2025 was the final calendar year of Calbright’s “start-up” period, and will be remembered as the time that the bold experiment in education and workforce development for adult students started by the California Legislature just seven years ago kept its promise and came to fruition.
Calbright kicked off 2025 being named one of the top online education providers. Over the course of the year the college increased its enrollment by 66% and expanded its student body into 57 of California’s 58 counties.
Calbright made headlines, including in Workshift by Paul Fain, with its research initiatives on ways to better support adult learners, supported the development of new and exciting EdTech tools for community colleges, and partnered with statewide organizations including the Rural County Representatives of California to better reach students in rural areas..
At the same time, Calbright’s administration and faculty played leadership roles in national and state organizations. The College’s President and CEO, Ajita Talwalker Menon, serves on the Board of Directors for the Competency-Based Education Network (C-BEN), a nonprofit international leader in helping institutions and employers advance skills-based learning; while Calbright technology faculty member Michael Stewart is one of just five faculty members across California who belong to the California Community College Chancellor’s AI Conversations working group – helping to set the parameters and policies for AI across the entire CCC system.
Calbright’s research initiatives also began to receive widespread recognition. A report by the Center for Higher Education Policy and Practice(CHEPP) at Southern New Hampshire University (SNHU) highlighted Calbright’s leadership nationwide in career focused learning, and a recent article in The Hechinger Report highlighted cites Calbright as a significant leader in developing fresh approaches that establish new best practices for adult learners.
Research conducted by Calbright and other community colleges shows that one of the greatest barriers to adult students completing their programs are difficulties meeting basic needs in their lives: Issues like food scarcity and difficulty getting medical care can make it more challenging, or impossible, for students to meet their educational goals. And so perhaps no new research initiative at the college is more exciting than its work, begun in 2025, to help its students identify need for support with their basic needs like healthcare and food security, find the assistance they qualify for, and get connected to resources.
Through its pilot research initiative, Calbright is now able to monitor students’ applications if they apply through the statewide BenefitsCal portal – which means Calbright counselors and staff can work directly with students to help them navigate the process, providing both automated and personalized support. The early results are promising, and at the end of 2025 Calbright is taking that research to the next level – partnering with Barstow Community College and Los Angeles Trade Technical College (LATTC) to further test, develop, and expand that research to help more students.
Calbright ended 2025 as a nationally recognized leader in online education and student-focused research. The College also awarded nearly 2,000 certificates of completion – nearly doubling the total number of certificates it had awarded in all years prior.
As Calbright looks to 2026, students, employer partners, policymakers, and supporters can expect the College to continue showing why its innovative model works at scale, meets the needs of California’s labor market, and is the institution needed to deliver high student satisfaction. There are more students to serve, more research to conduct, more experiments to try. Calbright enters 2026 knowing that the best may be yet to come.
