Johnson, 2009 ; Onwegbuezie et al ., 2009 ), as students definitely felt responsible for the end result. The way students spoke about their group members, however, was in terms of mutual trust rather than accountability. Students recognized differences in contribution but did not perceive this as problematic. They were empathic toward differences between students. If there were negative feelings at all, the low contributors were more apt to feel frustrated, indicating that the differences in contribution were, as Hall and Buzwell (2012) have suggested, involuntary and due to inadequacy rather than apathy or laziness.

In the five courses of this study, the combination of design factors seems to have prevented free riding. Although the causal nature of the relationship between design features of the group work and effective group processing cannot be claimed in the current study, the results indicate that, in particular, perceived autonomy and the challenging nature of the task evoked students’ motivation to make an effort. The relevance of the tasks, which required students to produce something new (to them) and something original and tangible, motivated students. The tasks were also open and complex, which are features that have already been found to promote deeper-level interactions than simple tasks ( Hertz-Lazarowitz, 1989 ; Cohen, 1994 ). Autonomy was a factor frequently mentioned as contributing to the effectiveness of the group work. Contradictory to Johnson and Johnson’s (2009) recommendation for teachers to structure processes, students of these courses designated the autonomy they had in choosing their topic and in organizing the process, as one of the factors increasing their motivation. Results from organizational research show that autonomy can, in fact, increase teamwork achievement, but only when positive interdependence is high ( Langfred, 2000 ). Autonomy combined with low interdependence decreases achievement, indicating that autonomy should be combined with challenging tasks. Although autonomy and level of challenge in a group assignment appears to be vital, instructors in different settings may need to use greater scaffolding.

Future Research and Concluding Remarks

It is important to keep in mind the small sample and restricted context when interpreting these findings. Although the results have been obtained in small-enrollment, upper-division courses, we think that our findings might also be transferable to large-enrollment courses, provided students will be working in self-directed small groups on substantial and relevant projects. As generalizability requires data on large populations, the findings of our five cases within a restricted context are not necessarily representative of the larger population. We believe, however, that there are strong reasons for our findings to be deemed “transferable” ( Lincoln and Guba, 1985 ) to comparable situations. While generalization is applied by researchers, transferability is a process performed by the readers of research ( Metcalfe, 2005 ). Unlike generalizability, transferability does not involve broad claims but invites readers of research to make connections between elements of a study and their own experiences ( Barnes et al ., 2012 ). According to Berliner (2002 , p. 19), implementing scientific findings is always difficult in education, “because humans in schools are embedded in complex and changing networks of social interaction.” Therefore, we do not claim to have produced broadly generalizable findings but instead invite the reader to identify how the findings can be transferred to his or her situation. Similar studies with data from other university contexts, such as other countries or other class settings, would help in understanding how the conditions that facilitate collaborative learning relate to different settings.

We assume, however, that the concept of evoking, rather than enforcing, positive interdependence by increasing autonomy and the challenge level of the task provides relevant insights for discourse on effective design of group work within life sciences education. Students in life sciences education, in general, are quite experienced in working in groups and in regulating their own work. Autonomy, combined with a challenging task, evoked interdependence and generated interaction as well as student motivation in these five cases. Structuring the process, for example by scripting, seems unnecessary for promoting student interaction. It was, in Dillenbourg’s (2002) words, not necessary to “didactisise” collaborative interactions or to disturb the autonomy and natural interactions of students. Moreover, structuring the process could have impeded the feeling of autonomy, which is crucial for student motivation (Deci and Ryan, 2000). Brewer and Klein (2006) came to a similar conclusion in their investigation of the influence of types of interdependence (roles, rewards, roles plus rewards, no structure) on student interaction. The groups with no structured interdependence had significantly more cognitive interactions involving content discussion than the other groups, indicating that structuring interdependence is not always necessary with university students. We suggest that collaborative learning with university students should be designed using challenging and relevant tasks that build shared ownership with students.

Acknowledgments

Drs. Kristin Denzer, Mario Stassen, and Fons Cremers are gratefully acknowledged for encouraging their students to participate in the interviews.

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What we know about Career and Technical Education in high school

Subscribe to the center for economic security and opportunity newsletter, brian a. jacob brian a. jacob walter h. annenberg professor of education policy; professor of economics, and professor of education - university of michigan, former brookings expert.

October 5, 2017

• 17 min read

Career and technical education (CTE) has traditionally played an important role in U.S. secondary schools. The first federal law providing funding for vocational education was passed in 1917, even before education was compulsory in every state. 1

CTE encompasses a wide range of activities intended to simultaneously provide students with skills demanded in the labor market while preparing them for post-secondary degrees in technical fields. Activities include not only specific career-oriented classes, but also internships, apprenticeships and in-school programs designed to foster work readiness.

CTE advocates cite several goals of career-oriented learning experiences. For non-college-bound students, CTE can provide hands-on training that translates directly to attractive careers upon graduation. Work-related or internship-like experiences that are often a part of CTE can teach students the “soft skills” necessary in the labor market. Finally, by integrating academic skills into a “real world” context, advocates claim that CTE can motivate students to attend school more frequently and be more engaged, and therefore improve core academic skills.

However, CTE has been on the decline for several decades. Starting in the 1980s, states increased the number of courses required for high school graduation, and began mandating students take additional courses in core academic areas such as math, science, social studies and foreign language. 2 These additional requirements, along with declining funding 3 and a growing perception that all young people should be encouraged to obtain a four-year college degree, led to a sharp decline in CTE participation. Between 1990 and 2009, the number of CTE credits earned by U.S. high school students dropped by 14 percent. 4

The past decade has seen a resurgence in interest in CTE. Scholarship in the area of education and the labor market has increased markedly. 5 In the past four years alone, media mentions of “career and technical education” have quadrupled. 6 In 2015 alone, 39 states instituted 125 new laws, policies or regulations relating to CTE, many of which increased state funding for such programs. Montana, for example, doubled the annual statewide appropriation for secondary CTE; Nevada tripled its funding. 7

Unfortunately, research on CTE has not kept pace with policy interest. 8

What does earlier non-experimental research tell us?

