
Education systems today face two major challenges: expanding the reach of education and improving its quality. Traditional solutions will not suffice, especially in the context of today's knowledge-intensive societies.
The goal of the Open Educational Resources (OER) movement is to equalize access to knowledge worldwide through openly and freely available online high quality content.
UNESCO has contributed to building awareness about this movement by facilitating an extended conversation in cyberspace. Over a two-year period, a large and diverse international community discussed the concept and potential of OER in a series of online forums.
The background papers and reports are now available in print. Open Educational Resources: Conversations in Cyberspace provides an overview of the first steps of this exciting new development: it captures the conversations between leaders of some of the first OER projects, and documents early debates on the issues that continue to challenge the movement. The publication will provide food for thought for all those intrigued by OER -its promise and its progress.
Open Educational Resources: Conversations in Cyberspace is UNESCO's first openly licensed publication - an indication of the commitment of the Organization to the sharing of knowledge and the free flow of ideas.
August 1970
Geographic Focus:

Children and Youth;Education and Literacy;Employment and Labor
This report aims to stimulate further dicussion and reform in the way we inform and prepare young people for the next step beyond high school. It contains findings of a high school student survey and offers areas of discussion and exploration to advance the common purpose of helping young people make wise choices for their future education and employment.
August 1970
Geographic Focus: North America / United States (Northeastern) / New Jersey

Children and Youth;Education and Literacy;Employment and Labor
This report aims to stimulate further dicussion and reform in the way we inform and prepare young people for the next step beyond high school. It contains findings of a high school student survey and offers areas of discussion and exploration to advance the common purpose of helping young people make wise choices for their future education and employment.
August 1970
Geographic Focus: North America / United States (Northeastern) / New Jersey

Education and Literacy;Employment and Labor
This publication reports the proceedings of "Where the Jobs Are: The Changing Face of Apprenticeship," a briefing held June 17, 2005 at Mercer County Community College. The briefing was conducted as part of the Career Connections project, an industry-education alliance that brings employers and educators together to develop curricula and resources that will prepare students for jobs in demand by New Jersey employers.
August 1970
Geographic Focus: North America / United States (Northeastern) / New Jersey

Education and Literacy;Employment and Labor
This publication reports the proceedings of "Where the Jobs Are: The Changing Face of Apprenticeship," a briefing held June 17, 2005 at Mercer County Community College. The briefing was conducted as part of the Career Connections project, an industry-education alliance that brings employers and educators together to develop curricula and resources that will prepare students for jobs in demand by New Jersey employers.
August 1970
Geographic Focus: North America / United States (Northeastern) / New Jersey

Education and Literacy;Employment and Labor
This publication reports the proceedings of "Where the Jobs Are: The Changing Face of Apprenticeship," a briefing held June 17, 2005 at Mercer County Community College. The briefing was conducted as part of the Career Connections project, an industry-education alliance that brings employers and educators together to develop curricula and resources that will prepare students for jobs in demand by New Jersey employers.
August 1970
Geographic Focus: North America / United States (Northeastern) / New Jersey

Consumer Protection;Education and Literacy;Welfare and Public Assistance
It is widely believed that starting public school teacher salaries are too low, and student loan burdens are too high. If true, we could be facing a situation in which recent college graduates cannot afford to go into teaching because they will be unable to repay their college debts. Public policies are already being formulated on the basis of that conclusion.
Unfortunately, the only major analysis of teacher salaries and student debt published to date is based largely on borrowers' subjective feelings about debt manageability. Likewise, more traditional methods of determining how much debt is too much offer little help because they are based primarily on general risks of default predicted by debt-to-income ratios rather than the ability of specific borrowers to handle their debts and other expenses.
To provide legislators with a more objective basis for policymaking, this paper assesses first year teachers' ability to pay back college loans given their actual salaries and expenses. This method eliminates both the subjectivity of determining debt burdens on the basis of debtors' feelings, and the imprecision of using correlations between debt-to-income ratios and overall default rates.
The findings presented here reveal that first year teachers in even the least affordable of the 16 districts examined can easily afford to pay back their debts. Indeed, with just some basic economizing, a first-year teacher could not only pay back average debt, but could handle debt levels nearly three times the national average. This does not mean that current teacher salaries or student debt burdens are "right" -- only markets can determine that -- but it does mean that there is no need for policymakers to intervene in either teacher pay or student aid to assure that college graduates can afford to become public school teachers.
August 1970
Geographic Focus:

Consumer Protection;Education and Literacy;Welfare and Public Assistance
It is widely believed that starting public school teacher salaries are too low, and student loan burdens are too high. If true, we could be facing a situation in which recent college graduates cannot afford to go into teaching because they will be unable to repay their college debts. Public policies are already being formulated on the basis of that conclusion.
Unfortunately, the only major analysis of teacher salaries and student debt published to date is based largely on borrowers' subjective feelings about debt manageability. Likewise, more traditional methods of determining how much debt is too much offer little help because they are based primarily on general risks of default predicted by debt-to-income ratios rather than the ability of specific borrowers to handle their debts and other expenses.
To provide legislators with a more objective basis for policymaking, this paper assesses first year teachers' ability to pay back college loans given their actual salaries and expenses. This method eliminates both the subjectivity of determining debt burdens on the basis of debtors' feelings, and the imprecision of using correlations between debt-to-income ratios and overall default rates.
The findings presented here reveal that first year teachers in even the least affordable of the 16 districts examined can easily afford to pay back their debts. Indeed, with just some basic economizing, a first-year teacher could not only pay back average debt, but could handle debt levels nearly three times the national average. This does not mean that current teacher salaries or student debt burdens are "right" -- only markets can determine that -- but it does mean that there is no need for policymakers to intervene in either teacher pay or student aid to assure that college graduates can afford to become public school teachers.
August 1970
Geographic Focus: