Giving Compass' Take:

• The Hechinger Report discusses the potential value of city "work colleges," in which students track performances at their place of employment in addition to classes, and how they may give young people in urban areas a better chance to reduce debt and succeed after graduation.

• How would the model for these schools differ from workplace training programs? Could they be scaled elsewhere? We should also look at the system of college debt in this country and how it can be addressed in more effective ways.

• Here's why higher ed innovation is happening beyond traditional schools.

It’s not uncommon for college students to work to save money for everything from books to spring break vacations. But schools generally don’t require students to work — unless they are work colleges.

There are nine federally designated work colleges, in which all residential students are required to work and school leaders track their performance at work just as they do in academic classes. There are evaluations, performance reviews and, in some cases, grades. Most students come from low-income backgrounds, and the work significantly offsets the cost of their tuition and fees. Schools are typically in rural areas, such as Berea, Kentucky, or Point Lookout, Missouri. But in March of 2017, when Paul Quinn College officially became a work college, it changed the image and perception of what these schools can do and where they can do it.

Paul Quinn College is in Dallas, the ninth-most populous city in the U.S.; it’s the first urban work college and the first historically black work college. Now the college, which has become known for taking unusual paths to success, is beginning a new chapter that will make it even more unusual.

“We’re about to start a national system of urban work colleges as well as a national consortium or urban work colleges,” its president, Michael Sorrell, said in April.

Many work-college advocates believe the time is right. Among adults age 29 or younger, 37 percent had outstanding student loan debt, according to a 2017 report from the Pew Research Center.

Read the full article about the value of "work colleges" by Delece Smith-Barrow at The Hechinger Report.