Prior non-experimental evidence suggests that students who participate in secondary CTE programs have higher employment and earnings than demographically-similar peers in the short run, but they do not necessarily have better academic outcomes. For example, many studies show little or no differences between CTE participants and comparison groups in terms of academic achievement, high school graduation or college enrollment. 9

A good example of this type of research is a recent study by Daniel Kreisman and Kevin Stange, which relies on data from the NLSY97, a nationally representative sample of 12- to 17- year-old youth in 1997 that tracks individuals over time.

They find that CTE participation is not strongly associated with educational attainment – CTE students are marginally less likely to enroll in college but no less likely to earn a degree – but CTE coursework does predict employment outcomes. Importantly, they find that CTE participation is associated with higher wages, with the increase driven entirely by upper-level coursework, defined as courses within a sequence beyond the introductory class, in more technical fields. Each additional year of upper-level vocational coursework is associated with a nearly 2 percent wage increase. 10 This suggests that the benefits of CTE education stem from in-depth study of a specific area consistent with the recent trend toward “pathways of study” within CTE. 11

As the authors recognize, however, the biggest challenge in evaluating CTE is that students typically self-select into such programs, or student choices are circumscribed by the types of programs offered in nearby schools. In either case, it is likely that students participating in CTE are different in many ways than other youth who do not participate in CTE – in terms of their personal abilities and interests, family background, etc. On the one hand, many observers have described CTE as a “dumping ground” for lower-achieving or unmotivated students. 12 On the other hand, because CTE is not the “default” pathway, the students who participate must be at least somewhat motivated and informed. 13

CTE can motivate students to attend school more frequently and be more engaged, and therefore improve core academic skills.

Kreisman and Stange attempt to circumvent this selection problem using what researchers refer to as an instrumental variables strategy. Simply put, they compare students across schools with different high school graduation requirements because, as they show, the greater the number of required courses, the fewer CTE courses students take. Using this approach, they find that the wage benefits associated with CTE disappear.

However, a key assumption here is that, after controlling for observable student and school characteristics, the students attending high schools with fewer graduation requirements are identical to those attending high schools with more graduation requirements. 14 As the authors recognize, this is a very strong assumption. If this assumption is true, it implies that students whose CTE course-taking is influenced by graduation requirements realize little benefit from it. Of course, it may still be the case that those who self-select into CTE benefit from it, and that prohibiting them from doing so would be detrimental.

A further complication is that virtually all of the existing research on CTE has focused on relatively short-run outcomes. This is a notable limitation because many believe that career-focused education involves a tradeoff – namely, learning a narrower set of technical skills that can provide short-run benefits at the expense of learning more fundamental skills that will better serve individuals in the long-run. 15 Indeed, a recent study using European data finds some evidence of exactly this type of tradeoff. 16 Given the changes we expect to take place in the labor market in coming years, and how often individuals might need to switch occupations, this is a potentially serious concern. Of course, advocates of CTE argue – with some justification – that career-oriented education today does aim to teach core academic skills essential to lifelong learning, and often does so better than traditional schooling, particularly for disadvantaged youth. 17

the gold standard

The single best way to avoid such selection problems and determine the causal impact of a policy or program is through a randomized control trial. While such experiments can be expensive and are often logistically or politically difficult, they have a long history in education policy research. Other research designs, known as quasi-experimental research, attempt to approximate the same design with statistical techniques.

According to the What Works Clearinghouse, for example, there are 83 programs with experimental or quasi-experimental evidence in the area of early childhood education, 39 programs for dropout-prevention, and 32 programs for English language learners.

In the area of secondary CTE, there is only 1. Yes, one. This study examined Career Academies in the early 1990s, before many of the occupations common today even existed and prior to the introduction of policies with important implications for secondary schools (e.g., school accountability). 18

Structured as distinct programs embedded within comprehensive high schools, the Career Academies provided students with career-oriented instruction in a particular field along with internships and other activities to prepare students for, and connect them with, the labor market. The schools in the study were located in or near large urban areas with predominantly low-income minority student populations. The Career Academy programs were oversubscribed, which permitted admissions to be determined by lottery.

Researchers found that Career Academies had no impact (positive or negative) on high school graduation, postsecondary enrollment or educational attainment. However, the study found that students who received the opportunity to attend a career academy earned 11 percent more than the control group. Interestingly, this positive wage effect was driven entirely by male students, who enjoyed a 17 percent earnings boost. Males defined as high-risk based on baseline characteristics (i.e. prior to high school) realized the largest benefits from the program. There was no significant difference between the earnings of females in the treatment and control group.

This single study has been cited hundreds of times, and is featured prominently in nearly every literature review and many policy proposals regarding CTE. While this was an extremely well-done evaluation of an important CTE model, it has important limitations. As noted elsewhere, Career Academies are a small component of CTE provision nationwide. 19 The study itself focused on a small number of sites which, as evidenced by their oversubscription, were perceived as high quality. 20

and then there were two

Compelling research on CTE recently doubled with the release of a new study of regional vocational and technical high schools (RVTS) in Massachusetts. 21

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Unlike the Career Academies described above, RVTS are entire schools devoted to career-oriented instruction. Students spend one week in the classroom followed by one week in a technical shop. While students in other schools have access to CTE courses, RVTS offer more variety in terms of the program of study, and the programs themselves are typically higher quality than those found in comprehensive high schools.

The author of the study, Shaun Dougherty, obtained detailed data on student applications to three RVTS. Because the schools are often oversubscribed, they admit students on the basis of their attendance, grades and discipline record in middle school. By comparing the educational outcomes of students who scored just above the admissions threshold (and thus were very likely to attend) and just below the admissions threshold (who mostly did not attend), Dougherty is able to account for the selection bias that has plagued prior CTE research. This approach is known as a regression discontinuity design. What Works Clearinghouse considers well-done studies of this type to provide evidence nearly as compelling as an RCT.

Dougherty finds that attending a RVTS dramatically increases the likelihood of high school graduation. Poor students are 32 percentage points more likely to graduate if they attend a RVTS, which represents a 60 percent increase given the baseline graduation rate of 50 percent. The effect for non-poor students is somewhat smaller, but still quite large – an increase of 23 percentage points from a baseline of 67 percent, suggesting a nearly 35 percent improvement. 22 At the same time, Dougherty finds that attending a RVTS has no impact (positive or negative) on the standardized math and reading exams that all Massachusetts students take at the end of 10 th grade.

where to go from here?

