September 13, 2024
The experiences of adults at nine colleges in Virginia, Michigan, and New Jersey offer valuable insights for colleges working to improve the economic mobility of adult learners.
Jobs for the Future recently conducted focus groups and separately surveyed adult learners and advisors to learn about their experiences with career advising and student support. The focus groups (57 adult learners) and survey participants (645 adult learners and 131 advisors) were from nine community colleges across Michigan, New Jersey, and Virginia that are part of JFF and Achieving the Dream’s Improving Economic Mobility for Adult Learners Initiative. This blog covers key recommendations emerging from this research.
Tina, a 35-year-old mother of two, works part time in a retail store earning $15 per hour. She is taking courses at a local community college hoping to earn an associate’s degree. While she feels good about pursuing a credential so she can earn more to support her family, she is often stressed by the balancing act, with roles as mother, student, and worker. She is hoping that a degree will help her move into a higher-paying position, but she would like more advice about what degree would put her in the best position to advance. Tina has been able to secure a child care subsidy for her preschool-age child, but she decided to drop one of her classes so she could take care of her school-age child after school.
Tina is a composite of the many community college students we surveyed. About 43% of community college learners are 22 or older, and one in five students are parents, as noted in research by the American Association of Community Colleges and Child Trends. Our research confirms what other studies have shown about the needs and experiences of adult learners: most seek college credentials to advance in their careers and benefit from intentional and structured career guidance that occurs at the start of their college journey, rather than at the end. Adult learners, like many community college students juggling work, caregiving, and school, often find that the academic and non-academic support services offered are not tailored to their unique needs, lived experiences, perspectives, career goals, or ways of engaging.
Early conversations about career goals can have huge implications for an adult learner’s success. Since adults often enter college with specific goals, such as getting a better job or moving up in their career, receiving early career advising to further clarify those goals and design a plan to achieve them can mean the difference between finishing or not.
As the adult learners we spoke with discussed the policies, programs, and services that help them succeed, and those that stand in the way, most described a college environment that supports all students equitably and sets resource and program priorities based on an understanding of their students. Colleges that want to attract and retain learners of all ages are more successful when they build programs and services that are flexible and tailored to an individual student’s life circumstances and experiences. And while free college programs go a long way toward making college more accessible, research from MDRC and others indicates that free tuition alone is not enough to improve persistence and success. One solution featured in our recommendations is credit for prior learning (CPL), which allows students to have their previous skills and knowledge accounted for through earned credits, saving students both time and money. Our key takeaway is that improving outcomes for adult students, and indeed all students, requires colleges to apply a personalized, evidence-based, and equitable student-centered approach when designing policies and practices. Student voice is a central tenet of student-centered design.
The colleges that are part of the Improving Economic Mobility for Adult Learners Initiative are listening carefully to their adult learners and applying principles of student-centered design as they work to address the needs of their adult students.
The adult learners and advisors we spoke with and surveyed point to some specific and actionable recommendations to improve their college experiences and outcomes.
Colleges that want to attract and retain learners of all ages are more successful when they build programs and services that are flexible and tailored to each student’s life circumstances and experiences.
Respondents expressed a desire for advisors to provide more than just help with choosing courses. Learners want more holistic career counseling, scholarship guidance, and options for combining education with work experience. They want information about what jobs are in high demand and pay good wages, what credentials are required to get those jobs, how long it will take, and what it will cost.
Only 32% of respondents reported that their advisor discussed the education and training required for certain jobs.
“I feel like the current system is more… responsive, not proactive.”
Half of the students we spoke with said that they didn’t have conversations about careers during their advising sessions. And they noted that career guidance was often only available to students who asked for it, rather than a routine offering for all students. This was also true of credit for prior learning or other opportunities to accelerate credential completion. Even at colleges where it was possible to receive credit for work experience or an industry credential, most students weren’t informed about it and advisors generally weren’t trained to discuss it.
