Professional and continuing education has often lived at the edge of the university. It is where institutions place online programs, adult learners, workforce partnerships, certificates and offerings designed for students who do not fit the traditional residential model.
These units learned how to do what the broader university now says it values: flexible delivery, accelerated formats, employer partnerships, applied curriculum, stackable credentials and support for learners balancing work, family and school.
But the future of professional and continuing education should not be a larger version of the old model. The goal should not be to defend the silo. The goal should be to spread the capability. Professional and continuing education should become an operating system for the whole university.
The Edge Is Becoming the Center
Online and adult-serving education is no longer marginal. IPEDS data show that more than half of postsecondary students now enroll in at least some distance education.
The academic workforce is also more complex than the traditional image of the tenured professoriate suggests. AAUP data show that roughly two thirds of U.S. faculty appointments are contingent, while about one third are full-time tenured or tenure-track. Any serious conversation about online, professional and continuing education must include the faculty models that sustain it.
The Silo Solved One Problem and Created Another
The silo model solved a real problem. It allowed institutions to build programs for adult and online learners when traditional academic structures were too slow or too focused on residential students. A central professional education unit could experiment with calendars, delivery models, pricing, advising, marketing and employer partnerships in ways departments often could not.
But silos create limitations. When online and professional programs sit too far outside disciplinary homes, they can become disconnected from faculty culture, academic identity and the intellectual life of the university. Students may complete a degree without feeling connected to the college, department or discipline that gives that degree meaning. Faculty elsewhere may see the programs as revenue operations rather than serious academic work.
Absorption Is Not a Strategy
Simply moving online and professional programs into colleges or departments is not enough. Disciplinary homes provide academic legitimacy, faculty ownership and intellectual coherence. Those are essential, but many traditional academic units are not designed to support adult and online learners well.
They may not have the infrastructure for accelerated calendars, asynchronous course design, enrollment coaching, employer engagement, market analysis, prior learning pathways, high-touch advising or adult learner retention. Moving a program into a college without preserving these capabilities can solve an academic legitimacy problem while creating an operational failure.
Disciplinary Homes Plus Shared Infrastructure
Universities need a matrix model: disciplinary homes for academic identity and quality, supported by shared professional infrastructure designed for online, adult, workforce and lifelong learners.
In this model, colleges and departments own the curriculum, standards, outcomes and faculty governance of programs. A central professional and continuing education platform supports capabilities every academic unit increasingly needs but few can build alone: instructional design, online program support, market intelligence, employer partnerships, noncredit-to-credit pathways, stackable credentials, adult learner advising, flexible scheduling and student success systems.
This is what it means to treat professional and continuing education as an operating system. It is not merely a portfolio of programs. It is a set of institutional capabilities that should help every part of the university serve learners across a lifetime.
Faculty Architecture Matters
A serious model also requires a more honest conversation about faculty. Universities cannot claim professional and continuing education is central while staffing and governing it as peripheral. Too often, full-time faculty in online, adult-serving and professional programs are treated as second-class academic citizens. They carry curriculum, assessment, mentoring, program development, employer engagement and revenue responsibility, yet may remain outside the prestige structures that define academic legitimacy.
Their work may look different from that of traditional residential faculty, but different is not lesser. Faculty who build online graduate programs, lead professional degrees, design applied curricula, manage practitioner networks, mentor working adults and connect programs to workforce needs do academic work. They should have meaningful promotion pathways, governance roles and, where appropriate, tenure-line or tenure-equivalent appointments.
This need for faculty architecture does not mean professional programs should rely only on full-time faculty. Practitioner faculty can be one of the strengths of professional and continuing education. In a recent national survey of chief online learning officers, adjunct faculty were reported as carrying a large share of online teaching at many institutions. That reality should not be treated as either an embarrassment or a cost-saving strategy. It should be treated as a design challenge.
The right adjunct faculty bring current field experience, applied examples, professional networks and credibility with adult learners, but adjuncts should not be interchangeable, low-cost instructional labor. They need to be selected carefully, supported intentionally and integrated into the academic culture of the program. The issue is not full-time versus adjunct. The issue is whether the faculty model is intentional, credible and aligned with the learners being served.
Online Students Need Membership, Not Transactions
Professional and continuing education also needs a stronger relationship model for students. Many online learners experience the university as a sequence of transactions: apply, enroll, take courses, pay tuition, submit assignments and graduate. That may produce enrollments, but it does not build belonging. If universities want lifelong learners, they must build lifelong relationships.
This is where small things matter. A university ID card, welcome package, program shirt, invitation to campus events, faculty communication, commencement recognition and clear alumni pathway may appear minor compared with curriculum or enrollment strategy, but these signals communicate membership. They tell online and adult learners that they are not simply consumers of asynchronous content or customers of a platform. They are members of an academic community.
That sense of membership is strategic. Students who feel connected to an institution are more likely to return for future learning, recommend programs to colleagues, participate as alumni and view the university as part of their professional identity. Relationship building should be treated as infrastructure, not decoration.
Preserve the Capability, Not the Silo
The future of higher education will require institutions to serve learners who move in and out of education across decades. Some will begin with a certificate, return for a degree, come back for professional development, partner through an employer and later mentor the next generation of students. That relationship cannot be managed through a transactional model.
Professional and continuing education has already taught universities many of these lessons. It has shown that flexibility matters, that adult learners need structures designed around real lives, that employer partnerships can extend academic reach, that online education requires more than moving courses into a learning management system and that applied learning and academic rigor can coexist.
The future is disciplinary integration supported by shared professional and relational infrastructure. Put simply: Do not preserve the silo. Preserve the capability.
If universities get this right, professional and continuing education can become a strategic learning laboratory for the whole institution, helping universities become more flexible, more connected, more academically coherent and more responsive to the learners they increasingly serve.