More rigorous research on CTE programs is clearly needed. To its credit, the Institute for Education Sciences (IES) recently initiated several new data collection and research grants in this area. The recent study by Dougherty is a great start, but only a start. Further progress requires a series of studies that build on each other, and examine different approaches to CTE. Because states play a large role in developing and overseeing CTE programming, they must take the lead. States have been very active in passing laws, issuing regulations and disseminating policies about CTE. States now need to step up and support a research agenda that can help ensure these new initiatives are successful.

The author did not receive any financial support from any firm or person for this article or from any firm or person with a financial or political interest in this article. He is currently not an officer, director, or board member of any organization with an interest in this article.

• The Smith-Hughes Act of 1917 preceded the passage of compulsory attendance laws in Mississippi in 1918 , the last of the 48 states of the time to pass such a law.
• Jacob et al. (2017). “Are Expectations Alone Enough? Estimating the Effect of a Mandatory College-Prep Curriculum in Michigan.” Education Evaluation and Policy Analysis,39(2): 333-360. http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.3102/0162373716685823 .
• U.S. Department of Education (2014). National assessment of career and technical education. Final report to congress. Technical report, Washington, DC.
• Hudson, L. (2013). “Trends in CTE Coursetaking. data point.” National Center for Education Statistics, NCES 2014-901.
• Shaun M. Dougherty and Allison R. Lomarbardi. “From Vocational Education to Career Readiness: The Ongoing Work of Linking Education and the Labor Market.” Chapter 10 in Review of Research in Education, March 2016, Vol. 40: 326–355
• From 5,518 stories in 2014 to 22,755 stories from January 1 to September 28 of this year, based on author’s Meltwater analysis.
• http://www.acteonline.org/uploadedFiles/Who_We_Are/Press/2015_State-Policy-Review_FINAL%20(1).pdf
• Corinne Alfeld made this same point in an IES blog post earlier this year.  See https://ies.ed.gov/blogs/research/post/career-technical-education-is-growing-research-must-follow
• For good reviews of this prior literature, see Kreisman and Stange (forthcoming) and Dougherty (forthcoming).
• The benefits of upper-level CTE coursework is driven largely by those focusing in technical fields.
• While selection bias is still a concern, it is worthwhile noting that the authors control for a very rich set of covariates including student demographics, parental income, parental education, student AFQT score, freshman year GPA, state of birth and various school characteristics.
• See, for example, Kelly, S. & Price, H. (2009). Vocational education: A clear slate for disengaged students? Social Science Research, 38 (4), 810–825.
• Insofar as CTE programs involve travel to/from worksites, it seems likely that participation requires more time than a student would have to devote to a standard high school track.
• As the authors discuss in detail in the paper, there are two reasons why their instrumental variable results might differ from their OLS regression results. The first is that the students who self-select into CTE have some positive, unobservable characteristics that explain their success in the labor market. The second is that there is true heterogeneity in the returns to CTE – the students who self-select do indeed benefit from the experience, but those whose course-taking decisions can be swayed by their school’s graduation requirements do not benefit.
• http://hanushek.stanford.edu/publications/german-style-apprenticeships-simply-cant-be-replicated
• Among younger people, employment rates are higher among those with vocational education. However, this pattern reverses by age 50. These patterns are most pronounced in countries that have highly developed work-based education systems such as Germany, Denmark and Switzerland. See Hanushek et al. (2017). “General Education, Vocational Education, and Labor-Market Outcomes over the Life-Cycle.” Journal of Human Resources. 52(1): 49-88.
• http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/top_performers/2017/07/the_false_choice_between_vocational_and_academic_education.html
• Kemple, J & Willner, C.J. (2008). Career academies: Long-term impacts on labor market outcomes, educational attainment, and transitions to adulthood . MDRC.
• Kreisman and Stange (2016), “Vocational and Career Tech Education in American High Schools: The Value of Depth Over Breadth.” NBER working paper
• And, if one looks beyond the headline results, the detailed findings of the Career Academy raise a number of important questions about the mechanisms, and thus generalizability, of the impacts. For example, students in the treatment group reported significantly higher levels of interpersonal support from teachers and peers than their comparison counterparts. While Career Academy students did engage in work-based experiences that control students did not, researchers found that the curricula and instructional materials used in the Career Academies were similar to those used in other parts of the high school, and did not meaningfully integrate academic content with career-related applications. Together these findings suggest that the benefits of attending a career academy may relate as much to the school culture as the particular career focus, similar to the benefits of attending a small school or “school-within-a-school.”Bloom, Howard S., and Rebecca Unterman. 2014. Can small high schools of choice improve educational prospects for disadvantaged students? Journal of Policy Analysis and Management 33(2): 290–319.
• Dougherty, S.M. (forthcoming). “The Effect of Career and Technical Education on Human Capital Accumulation: Causal Evidence from Massachusetts.” Education Finance & Policy.
• These findings are consistent with some prior research suggesting that CTE participation can increase attachment to school. See, for example, the following studies: Plank, Stephen B., Stefanie DeLuca, and Angela Estacion. 2008. High school dropout and the role of career and technical education: A survival analysis of surviving high school. Sociology of Education 81(4): 345–370. Cellini, Stephanie Riegg, “Smoothing the Transition to College? The Effect of Tech-Prep Programs on Educational Attainment,” Economics of Education Review, 25(4), August 2006: 394-411.

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The Benefits of Course Evaluation in Higher Education

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An increasing number of higher education institutions have begun administering online course evaluations for their students. As students and instructors learn to navigate unfamiliar learning environments, especially those which are entirely virtual, course evaluations open a line of communication to help professors become more effective in these environments and give students an active role in their education.

Course evaluations encourage self-reflection among students, faculty, and staff, which drives growth and development. Effective survey solutions allow a department or campus to get a read on the student population, which encourages constant change for the better.

What is a Course Evaluation?

Course evaluations are anonymous surveys completed by students, usually at the end of a term, to reflect on the efficacy of an instructor and the course. University course evaluations provide a wide variety of benefits. Some universities create a course evaluation template to rely on each year as they gather students' feedback. After students have responded to the course evaluations, administrators receive the results. This data set includes information from student evaluation of courses to help improve the course in the future.

8 Benefits to Online Course Evaluations

Online course evaluations provide numerous benefits for students, teachers, and staff administrators. Regardless of when a professor administers course evaluations – usually mid-semester or the end of term – they can receive valuable feedback from their students to help improve their instruction style. Students also have the opportunity to communicate concerns or appreciation for their professors, giving them a voice and making them active participants in the classroom. Administration can collect information from student course evaluations to evaluate a professor in conjunction with other information.

