The Emerging Policy Triangle: Economic Development, Workforce Development and Education

This report, funded through a grant from the Ford Foundation, seeks to better inform legislators and other key policymakers about the confluence of forces bearing down on higher education and the resulting impacts to state goals and priorities. Using an array of data, the report highlights the ways in which a state’s stock of human capital is depleted and replenished through education, migration, and the aging of the workforce (i.e., retirements). This edition includes profiles for all 50 states and international comparative data from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) showing how well the United States and its individual states fare in comparison to other countries on measures of educational attainment. These data provide a benchmark for action, given the interrelatedness and heightened competition of an increasingly global economy. In addition, they are sobering evidence that more attention must be paid to how states can better harness the resources of their higher education systems to assure that they remain competitive in the decades to come.