Business leaders gathered in New York City on April 30 for the release of Boosting Postsecondary Education Performance, a new CED report focused on revitalizing the American postsecondary education system. The release event featured welcoming remarks from CED Co-Chair Roger W. Ferguson, Jr. President and CEO, TIAA-CREF and keynote remarks from Jeffrey A. Joerres, a CED Trustee and Chairman and CEO, ManpowerGroup.

Charles Kolb, President of the Committee for Economic Development, is stepping down from that post after 15 years at the helm of the business-led policy group. Mr. Kolb, a former White House advisor to President George H.W. Bush, is leaving CED to become the president of the French-American Foundation, the principal non-governmental organization linking France and the United States. Mr. Kolb will assume his new post in July of this year.

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Today, the Committee for Economic Development (CED) is beginning a national campaign to get business leaders involved in postsecondary education reform. To launch the effort, CED is releasing Boosting Postsecondary Education Performance, a report with data that underscore this urgency. The CED report concentrates on those "broad-access" institutions that will bear much of the burden when it comes to providing postsecondary education to most Americans. CED's goal is to help build stronger connections between postsecondary education and the American business community in order to drive the needed structural reforms throughout this vital sector of American education.

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CED and the Brennan Center for Justice hosted a dinner on Wednesday, April 18th with NY LEAD, a new coalition of business, academic, and philanthropic leaders supporting campaign finance reform in New York. CED and NY LEAD are advocating for the statewide adoption of public matching for low-dollar contributions. This reform mirrors CED's policy recommendations made in 1999 and recently restated in our most recent report, After Citizens United: Improving Accountability in Political Finance. Dinner speakers included Sean Eldridge, President, Hudson River Ventures; Charles Kolb, President of CED; Jane Sherburne, Senior Executive Vice President of BNY Mellon; and Michael Waldman, President of the Brennan Center for Justice.

On April 11, CED in partnership with CEAL (Business Council of Latin America), a non-profit network of business leaders from Latin America, hosted a day-long early childhood education conference for an intimate discussion about early childhood education advocacy.

CED hosted, along with the Tennessee Business Education Coalition, a series of events around promoting teacher effectiveness and human capital in education reform in Tennessee.

CED President Charles Kolb testified before United States Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) on March 8, 2012.

The hearing focused on the role of education in preparing American workers for success in today's economy, as well as on the global competitiveness of the United States. Several important postsecondary education issues were highlighted, including the importance of quality of early childhood programs and K-12 education reform.

CED, along with the Business Council of New Orleans and The River Region and CED Trustee Pres Kabacoff, Co-Chairman of the Board of Directors & CEO, HRI Properties, co-hosted a luncheon on March 6, 2012 at the Chateau Bourbon Wyndham Hotel in New Orleans, LA. The luncheon convened local and regional business leaders, academics and postsecondary reform advocates for a discussion about the Louisianan postsecondary education system and why Louisianan business should become involved in sustainable sector reform.

On Tuesday, February 28, 2012 Dr. Joseph Minarik, Senior Vice President and Director of Research at CED delivered his annual analysis on the budget outlook. The presentation included a detailed analysis on the housing market, current and historic debt levels, and the impact of proposed and likely policy changes on the federal budget outlook. Dr. Minarik concluded the presentation with recommendations for potential political compromises based on the research available.

CED has released The Future of Taxpayer-Funded Research: Who Will Control Access to the Results? – a new report that examines how scientific researchers and members of the public will access government-funded research in the expanding digital age.