1. Maintain Anonymity

Students highly value anonymity when they give their professors feedback, especially when they criticize aspects of their teaching. Anonymity ensures students that their comments cannot be attributed to them in particular, which allows them to feel more comfortable expanding on their honest insights on their course or teacher.

In one study demonstrating the benefits of course evaluations, the researchers distributed different kinds of surveys to determine which factors most heavily contributed to responses and how to optimize student participation. They selected each online platform to manipulate different variables, but every platform allowed students to anonymously report their feedback. This demonstrates the inherent importance of allowing students to offer insights without attaching their contributions to their identity.

Administrators should prioritize anonymity in all aspects of the evaluation collection. This includes maintaining the privacy of students and their thoughts throughout data collection. A course evaluation survey solution should allow you to reopen or reset responses while maintaining the anonymity of the response and allow role-based permissions that you can customize to limit who has access to results and information.

2. Elicit Meaningful Comments

Many people believe that online course evaluations yield a higher amount of negative feedback than paper-based surveys. However, studies have proven this to be a misconception . Researchers did not identify consistent, significant differences between evaluations submitted online and those which students completed on paper. In general, overall trends in evaluations remain consistent between surveys submitted on paper and online.

However, online course evaluations do show a higher rate of meaningful comments from students. In one study, less than 10% of students provided open-ended commentary about their course or professor when the professor administered the evaluation on paper during their class. However, the same study showed that 63% of students who completed and submitted the survey online offered long-form or open-ended commentary.

Longer commentary supplied in course evaluations by students allows for more active responses by professors. Optimal course evaluations include a limited number of questions, which means that, in order to get a more comprehensive understanding of student insights from the survey, respondents need to provide open-ended commentary. Conducting course evaluations online encourages students to contribute additional insights and supplies more constructive feedback for teachers.

3. Offer Greater Accessibility

Most course evaluations are administered online, and with good reason. Electronic survey collection platforms offer greater flexibility for students to complete the evaluations outside of the classroom. They also allow a respondent to take all the time they need – they can take breaks, spend time thinking about their answers, and dedicate a longer period for writing their responses. Additionally, they avoid the stress of completing their evaluation first or last and making their response easier to identify.

4. Encourage Self-Reflection

Students and teachers alike benefit from course evaluations because of the necessary self-refection. In order to provide meaningful feedback, students must consider both their instructor's performance and the demonstrated commitment they had to the course. Respondents reflect on their performance throughout the term to determine which aspects of the course they enjoyed and disliked, while factoring in how their attitude and performance impacted those experiences. This allows them to provide constructive feedback for their professors and brainstorm how they can perform better as a student in the next term.

Constructive feedback allows professors to reflect on their performance throughout the term. Newer instructors with limited teaching experience especially benefit from the evaluations. Instructors can compare their own assessment of their performance with the feedback provided by their students to more accurately determine the effectiveness of their efforts throughout the term. Well-made evaluations create actionable goals for instructors to help them develop and grow over time.

5. Reduce Cost and Environmental Impact

Online course evaluations are much more environmentally friendly than their paper counterparts. Printing hundreds of evaluations uses significant amounts of paper, and students are becoming increasingly environmentally conscious. Many schools also have a commitment to environmentally sustainable practices, so you can uphold this statement by opting for online course evaluations. Paper evaluations also cost much more than an online survey platform. Save money by implementing efficient virtual course evaluations.

Loose paper also gets misplaced or lost easily, which means that students must either complete the evaluation during valuable class time or keep careful track of the paper. When the sheets get lost, either the school uses more funds to replace them or forfeits the feedback. Many students likely avoid requesting a new copy of the evaluation sheet, which means that they opt out of submitting an evaluation altogether.

6. Acquire Metrics for Teacher Evaluation

While short-term goal setting and self-reflection offers great benefits for students and teachers alike, course evaluations collected over time also provide a metric for long-term instructor evaluation. Faculty may refer to the course evaluations for a newer instructor or individual with less teaching experience to determine whether they are prepared for advancement. Combined with other types of evaluation, such as in situ observation, course evaluation surveys provide valuable insights for contract renewal considerations and advancement opportunities.

Course evaluations also come into play for tenure-track faculty who may be considered for promotions. The most important factor for determining an instructor's effectiveness in the classroom boils down to overall trends. Student feedback contributes to these evaluation metrics and may also complement other factors like general score trends and patterns for specific courses.

Administration values the information gathered from course evaluations, but instructors may also review the feedback provided to track their own growth and development over time. Regardless of whether they do so for specific goal measurement, they can determine whether the changes they have made over time have had positive effects for their students. This becomes especially important as instructors navigate unfamiliar online learning environments.

7. Receive and Assess Information Quickly

Whereas paper evaluations require manual calculation of results, online course evaluations aggregate information automatically and, consequently, much more quickly. This saves significant amounts of time and offers the perk of real-time access to data. Immediate insights allow for quicker responses and easier decision-making. Good survey solutions allow administrators to aggregate and disaggregate data according to certain filters and criteria. This allows you to sift through the data and pull relevant information more easily.

The ability to generate reports, compare feedback data over time, and organize results based on demographic information allows you to have a more comprehensive view of the feedback students provide.

8. Give a Voice to Students

Allowing students to provide feedback about their courses and instructors demonstrates that the institution cares about their experience in the classroom. Students seeking higher education dedicate extensive time and effort to obtaining their degree, just as instructors spend hours preparing lessons and class materials, meeting with students to ensure their success, and evaluating submitted coursework.

Allowing students to voice their concerns with and appreciation for their courses or instructors gives them a more active role. Rather than centering classrooms around professors, shift the focus to the students and allow them to contribute to their educational experience.

Create an Effective Course Evaluation

Course evaluations offer many benefits, but only when done correctly. There are some essential steps that you must take in order to create an effective course evaluation for students. We collected seven considerations you should make as you create a plan for an effective course evaluation.

1. Establish Criteria for Good Teaching

Determine what kind of data you aim to gather with the students' course evaluations. Some of the most common goals may include evaluating teacher effectiveness, collecting data for teacher training, and providing focus points for specific aspects of the classroom experience.

