The Penn Foster Blog

High schools work hard at making sure students know their options after high school and preparing them to take that next step. Career colleges also play an influential role in providing these students with the tools and resources they need to continue their education. When career colleges and high schools work together for this common purpose, the chances for successful student outcomes is even greater.

During times of high unemployment, workers and job seekers commonly return to school to acquire new skills and become more employable. As the job market grows, college enrollment rates traditionally start to decline.

In order to stay competitive in today's marketplace, large corporations are jumping at the chance to partner with ed-tech providers and colleges to offer education pathway programs for employees. Multinational corporations such as Chipotle and Wal-Mart are investing in these partnerships in order to attract and retain talent.1 But this begs the question as to what small businesses are capable of in terms of providing similar opportunities. Certain niche providers are starting to pop up to cater to this sector, in order to reach working learners who happen to work at the local, family-owned coffee shop instead of a Starbucks.

In life no two people are the same: they support different teams in sports, like different foods, and even identical twins have differences. So when it comes to learning, "one-size-fits-all" doesn't work! According to Neil Fleming's Visual-Auditory-Kinesthetic model,1 most people have a dominant learning style that falls into one of three categories:

The world connects, shares, laughs, and learns on social media. Why shouldn't educators be a part of the conversation? Some are, but more could benefit. When leveraged correctly, several popular social media platforms can be wonderful educational tools for enhancing student engagement and performance, and can even be used for establishing program credibility and thought leadership for education professionals. Learn how two of the most well-known social media platforms can help you augment student outcomes, and how to apply these tools in your everyday work.

Many people believe jobs in the retail or quick-service restaurant industries are meant to be short-term. This leads to high turnover rates in both industries, which in turn makes promoting from within difficult. Hiring managers in these industries may wish to institute certain programs to help them retain their best employees and groom them for management roles. With some inspiration from leadership, star workers can be long-term staff members.

Admissions directors at four-year universities and community colleges are facing more pressure than ever, the latest Inside Higher Ed Survey of College and University Admissions Directors found.1 Controversies over admissions practices and student loan debt are just a few of the numerous challenges admissions directors now have on their plate. While career schools may not face all the same challenges as their peer institutions, there are nonetheless many parallels and valuable insights they can draw from these findings.

Historically, classroom material has been designed to be taught by a teacher, not to be self-taught by the student. However, since students are capable of learning and contributing so much more to their educational experience than just passively memorizing and regurgitating material, the role of the educator is changing. This article dives into three core pillars of student empowerment and how educators can leverage these pillars to work in tandem with students to enable greater outcomes.

Smart, successful companies invest in employee development, partly because they're one of the best ways to motivate and retain employees. There's abundant research to support this, including:

As September drew to a close, the medical community was bracing itself for the long-awaited transition from the ICD-9 to the ICD-10 medical classification system.1 Not everyone was prepared for it, however - according to a readiness survey by the Workgroup for Electronic Data Interchange, a quarter of physician practice respondents said they weren't ready for the Oct. 1 deadline, while another quarter wasn't sure if they were ready.2 Despite this, the initial transition seems to have gone well, and no major problems have been reported.