Early conversations about career goals can have huge implications for an adult learner’s success. Since adults often enter college with specific goals, such as getting a better job or moving up in their career, receiving early career advising to further clarify those goals and design a plan to achieve them can mean the difference between finishing or not. Indiana’s Ivy Tech has redesigned advising so that every student receives early career coaching, a practice that colleges in this initiative are putting in place. In addition, while opportunities to earn CPL can significantly accelerate a student’s path to a college credential, the Council for Adult and Experiential Learning and others found that CPL is not available for many programs of study, not easy to earn, and not widely understood or communicated at most colleges. We also found that a smaller share of women than men received information about CPL, leaving them without the information to access the accelerated experience that CPL can provide. That may be related to the prevalence of CPL for military experience. Significant work remains to be done for colleges to redesign internal processes, policies, and practices to improve awareness and use of CPL and for states to incentivize two- and four-year institutions to improve the transferability of credits earned through CPL.
57% of advisors reported they had “rarely” or “never” received specific training from their college on advising adult learners with unique needs.
While advisors agree that students need more career advice, many of the advisors we surveyed said they didn’t feel equipped to engage as meaningfully as they would like. High-impact practices to build advisor capacity to serve on the front line of career conversations include providing ongoing training opportunities, clear processes, and easy access to vital career navigation support. Likewise, for discussion of CPL to become a standard part of adult learners’ advising experiences, advisors need to be trained, and information related to CPL learning policies needs to be easily accessible and clear for students and advisors alike.
Finally, college leadership can ensure that consistent processes are in place. Students surveyed described wide variability in information shared about careers, CPL, and support services. Protocols establishing norms for advising benefit adult learners and all students.
“I remember one professor put together the career-related positions in the presentation slide on the first class day.”
The students we spoke with said they didn’t expect all the information and guidance to come from advisors alone. They identified faculty and other student services staff who can provide valuable career support to complement meaningful advising conversations. Some students praised faculty who provided personal career guidance, took a more proactive approach to academic support, and put course material in a career context. Faculty engagement in careers is also important for internships, job shadowing, and other forms of work-based learning experiences.
Student-facing faculty and staff need training, resources, and tools to be able to provide proactive and targeted career support to adult learners and the empowerment to provide this support equitably and consistently. This will require ongoing professional learning opportunities, redesigned processes and protocols, reallocation of job responsibilities, and increased accountability. Embedding the responsibility of career guidance across all faculty and staff provides collective support to augment what advisors provide.
“I’m struggling to find courses for spring and summer because I have to take a minimum of six credits, and they’re only offering me five in my program.”
The adult learners we spoke with described several institutional barriers they encountered. Challenges they faced included uncertainty about scheduling of courses required for credential completion, limited class availability, and last-minute cancellation of courses, which upended work schedules. Other obstacles included policies and practices such as academic probation and course retake policies, registration holds for (often small) unpaid fees, and attendance, incomplete grades, and course withdrawal. Equity-minded colleges are reviewing their policies from the perspective of adult students, balancing institutional needs with the needs of a large and growing population of adult learners. Considering the barriers certain policies can pose can make the difference between a student achieving a credential or dropping out.
The students we spoke with said that they appreciated being seen as adults who brought life experience and diverse contributions to the classroom. Their relationships with staff and faculty were important to their motivation to remain enrolled and complete credentials. While many of the adult learners in our study described feeling overlooked by an education system that wasn’t designed with them in mind, they said they felt most supported when they developed relationships with caring faculty and staff that amplified their voices and empowered them to develop agency and advocacy to advance on their pathways to social and economic mobility. Some noted that having a single point of contact for advising and access to services helped create a sense of belonging. Similarly, adult learners said that they were highly appreciative of instructors who recognized and responded to the challenges they faced by providing additional support and guidance. Students also said that they appreciated support that came from other students, especially opportunities to connect with other adult students through spaces for peer engagement, study groups, and tutoring. The various supports they described are represented on several campuses, including those engaged in the Caring Campus initiative.
His job is not just a paycheck for him.... He wants to see the student succeed.
Student on the importance of faculty support
Adult learners studying at community colleges have tremendous insights into the type of advising, services, and support that would most help them succeed. Community colleges that make an effort to listen to their students and adapt to their specific needs will be most successful in retaining students and ensuring that they complete the skills and credentials they need for economic and social advancement throughout their lives.
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