Establish the criteria for good teaching to ensure that you sort data according to those expectations. The definition of good teaching varies, but many programs fall back on the outline of scholarly teaching, which relies on six standards – clear goals, adequate preparation, appropriate methods, significant results, effective presentation, and reflective critique.

After deciding upon the criteria to prioritize in evaluations, create questions that help collect data pertaining to those standards. Because general academia has not come to an agreement on how to reliably determine teaching effectiveness, it lacks a standard course evaluation template. However, you should aim to ask questions that address a single criterion in your teaching standards. Avoid questions that ask respondents to address more than one aspect of a teacher's performance, and stay clear of leading questions that introduce bias.

2. Limit the Amount of Questions

After establishing the criteria that the evaluation aims to address, decide how many questions to include in the survey. Too few questions limit the amount of data that faculty receive, but too many questions deter students from submitting feedback because of survey fatigue. While it may be tempting to create a long survey that supplies comprehensive results, this decreases response rates.

Many course evaluation surveys divide the questions among the different standards of teaching effectiveness they aim to address. Assign a specific amount of questions to each category you want to measure and create questions that address that particular aspect of the classroom or instruction. Ensure that you elicit information that will be conducive to achieving your goals. This means that you should think carefully about how you will consider the data after collecting it and have a thorough understanding of how to analyze your findings.

Consider stating the amount of questions in the initial instructions of the survey. This prepares respondents for the length of the evaluation, so they can determine whether they will have enough time to thoroughly respond to the prompts.

3. Ensure Students Understand the Questions

Question clarity plays an essential role in the types of responses collected in a survey. When students misunderstand the questions, their answers are less meaningful to the data set. However, there is no way to know that students misunderstood the question when they answered, which means that analyzing the data provided may lead to skewed results.

To prevent misleading questions, ensure that the questions you include specifically address aspects of effective teaching that students can observe in the classroom. Although an instructor's expertise in a subject directly impacts their ability to proficiently teach it, many students would be unable to judge the extent of a professor's expertise. However, students observe and are directly affected by an instructor's enthusiasm about the subject and their ability to explain the concepts in a practical, digestible fashion.

To ensure clarity, obtain feedback from a small group of randomly selected students about the question quality before making the evaluation public to everyone. You may also consider allowing survey respondents to provide commentary on the question clarity. This process ensures that faculty and administrators accurately interpret data.

4. Use Standardized Questions

After you have written clear questions, determine how to standardize them across programs and departments on campus. Using the same questions allows administrators to easily identify trends from the data and compare feedback for instructors and courses within a department or over various disciplines. For schools aiming to obtain a comprehensive view of their entire campus, standardized questions level the playing field and better allow for meaningful comparison.

However, you should consider how questions apply to different courses depending on delivery method and course style. Courses that primarily use small laboratory groups may not be comparable to large lecture courses. As a result, questions that ask about the effectiveness of a specific delivery method will produce results that are not comparable across all departments.

Allow flexibility and practicality of course evaluations by permitting instructors to add questions at the end of the survey that are specific to their course. This ensures that professors receive valuable feedback pertaining specifically to their instruction methodology and chosen educational setting in addition to the standard questions that aim to measure general criteria.

5. Vary Question Styles

Though there have been debates about the most effective rating styles for data collections, most sources agree that course evaluations greatly benefit from primarily employing a rating scale. Rating scales are beneficial because they permit a respondent to complete the survey quickly, which helps increase response rate.

A four- or five-point scale is most common for course evaluation surveys. Departments must determine whether they choose to include a "neutral" option and/or "not applicable" options. If an overwhelming number of respondents select the neutral option, then the department may opt for a four-point system. This requires students to take a preference one way or another in their responses. The "not applicable" options are extremely useful if your campus chooses to include standardized questions that do not apply to all courses or instructors.

Online course evaluations more frequently elicit longer responses in open-ended questions. Respondents provide valuable information in these open-ended questions, so consider including some questions that allow students to elaborate on answers. Write these questions carefully to ensure that students understand what kind of information you want them to provide, and avoid unnecessarily vague prompts.

6. Consider Who Students Evaluate

In some courses, more than one instructor leads the class. This may occur more frequently in certain departments. Similarly, some introductory courses include graduate students to teach part of the course and a full-time professor teaching the rest. These specific scenarios require administration to consider which instructors a student evaluates.

Most programs limit the amount of instructors that students evaluate, and they determine which instructors receive feedback based on a variety of factors. Some departments prefer receiving evaluations for one instructor per course, determined by who taught the majority of the time. Other programs prefer to review evaluations for new instructors to receive more data about their performance, while longer-standing faculty members may require fewer evaluations.

Surveys that require respondents to provide feedback for multiple instructors will end up longer. As we discussed previously, you should aim to limit the amount of questions in the evaluation to avoid survey burnout.

7. Decide When to Offer Evaluations

Most campuses administer course evaluations in the last two weeks of the term before final exams. This allows students to formulate a well-informed opinion throughout the semester, and this time frame rarely interferes with other academic deadlines as students prepare for exams. Avoid offering evaluations after students have completed the final examination for the course or on the same day as the exam. Students may project their feelings about the exam onto the evaluation and skew the results.

Some programs opt to administer course evaluations in the middle of the semester. This allows instructors to consider how their students feel about their instruction and the course overall, giving teachers the opportunity to make adjustments to benefit the class. When the department administers official evaluations at the end of the year, some professors choose to administer unofficial course reviews midway through the semester to allow students to express their concerns and reflect on their performance up to that point.

How Watermark Can Help

The Watermark Course Evaluations & Surveys solution allows you to collect high volumes of student feedback and monitor the responses in real time. Enhance response rates with Learning Management System (LMS) integration options for more platforms for students to access the surveys. Our solutions work with the technology and LMS systems you already use, such as Blackboard, Canvas, D2L, and Moodle, to make the transition even easier.

Contact Watermark Today

An integrated course evaluation and survey solution drives campuses toward more effective instruction. By opening a line of communication between students and instructors, a campus can facilitate professional and academic growth and development. Watermark offers an award-winning software system that campuses around the country can trust. We value customer satisfaction, so we offer continued customer support beyond the initial installation. With over 20 years of accumulated knowledge and experience, we can offer a wide variety of functionality for your campus. If you would like to learn more about Watermark or contact us for a demo, you can fill out the contact form .

