On a recent visit to one of our campuses, I met a student who took an unconventional route to arrive at our college. Many of our students come to us long after they graduate from high school, often after working for several years. Some have tried another college but didn’t graduate. This particular student, Helanna Salinas, had enrolled in our Surgical Technology Program after she earned a bachelor’s degree at a large state university but couldn’t land the career she wanted.
Helanna got her degree in biology, a popular college major that offers a plethora of postgraduate career opportunities, but she discovered that a biology degree doesn’t always provide direct access to a job in healthcare, especially one that allows her to work alongside doctors. CHCP is providing the training she needs to become a certified surgical technologist.
Helanna’s story is just one example of what I see far too often in higher education these days: Though colleges generally do a good job of educating their students—of exposing them to new knowledge and opening them up to new ideas, new perspectives and new worlds—they often fall short of providing students what they are ultimately seeking.
Today’s college students are likelier than ever to be working and raising children and to be stretched thin financially. They have no time or money to waste, especially after they have identified a new career opportunity that requires a new college credential. In survey after survey, today’s students say they’re enrolling in college not to find themselves or discover higher truths but to earn more money, get a promotion or move into a new career.
The unsettling truth for traditional higher education is that institutions should adopt a consumer-driven mindset and give students exactly what they need. Higher education bristles at treating students as consumers or customers, even as increasingly cynical students view their learning as purely transactional. Customers—and students—are always right, as the saying goes, but not in the way most people think. Whether it’s called learners first or students first, a new consumer-oriented mindset is beginning to demonstrate the potential to improve outcomes for learners. Colleges should embrace a consumer mindset and find ways to ensure college can work for their students’ complicated lives.
Here are four things institutions can do immediately to meet their students’ needs.
Build Flexible and Structured Schedules
Time is the ultimate luxury for adult learners juggling so much in their lives. A traditional postsecondary setting can diminish their chance of success. Institutions can support today’s learners by starting programs more often than at the beginning of the fall and spring semesters. Shorter academic terms and shorter courses that begin monthly and run for just four or eight weeks can accelerate a student’s path to graduation.
A 2024 study found that nearly six in ten degree-seeking students are on blocked completion paths—that is, degree pathways missing multiple required courses that students must take to graduate. Creating guided pathways that lead directly to a certificate or degree can take the guesswork out of the college journey and reduce the odds that the academic schedule will act as a barrier to completion.
Offer Prior Credit from Both Learning and Work
Institutions that accept credit for prior learning can help students, especially adult learners with prior professional experience, start college quicker.
Awarding industry-validated credentials and other certificates of value as learners make progress toward completion can increase the chances that students can land the jobs they want at the pay they desire. Had the student I mentioned earlier been able to earn an industry-recognized credential while working toward her bachelor’s degree, she would have been able to start her career sooner.
Make Programs Truly Stackable
Start with short-term programs that can help students achieve success early and often, then give them off-ramps if they need to return to work to earn more money to pay for school or support their families. When stackable credentials are embedded within academic programs, students can toggle between work and school as they need to without wasting time and money repeating courses they have already completed.
Embrace Innovation
Institutions should seek to understand what their learners need. If students face significant commuting and childcare expenses, reducing the number of days they need to be on campus can save them money. By offering hybrid schedules, with lecture classes taken asynchronously online and only hands-on labs requiring in-person class attendance, institutions can increase access to higher education and help learners make more efficient use of their time.
Our nation is facing a college completion crisis. At last count, more than 40 million Americans started college but did not finish because the institution they chose either failed to provide them with the support and flexibility they need to manage their busy lives or did not focus on teaching them the skills they need to find careers. Students can experience extraordinary success when institutions adopt a customer-focused mindset—one centered on the needs and goals of their students. And when students succeed in college, they’ll do what they do when they buy something they enjoy: They’ll tell their friends.
Customer satisfaction can certainly bolster student recruitment and enrollment, but it’s customer success—student success—that should be the goal of all colleges.
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