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Opening New Doors into Higher Education: Transforming Four-Year Institutions to Better Serve Adult Learners

Over the holidays, I was speaking with a friend who recently moved into higher education after a long career in the corporate world. She shared her surprise at how slowly change seems to come about on the campus she now serves. Knowing the steep challenges that her particular public institution faces and having weathered similar enrollment and budget issues at my own, I just smiled and assured her that things were about to be different.  

Like a classic wooden roller coaster in a sleepy beach town, higher education—particularly but not exclusively regional publics and smaller privates—has been progressing toward change at a slow initial pace up the current hill it climbs. The speed of this ride will change radically, however. Many campuses, if they haven’t already, will soon experience the most rapid, terrifying and—arguably—exhilarating journey of their lives. The plummeting descent of enrollment declines and the turns of demographic shifts can, with apologies for the extended metaphor, either derail a campus or create the momentum to drive it forward into exciting new twists and heights.  

In response to such changes, the campus community I serve has moved faster, further and with greater willingness over the past five years into new programs, processes and policies than I or any of my long-term colleagues would have predicted possible. From the view of one who has survived such a roller coaster journey, I can share that the result is invigorating: New and different students are finding our campus with higher enrollments than in over a decade, departments and academic programs are innovating rapidly, and we are achieving a new fiscal equilibrium as a result of this rapid ride. It is true that there were unmistakable losses and costs along the journey. Positions were cut, re-envisioned or restructured; programs were reviewed, reimagined or eliminated; and we operate on much tighter budgets than before. Despite these difficulties, the university has also changed in positive ways that better serve many of our students. Reflecting on this rapid transformation, it is clear that some key steps taken in leading change can be credited for yielding these positive outcomes.  

Building the Case for Rapid Change and Serving New Populations 

Arriving at a new institutional destination takes a firm and broad commitment to engaging community members—faculty, staff, board members, alumni, students, external stakeholders—in understanding the need and opportunities for change. As educators, higher education administrators need to remember to teach, which means collectively reviewing longitudinal enrollment and budget data, engaging in and sharing environmental scans, and creating opportunities for stakeholder input into data analysis and solution creation. At William Paterson University, faculty and staff had multiple occasions to quickly learn a lot about areas that were previously obscure to many, such as the cost of instruction by program or departmental student success rates disaggregated by demographics. We carefully reviewed regional K-12 pipelines and data on stopped-out students. In these dialogues, it is important to ask questions and listen. Campus stakeholders need to understand why change is needed, but they can also provide critical insights into how to effect it.  

For many four-year institutions, particularly those the demographic cliff is hitting hardest, a key focus of this change has been on creating new opportunities to engage returning adult learners. As I shared in an earlier piece, in so doing we are building the new passageways into our colleges and universities that Martin Luther King, Jr. called for over half a century ago when he stated, “A democratic educational system requires multiple doors.” (Where Do We Go From Here, Chaos or Community? New York: Bantam Books, 1968. 230.)  

As we work to engage the large national population of some no credential (SCNC) college students so vital to our institutional health, however, we face culture changes that make many campus community members uncomfortable. It is reasonable to wonder how University X might be altered if it no longer serves exclusively, or even predominantly, the fresh-out-of-high school, full-time students it has traditionally recruited. How will such a shift in identity impact engagement with alumni? What is lost in the reconstruction of campus focus and branding? Thoughtful and thorough engagement with these questions can help stakeholders celebrate steps achieved rather than (only) mourn what used to be.  

Key questions to generate momentum toward the rapid changes necessary to serve a changing demographic include the following:  

  • Programmatic implications: What are the degree or certificate needs of the new populations you are seeking to attract? In building them, how can you add without losing? If you seek to serve more professionally focused working adults in career-readiness programs of study, where might you build upon existent liberal arts strengths, thereby supplementing and not supplanting strong academic expertise? At William Paterson University, for example, a degree completion program in Leadership & Professional Studies provides a strong liberal arts foundation in critical thinking, communication, cultural competency, data analysis and other cross-disciplinary skills upon which students advance a leadership project focused on their own professional goals. The program takes advantage of existing courses serving more traditional programs and has attracted new interest from career-focused adult learners, yielding a win-win enrollment story.  
  • Policy assumptions: What are the philosophical underpinnings of your current policies and practices? Many academic policies around credit by examination or transfer options are protectionist and exclusionary. If the goal is to assist motivated adults to return to complete their degrees, where might standing policies need updating? We have found that many returning adult learners, with the support of accelerated degree completion by strong credit for prior learning (CPL) options and lenient transfer credit policies, are motivated to demonstrate their life-gained strengths through high academic achievement in their remaining degree requirements and rapid advancement into our graduate programs. Why make someone repeat a freshman-level course they took twelve years ago because it falls outside a ten-year limit if they are ready to advance toward master’s-level work?  
  • Pedagogical practices: How are classes constructed and delivered? Do course standards or policies include paternalistic assumptions such as “students need to learn to…”? One adult learner who challenged a professor’s firm no-late-assignments stance designed to teach students how to manage deadlines explained that she was leading a team of 200 employees and fully understood deadlines but that he had not provided sufficient lead time for her to complete the assignment against a large work project she faced in the same window. He realized that, in controlling when he thought students would be ready for the work, he was not allowing adult learners to navigate course material around their complex work and family lives.  