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Reducing Racial Disparities in Health Care

Address racial biases and barriers. improve equality in health care..

In partnership with the Disparities Solutions Center at Massachusetts General Hospital, this course will help you deliver high-quality health care to all through organizational change.

What You'll Learn

What is inequality in health care? What does social justice in health care look like? Does your organization address racial equity and access to care? Is diversity, bias, and inclusion a common conversation or evaluation to improve delivery? How do you address these topics with your leadership and board members?

Racial disparity in the United States health care industry isn’t a new topic; for decades researchers have focused on quality of care, access, and safety of people of color versus their white counterparts. While in recent years quality and access has improved in the U.S. thanks to initiatives like the Affordable Care Act, there is still a gap in the quality of care different groups receive. It’s vital to continue closing the biases and disparities in health care through education, communication, and action. 

In Reducing Racial Disparities in Health Care, you will not only examine the disparities that exist when serving a diverse population, but also approach each inequity head-on to learn more about the causes and how to eliminate these issues. By focusing on data collection and performance measurements unique to your organization, you will identify how core issues in care quality of ethnic and racial minority groups, which are often multifactorial in nature, contribute to poorer health outcomes, lead to higher costs, and exemplify low-value health care.

Offered in conjunction with the Disparities Solutions Center at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) , this health equity course will use real-world examples, case studies, and insights from leaders in the field to help you understand the history of racism in health care and digest the latest in understanding racial disparities in health care—allowing you to create strategic approaches that you can apply to your organization. Beyond dei training for health care professions, this course will help ou will learn how to harness and analyze data, visualize and communicate the results, and use feedback from stakeholders to begin closing the gap.

Remove racial biases and barriers. Improve equality in health care.

The Harvard Medical School is accredited by the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education (ACCME) to provide continuing medical education for physicians.

The Harvard Medical School designates this enduring material for a maximum of 22 AMA PRA Category 1 Credits™. Physicians should claim only the credit commensurate with the extent of their participation in the activity.

Upon successful completion of the course, participants will have access to claim their credits through the Harvard Medical School’s continuing education platform. 

The course is part of the Health Care Leadership Learning Path will be delivered via  HBS Online’s course platform .  Learners will be immersed in real-world examples from experts at industry-leading organizations. By the end of the course, participants will be able to:

• Identify the causes of systemic racism in health care that are grounded in historical instances of segregation to better understand why health equity is important
• Use the Kotter method to identify organizational gaps and needs, create a vision for change, and implement an executable strategy to close disparities
• Learn how to collect and analyze data unique to underserved populations to inform organizational change
• Gain greater knowledge regarding how continued inequality affects overall quality and cost of care
• Create a vision to obtain stakeholder buy-in and a strategic framework to implement solutions leading to high-value equitable health care

Your Instructors

Joseph Betancourt , MD, MPH (he/him/his),  is the newly appointed President of the Commonwealth Fund, becoming one of the first Latino heads of a national health care foundation. He previously served as Senior Vice President, Equity and Community Health at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH). He was the founder of the Disparities Solutions Center (DSC) at MGH, Faculty at the Mongan Institute, an Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and he continues as a practicing Internal Medicine physician. He is the current chair of the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Committee of the Massachusetts Health and Hospital Association and sits in its Board of Trustees. He was inaugural incumbent of the Sumner M. Redstone Endowed Chair in Health Equity. Dr. Betancourt is a nationally and internationally recognized expert in health policy, health care disparities, diversity, and cross-cultural medicine.

Aswita Tan-McGrory , MBA, MSPH (she/her/hers) is the Director of the Disparities Solutions Center and the Director of Equity in Care Implementation at Massachusetts General Hospital. At the Disparities Solutions Center she leads the mission to address racial and ethnic disparities in health care and oversees the Disparities Leadership Program. As Director of Equity in Care Implementation she provides leadership for assuring equity in access to, and delivery of clinical care, specifically related to the “Doorstep to Bedside” approach of assessing the care delivery continuum at Massachusetts General Hospital. Ms. Tan-McGrory is a subject matter expert and public speaker, and travels across the country to speak to organizations about how race, ethnicity, and language impact the quality of care.

Real World Case Studies

Affiliations are listed for identification purposes only.

Mitchell Kellaway

Mitchell Kellaway is the Program Manager for Data Accuracy within the Health Equity team of the Mass General Brigham (MGB) Office of the Chief Medical Officer. His work will help illuminate best practices for measuring, monitoring, and reporting on race, ethnicity, and language preferences (REaL) data.

Alvin Powell, MD

Dr. Alvin Powell is the Vice President of Clinical Care, Health Equity at Cone Health in North Carolina. His case study will help you understand how structural racism and discrimination (SRD) has shaped the health care system and what organizations can do to acknowledge past harms.

Altaf Saadi, MD

Dr. Altaf Saadi is  the Associate Director at the Mass General Asylum Clinic and Principal Investigator for the Neurodisparities and Health Justice Lab at MGH. She will help you look ahead to emerging topics in health care disparity and prepare your organization to better serve immigrant populations.

Available Discounts and Benefits for Groups and Individuals

Experience Harvard Online by utilizing our wide variety of discount programs for individuals and groups. 

Past participant discounts.

Learners who have enrolled in at least one qualifying Harvard Online program hosted on the HBS Online platform are eligible to receive a 30% discount on this course, regardless of completion or certificate status in the first purchased program. Past Participant Discounts are automatically applied to the Program Fee upon time of payment.  Learn more here .

Learners who have earned a verified certificate for a HarvardX course hosted on the  edX platform  are eligible to receive a 30% discount on this course using a discount code. Discounts are not available after you've submitted payment, so if you think you are eligible for a discount on a registration, please check your email for a code or contact us .

Nonprofit, Government, Military, and Education Discounts

For this course we offer a 30% discount for learners who work in the nonprofit, government, military, or education fields. 

Eligibility is determined by a prospective learner’s email address, ending in .org, .gov, .mil, or .edu. Interested learners can apply below for the discount and, if eligible, will receive a promo code to enter when completing payment information to enroll in a Harvard Online program. Click here to apply for these discounts.

Gather your team to experience Reducing Racial Disparities in Health Care and other Harvard Online courses to enjoy the benefits of learning together: 

• Single invoicing for groups of 10 or more
• Tiered discounts and pricing available with up to 50% off
• Growth reports on your team's progress
• Flexible course and partnership plans 

Learn more and enroll your team ! 

