Continuing education has evolved from a peripheral offering to a key strategic contributor to universities’ growth and innovation. As institutions face shifting demographics and workforce needs, continuing education plays a vital role in expanding enrollment, generating revenue and fostering community and corporate partnerships. In this interview, Chris Graham discusses what these partnerships do for the institution, the challenges that come with them and how to better align community relationships with institutional goals.
The EvoLLLution (Evo): What role do community and corporate partnerships play in the success of continuing education programs?
Chris Graham (CG): Community and corporate partnerships are the cornerstone of continuing education programs. When you think about where education’s moving—pathways, stackable credentials and unbundled education—it’s really happening in corporate alignment.
Google has come out with many certificates in IT and cybersecurity, and in many ways they’re teaching the foundational skills to enter into those markets. But what they’re often missing are the pathways into degree programs. In partnering with organizations like Google, we can stack these certificates into academic credit. The closer you’re aligned with corporations and partnerships, the more relevant your content will be.
Evo: What are some challenges to that come with community and corporate partnerships?
CG: You often see partnerships struggle because there’s not a centralized coordination. If the company’s working with the university on one specific thing, then they’re talking to different departments. There are so many silos because institutions are so large that it can be hard to capture the comprehensive nature of a partnership.
Evo: What are some best practices to overcome that obstacle?
CG: It’s important to centralize services. The workforce and community education at National University is the interface with the corporate community. We have to approach the relationship in a comprehensive way because we’re here to serve students and serve companies for anything from training to hiring to pathways to professional development and the like.
It’s also important to have faculty involvement. You have to bring them onboard early because they’re really the talent in terms of content and training. Many times, I’ve seen CE departments suffer because they weren’t central in the university but off to the side as an annex. But the more you integrate faculty into the conversation early, the more it can become a central part of programming and you can actually start to really align your academic offering and the corporate partnerships at the same time.
Evo: What are the characteristics of a strong partnership, and how do you find one that fits your needs and your goals?
CG: A key characteristic of a strong partnership is deep involvement on both the university and corporate side. For example, we had a local hospital with a leadership gap. They had folks who were at the bedside and needed to move up to the supervisory level, but there wasn’t a bridge program to do that. We worked with faculty and hospital leadership to create and launch this program, which led to other opportunities. With the pandemic occurring, there was a sudden need for this series of staff training on crisis communications and emergency management. When you start with these smaller trainings and make them stackable, they can easily lead to full degrees. The goal at the end of the day is for our students to get hired. It’s about that comprehensive nature where you have a variety of touch points. We’re serving them, and they’re helping serve our students, which is really the magic of these partnerships.
Evo: How do you measure the impact of those partnerships?
CG: We want to first see how students are doing. Are they moving up in their organization, moving along the pathways and continuing to persist? We have a partnership with Amazon that allows students to take on a construction management certificate. When they’re ready to move up to a supervisor role, they can roll that into the bachelor’s degree and are already a leg up in terms of moving forward with a degree.
Another metric for success for us is the number of students getting hired, student outcomes and how they’re doing in the workplace. We want companies to be satisfied with the students coming in and hiring them. It’s a big piece of our focus. Our folks are nontraditional working and military students, so how are we actually helping them in their career transitions and their pathways?
Evo: What advice would you give other higher ed leaders looking to strengthen their engagement, foster more partnerships and set their students up for success?
CG: It’s important for higher ed leaders to look beyond just the degree. There are a variety of ways to build relationships with companies and to stack toward the degree. I would focus on prior learning. You must be stackable. The argument about whether a degree is worth it or required for the workforce is really a yes-and argument. If you can create the training for people to move up in their career, to earn and learn and still roll that into a degree, it’s an economic equalizer. So, if there are ways to do both, that’s my recommendation.
It’s also important to engage your faculty along the way because faculty are often on the cutting edge, and they’re the talent. You need them to move these partnerships along. And lastly is focusing on your partnership needs. We’re here to help them hire, train and retain partners’ employees, so we need to focus on that outcome with our corporate partners.
Evo: Is there anything we’d like to add?
CG: In terms of our partnerships, we’re proud of the English Language Learning (ELL) training we’re doing for organizations. There are many populations who need English language learning, but it’s not necessarily easy to access because they're clocking out of their job fulfillment center and picking up their kids or going to a second job. They can’t go to a campus to go do EL training.
We’ve partnered to set up an online ELL program that is easier for folks to access. What’s great is that they’re working toward their GED at the same time. They can get academic credit while going through ELL training program, which is a great on-ramp and access builder.
Evo: How important is flexibility in a student’s educational journey?
CG: Flexibility is critical. Our students are all nontraditional working military, so our courses are set up 30 days at a time. That was an access play. At first people thought it was crazy, but over time they’re seeing consistency to the schedule.
We don’t want to burden students with the academic stuff. We don’t have four papers due the same day. Imagine working a 60-hour week, having a family, then having these papers due on the same day. It’s too much. What we try to do is fit courses into peoples’ lives and make them manageable.
We call our students “and-ers”. Everyone is a student, and they’re a parent, teacher, soldier, engineer…. They have so many facets to their lives, so we want to help best we can, whether it’s through an online format or synchronous online format or the way we bundle or curate education to easily fit into students’ lives. They can listen to lectures on the go and have readings in bite-sized portions. So, flexibility is really important.
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