Changing to Serve Adult Learners and Better Serving All 

At my university, the new doors we have constructed for the SCNC population—flexibility in course delivery schedules and modalities, policy changes regarding transfer credit and readmission, creation of new credit for prior learning opportunities, targeted student supports for working adults—are serving not just returning adult learners but also our traditional students. As on many campuses, our 18- to 22-year-old students also face increasingly complex family and work responsibilities, require flexibility and support, and are seeking innovative curricula that embed career outcomes as they prepare to enter a rapidly evolving job market. It turns out changes created to attract and serve adult learners—from extended service hours and virtual supports to modified academic policies—are benefitting everyone. 

Like many campuses that have long delivered the bulk of their degrees through two 15-week semesters, one of the first steps we needed to take was to increase flexibility and variety in our course schedules and modalities. Working students, whether adult or traditional, do not necessarily want to wait for a new academic year to begin or to come to campus daily for three months to complete a course. Increasing course options across the summer months and during the winter break made clear the popularity of shorter sessions and flexible delivery options, leading us to a deeper review of both our academic calendar and our balance of in-person, asynchronous online and hybrid courses.  

When we launched fully online programs within six accelerated seven-week sessions across the full twelve-month calendar for graduate and undergraduate adult learners, we found that many of our traditional students wanted similar options. We now offer a select, targeted set of seven-week classes embedded into the regular terms to allow full-time main campus students to move in more focused ways through sequenced courses. A sophomore can take, for example, the Methods I and II requirements during the fall semester and be ready to advance beyond these prerequisites to next-level major options in the spring, rather than have to wait until their junior year to engage in the meat of their chosen field. Such options to begin major courses earlier also seems likely to improve student persistence (though the data is still being gathered on this point).  

The largest lift for our campus was the construction of robust support for CPL. We established a dedicated CPL support team, engaged faculty and deans in assessing and understanding credit equivalencies, and created new policies and processes to make CPL options available to returning adult learners. The SCNC population we sought to attract has responded: They are looking for such opportunities to support degree acceleration and appreciate that we value what they bring and know. National data show that the opportunity to earn CPL not only attracts adult learners to campuses but also supports their likelihood of degree completion and increases the number of institutional credits they are likely to take.  

Surprisingly, our traditional students have also benefited. A student who has met all major and general education requirements for their degree but finds out they are a few credits short of graduation now has the opportunity to request CPL for a CPR certificate they may have earned for a summer job, for example, to allow them to graduate on time. This option has saved many of our traditional students from the expensive and demoralizing need to stay on for a summer or additional term to meet credit requirements and has assisted in timely degree completion. Though correlation is not causation and there are certainly other factors at play, this option may have contributed to the 3.1% increase in four-year graduation rates since launching our CPL supports.   

Creating New Communities of Inclusion—Both for Students and Those Who Serve Them 

Returning adult learners need intentional means to build a sense of belonging. When we meet with new admits to our online degree completion programs, they share their fears about not fitting in. Our main message in these orientations is that they’ve got it this time and we’ve got them. (We can state these points with confidence, because our persistence and completion rates for our online adult learners at William Paterson University significantly outpace national averages in nonprofit online institutions.) To mitigate adult learner anxiety over belonging at our institutions, campus webpages and stories need to reflect their presence, as well as that of the photogenic, fun-loving 18-year-olds we usually celebrate. Just as our images and stories must highlight the diversity of our student bodies, adult-conscious marketing can help normalize an understanding of the breadth of learners our campuses serve—for both community members and for new students.  

Returning students need targeted means to connect with adult student peers. Whether online or in-person, adult learners need access to an equitable range of supports and opportunities as those available to traditional students. This shift requires the systematic engagement of offices across campus. Career guidance, for example, is different for a 35-year-old degree completer seeking to advance professionally than for a 20-year-old full-time student exploring future career options. Admission and advisement questions are distinct for returning SCNC students, who don’t appreciate the assumption that they are parents instead of applicants. Each student-facing office must reflect on how to modify or augment their practices, communications and processes to serve a returning student population’s distinct needs.  

For campuses built to serve traditionally aged college students, a shift to engaging with adult learners thus also requires professional development for faculty, staff and administrators. Such development is not a one-and-done process. Rather, it requires building intentional and ongoing support, which relies on establishing strong peer connections for new faculty and staff, and developing broad, deep awareness of the challenges adult learners face, as well as the strengths they bring. Here again, creating the growth mindset needed for working with adult learners can also help campus members better serve traditional college students.  

In sum, though there are challenges to longstanding campus cultures in opening new doors to adult learners, there are benefits too. The changes essential to maintaining institutional relevance in the face of shifting demographics are difficult. But when engaged thoughtfully and broadly, such institutional transformation can be reinvigorating. Steps taken to serve returning adults can better support traditional campus populations in surprising ways.  

Many of our four-year college and university missions stress a commitment to inclusivity and underscore the value of lifelong learning. Campuses that work to build the community buy-in necessary to shift focus in whom they serve, that seek to equip their faculty and staff with the new perspectives and skills needed for this work, and that engage in systemic changes to open new doors to adult learners may find that, in so doing, they will better walk the talk of their published missions. While few university communities would wish to have to undergo such a drastic transformation in so short a time, the transformations accomplished on this institutional roller coaster ride can also be reinvigorating and reenergizing in recalling to us the why of the work.