Who Will Benefit

Health Care Executives

High-level administrative leaders who will benefit from better understanding the disparities and gaps in health care delivery within their organizations, and how to create a strategic solution to deliver more equitable care.

Equity Officers and Administrative Leaders

Officers and leaders who want to create, fund, and support diversity, equity, and inclusion policies and initiatives in their organizations.

Rising Health Care Professionals

Focused on the next generation of health care professionals who will benefit from starting their career with an eye toward equitable and inclusive health care.

Learner Experience

“I think this course should be a requirement for all people who work in the health care industry, from environmental service folks to CEOs. This information is imperative to break down the boundaries of disparity that currently exist. The course uses evidence-based approaches to better understand how our system currently operates. Using such data, as well as testimonials from people working to create change, we can develop a better appreciation of how to make a difference.”

Rae Nathanson Occupational Therapist, New York Presbyterian Hospital

The majority of Reducing Racial Disparities in Health Care learners who participated in our post-course survey report: 

• They can immediately apply their learnings to upcoming projects or projects that they are currently working on.
• They are likely to recommend this course to a colleague or friend.   

“This is an eye opening essential learning for all people working in health care. It is essential to understand what lies beneath the surface of our current systems and how they are stacked against certain populations.”

Christy Director of Health Equity

“This course opened my eyes to issues I had not thought about. I have an awareness of racial issues but have not experienced the challenges faced by many people in health care. The course made me think about these challenges, and in particular, how they apply in my organization. It also made me aware of the growing challenges in the industry.”

Course Participant

Syllabus and Upcoming Calendars

Reducing Racial Disparities in Health Care is a health equity course introduces strategies that advance policy and practice to eliminate racial and ethnic disparities in health care. The course begins with understanding our history (Module 1), followed by learning about the foundations of this type of work (Modules 2 through 4), and ending with an examination of emerging topics (Module 5).

Online Course requirements: There are no prerequisites needed to take this online course. In order to earn a Certificate of Completion from Harvard Online, participants must thoughtfully complete all 5 modules, including satisfactory completion of the associated quizzes, by stated deadlines.

Download Full Syllabus

Download July 2024 Calendar

Download October 2024 Calendar

• Understand how structural racism and discrimination (SRD) has intentionally shaped the U.S. health care system.
• Identify how Social Determinants of Health (SDOH) explain current disparities in health care.
• Perform a 5 Whys Analysis.
• Describe how SDOH and SRD impact disparities in your field.
• Create a plan to listen to the communities your organization serves.
• Understand how Nemours Children’s Hospital Delaware , Tufts Health Plan , and Mass General Brigham (MGB) applied the 8-Step Kotter Model .
• Learn how to use the Kotter Model for leading organizational change.
• Perform an organizational assessment using the Kotter Model.
• Use your assessment to create an action plan that will initiate and sustain change.
• Analyze MGB’s best practices and guidelines for implementing standardized data collection.
• Recognize the importance of gathering race, ethnicity, and language preference (REaL) data.
• Understand minimum standards for the collection of REaL data.
• Learn the inherent problems of collecting REaL data and devise solutions for addressing these challenges.
•  Develop a plan for REaL data collection using the Plan-Do- Study-Act (PDSA) cycle.
• Create a process map to understand your organization’s current data collection process.
• Recognize the importance of measuring and monitoring data.
• Assess what tools are needed to measure, monitor, and report on your data.
• Understand how data can inform action.
• Foresee challenges to monitoring disparities and prepare solutions to address these challenges.
• Identify disparities in your organization.
• Develop steps to address the identified disparities.
• Acknowledge the importance of examining immigrant health disparities as part of the dialogue on eliminating disparities in health care.
• Understand a framework for improving health care for immigrant populations.
• Use the toolkit developed with Massachusetts General Hospital faculty to welcome and protect immigrants in health care settings.
• Explore the possibilities of virtual care.
• Consider health care pathways for patients with Limited English Proficiency (LEP).
• Formulate steps to address access to virtual care for LEP patients at your organization.

Earn Your Certificate

Enroll today in Harvard Online's Reducing Racial Disparities in Health Care course.

Still Have Questions?

Are there discounts available? What are the learning requirements? How do I list my certificate on my resume? Learn the answers to these and more in our FAQs.

Explore and connect with articles, webinars, and more.

Addressing Racial Disparities in Health Care

A discussion with health care leaders, moderated by Aswita Tan-McGrory, Director of the Disparities Solutions Center at Massachusetts General Hospital.

Aswita Tan-McGrory Examines Why Disparities Exist in Health Care Systems

While quality and access to health care in the U.S. has been improving in recent years, there’s still significant work to do. Aswita Tan-McGrory is one of the leaders at the helm of this transformative work.

Best Continuing Education Courses for Health Care Professionals

In order to help you take the next step in your professional development, we have compiled a list of our top professional development courses for health care professionals.

Related Courses

Digital health.

Digital technologies and big data offer tremendous opportunities to improve health care.

Health Care Strategy

Learn from HBS Professor Leemore Dafny how to align the principles of business strategy with the unique challenges and structures of health care organizations to capture value, define your mission, and lead your organization to success.

Health Care Economics

Taught by Harvard Medical School faculty, this course provides insights into the interactions between industries in the US health care sector and teaches what economic forces are shaping health care.

• Academics /

Premedical Program

Prepare for medical, dental, veterinary, or physician assistant (PA) school through the postbaccalaureate Premedical Program at Harvard Extension School.

Overview & Benefits of the Premedical Program

In the Premedical Program, you’ll take challenging core science courses, many of which are taught by Harvard University faculty. And you’ll have the opportunity to enroll in clinically relevant electives.

Through either the premedical or pre-physician assistant (physician associate) track , you’ll develop the knowledge and skills necessary to succeed in professional school and demonstrate your competency to admissions committees.

Individualized curriculum to help you become a competitive applicant

Personalized advising on course selection, the application process, & sponsorship

Harvard faculty from such schools as the Medical School & School of Dental Medicine

Flexible course schedules for the part-time student

Clinical & research opportunities

Engaged peer community & Harvard alumni network

The Premedical Program offers two tracks:

We’ll work with you to create a customized course curriculum to meet your academic needs based on:

• Your chosen curriculum track
• An assessment of the courses you took as part of your undergraduate degree
• The courses you’ll need to fill gaps and complete prerequisites.

