CAEL’s 50th anniversary celebration provided many occasions throughout 2024 to celebrate and reflect on the impact the CAEL community, especially its membership, has been able to achieve since its founding. If you participated in any of them, you were probably reminded how deeply ingrained credit for prior learning (CPL) is within the story of CAEL. Few would argue that CPL has been a defining characteristic of its nonprofit mission. From day one in 1974, CAEL has led the cause of ensuring academically valuable learning experiences aren’t overlooked just because they take place outside a classroom.
Of course, CAEL’s CPL work was an extension of an even more fundamental commitment: ensuring adult learners themselves are not overlooked. Too often, higher ed consigned them to the undiscerning concept of the nontraditional student. Thankfully, most higher ed institutions now engage with adult learners much more intentionally. They recognize them as unique students who offer valuable real-world competencies and perspectives.
Still, even within this enhanced appreciation of adult learners, there are opportunities to be more inclusive. When we think of adult students, we tend to limit the concept to what we consider the traditional working-age population, which means older adults are often disregarded. But by disregarding them, we disregard opportunities and, critically, effective strategies for meeting workforce development challenges and improving economic mobility.
Demographic trends are shifting the U.S. population toward a higher percentage of older Americans. Older adults are more likely to remain part of the active workforce than previous generations. As they work beyond expected retirement ages, they are more likely to look to postsecondary education as a source of work-relevant curricula than the lifestyle classes traditionally marketed to them.
Colleges and their workforce development partners should embrace this trend for the opportunity it is. To help them do so, CAEL is publishing a series of briefs with support from AARP. The first one, “Leveraging a Lifetime of Knowledge: How Credit for Prior Learning Can Help Older Adults and Veterans,” details the growing benefits of upskilling and reskilling older adults, which parallel the imperative to help veterans connect with education and training resources that recognize the wealth of experience they bring as they transition into civilian careers.
The brief notes that the trend of working beyond the traditional retirement age is often driven by necessity. Many Americans haven’t accrued a level of retirement savings that can preserve their career-driven standard of living. For U.S. veterans, who number more than 16 million, supplementing the average military retirement benefit of $2,570 per month often requires postsecondary credentials that can access higher-paying civilian jobs.
The brief also reminds us of CPL’s ability to significantly reduce both the time and cost associated with obtaining such credentials. This aspect can be particularly impactful for the nearly 40 million Americans with some college but no credential. More than 11 million of them are between the ages of 45 and 64. At the same time, the brief outlines how using CPL to make higher ed more accessible to older adults and veterans helps postsecondary institutions more effectively address pressing challenges. These include declining enrollment, funding issues and questions about the value of college education.
The brief includes several policy and practice recommendations for making CPL effective for older learners and veterans. Examples include transparency, academic rigor via faculty inclusion, strategic student support, data-driven decision making and improved communication, especially around the value proposition CPL offers targeted student populations.
Another helpful aspect of the brief is the collection of additional resources it offers. They include guides on military CPL, how to use CPL to recruit and retain students, research findings, and more. For example, the brief references CAEL’s work with the American Council on Education to publish an analysis of more than 360 state and system policies enacted to support CPL opportunities. Completed shortly after the brief’s publication, this collaboration resulted in “The National Landscape of Credit for Prior Learning: Effective State and System Policies for Success and Equity,” a survey of CPL policies in all 50 states, Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia. Along with the report, CAEL and ACE launched an interactive online database that allows users to query the underlying data to customize comparisons and other analyses of state and system CPL policies.
CAEL is continuing the three-brief series with “Aging Workforce, Rising Potential: Policy and Employer Action for Older Workers.” This brief argues that older employees are workforce treasures hidden in plain sight. As companies face an acute shortage of skilled workers, reskilling or upskilling older employees offers a proactive alternative to managing retirement attrition. Much like higher ed institutions can benefit by valuing older students’ wealth of prior learning and providing more options to help them harness the benefits of that knowledge and experience, employers can also benefit by helping older workers build upon their profound professional experiences.
You can find these briefs along with all of CAEL’s publications on the research page at cael.org. If you have questions about how your institution can better support older adults and veterans or you would like to join the discussion around supporting these vital subpopulations of adult learners, please join us at the CAEL Member Hub, where you can also join our newest community of practice, devoted to military-connected learners. Not yet a CAEL member? Explore our membership options here.
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