Most students take a mix of core courses and electives in biology, general chemistry, organic chemistry, physics, and math.

Watch Our Information Session

Learn more about the Premedical Program from our program administrators and a current student in our recorded information session .

Our faculty come from across Harvard University, including Harvard Medical School, Harvard School of Dental Medicine, and the TH Chan School of Public Health.

Director, Premedical Program, Harvard Extension School

Sirinya Matchacheep

Lecturer on Chemistry and Chemical Biology and Director of Instructional Laboratory Programs, Harvard University

Britt Stockton Lee

Clinical Simulation Faculty, MEDscience Simulation Lab, Harvard Medical School

Our Student Community

Graduates of the Premedical Program have been accepted into—and graduated from—top medical and dental schools across the United States, including Brown University, Emory University, Johns Hopkins, and Weill Cornell Medical College.

As a student, you'll engage with peers and faculty regularly in class and weekly gatherings. After you complete the program, you’ll join the global network of the Harvard Alumni Association.

Learn more about our students in the Premedical Program Fast Facts sheet .

Check out the full list of program benefits .

Average age

Average # of years between undergrad degree earned and program admission

Have healthcare work experience

Average # of years to program completion

The weekly clinician chats are excellent opportunities to connect with physicians in the Boston area and gain exposure to the various paths in medicine one can take.

Cost & Aid

The total cost of the program will depend on how many courses (credits) you need to complete the requirements of your chosen programs and schools.

• Course tuition: Our 2023–24 tuition for a 4-credit undergraduate course is $2,040.
• Financial aid: After admission, you may qualify for federal aid. Typically, eligible students receive grant funds to cover a portion of tuition costs each term, in addition to federal financial aid options.
• Reduced Harvard Summer School tuition: You’ll pay Harvard Extension School tuition rates for Summer School courses as a student in the program. 
• Payment plan: Program participants may be eligible to enroll in an interest-free payment plan for fall, spring, and summer tuition.

Admission to the Premedical Program

Students in the postbaccalaureate Premedical Program are chosen through a selective application process. The application process is the same for all students interested in pursuing medical school, physician assistant school, dental school, and veterinary school. 

You are eligible to apply if you meet the following criteria:

• Have completed a bachelor’s degree from an accredited institution.
• Are a US citizen or permanent resident.
• Have English language proficiency.

Applications for the Premedical Program are accepted between January 10 and April 10.

Harvard Division of Continuing Education

The Division of Continuing Education (DCE) at Harvard University is dedicated to bringing rigorous academics and innovative teaching capabilities to those seeking to improve their lives through education. We make Harvard education accessible to lifelong learners from high school to retirement.

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RN to BSN: Advancing Your Nursing Career

4 min read • February, 09 2024

If you’re a registered nurse (RN) with an Associate Degree in Nursing (ADN) looking for more job security, earning potential, and job satisfaction, an RN to BSN program may be the ideal next step in your career. Obtaining a Bachelor of Science in Nursing (BSN) can open new financial, leadership, and learning opportunities in your nursing career while providing a solid foundation for future growth.

What Is an RN to BSN Program?

An RN to BSN program provides ADN nurses with a straightforward path to completing their BSNs. It typically takes four years to complete an undergraduate BSN degree. However, if you’ve already earned an ADN, you can complete an RN to BSN program in two years or less.

Having a BSN can open the door to more advanced nursing leadership roles, increasing your career options and salary while positioning you to pursue more advanced degrees.

RN to BSN Requirements

Many public and private colleges and universities offer RN to BSN programs. Each institution sets its own admission policies, but specific requirements generally apply. All programs require you to have an ADN, and your license to practice as an RN must be active and unrestricted. Other RN to BSN requirements may include:

• A minimum GPA. Your previous college and high school academic performance may impact admission decisions.
• Standardized test scores. Most schools require the SAT or ACT.
• Prerequisite classes. ADN coursework generally satisfies this requirement. (Note that some older STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) credits may need to be retaken depending on admission requirements.)

RN to BSN Curriculum

The RN to BSN program curriculum picks up where your ADN ends. RN to BSN classes delve into nursing theory, public health and policy, specialized health sciences, and management and administration. The total credit hours required vary by program, and there’s usually flexibility in the number of hours taken each semester for full-time and part-time students. RN to BSN programs typically occur on-site, but many schools also offer accredited RN to BSN online programs, including some without clinicals . An online program is a convenient and manageable option for nurses working while in school.

How Much Does an RN to BSN Program Cost?

The cost of an RN to BSN program varies depending on the institution you choose. The average tuition for an in-state resident at a public university is typically about $9,600 per year. Private universities are significantly more expensive, with average annual tuition and fees closer to $34,000 . Financial aid for nursing students is available through various sources, such as scholarships, grants, fellowships, loans, and work-study programs.

The Benefits of an RN to BSN Program

Obtaining a BSN gives RNs more opportunities for career advancement. Many health care facilities and employers actively seek nurses with a BSN. Studies indicate patients have better outcomes , shorter stays, and incur fewer costs in hospitals that have more BSN nurses on staff. Some states, including New York, have even enacted laws that require RNs to complete a BSN within ten years of licensure.

Beyond the industry’s structural change toward hiring BSN nurses, consider an RN to BSN program’s financial, professional, and personal advantages.

Financial Benefits

Compensation for BSN nurses is significantly higher than for ADN RNs. Depending on where you live, you could earn upwards of $90K as a BSN nurse, according to ZipRecruiter , compared to an average salary of $75K for an ADN nurse . With the career opportunities available to BSN nurses, the differential expands as you assume more advanced roles and responsibilities.

Professional Benefits

A BSN allows greater professional flexibility and more access to leadership opportunities. Whether you want to specialize in cardiology or oncology, join the staff at a Magnet-designated hospital, or become a nurse administrator or educator, a BSN is essential. This status is also required for admission to graduate nursing programs.

Personal Benefits

Many nurses find the intellectual challenge and pride of accomplishment in earning a BSN inspiring and fulfilling. Besides the new skills and training you’ll receive, obtaining a BSN gives you more freedom and control over your career.

If you’re an RN who wants to make significant contributions to health care, an RN to BSN program is a rewarding investment that gives you a competitive edge.

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