For millions of working-age adults in California, gaining the skills needed for a better job often feels out of reach. While work-based learning, including internships and career coaching, is proven to land students good jobs, most programs are rarely built for adult learners who face barriers to time, cost, and schedule flexibility.
To bridge this gap, College Futures Foundation and Calbright College are launching a major new initiative. Calbright will collaborate with industry, labor, health care, and research leaders — including Riipen, AlliedUp Cooperative, SEIU-UHW, and HCM Strategists, as well as institutional partners at sister colleges — to test and improve how to successfully help adult learners translate their skills and experiences into jobs.
Through this effort, called ACCESS+, Calbright will build upon its work connecting adult learners under two separate programs:
- For Calbright alumni, learning how to build greater access to short-term paid “micro-internships” that are designed to remove the access barriers adult learners usually face in work-based learning.
- For Calbright community health worker students, focusing on personalized career coaching that can bridge the gap between education and employment.
By gathering evidence on what works, this partnership aims to build a scalable blueprint for more than 6.8 million adult learners with credentials, and millions more looking to upskill, reskill and pivot careers across California.
“California has always been a beacon of innovation, but true progress requires that every working-age adult has a clear pathway to economic mobility,” said Ajita Talwalker Menon, president and CEO of Calbright College. “This partnership with College Futures Foundation provides an opportunity to create a scalable blueprint for our entire state on connecting adult learners to gainful employment. By demonstrating how flexible, paid micro-internships and targeted career coaching can break down long-standing barriers, we can transform how we support adult learners and develop access to the workforce our regional and statewide employers need.”
“Our partnership with Calbright College will explore how evolving learning models can address a persistent challenge for working learners: the disconnect between educational attainment and access to quality employment,” said Rebecca Ruan-O’Shaughnessy, director of program & strategy at College Futures Foundation. “The Career Bridge Micro-Internship and Community Health Worker pilots will help us learn how different approaches to work-based learning can address barriers and improve educational and workforce outcomes and pathways to economic mobility.”
Work Based Learning Is Not Optional
Learning in a classroom, by itself, isn’t enough. Work-based learning is widely acknowledged to be a vital component of adult learners’ education and workforce training experience — not something only undergraduates or those early in their careers need.
A recent report from the Center for Higher Education Policy and Programs at Southern New Hampshire University called for work-based learning and career connections “to be integrated into all learning degree types and modalities in higher education,” and cited Calbright as a leader in this effort.
Unfortunately, there is significant demand, and programs have traditionally not been designed in a way that celebrates the skills adults bring to education and work-based learning.
“Opportunities like paid internships, apprenticeships, and co-ops have been found to improve performance in college, employment opportunities, salaries, and career satisfaction,” the Southern New Hampshire University report said. “While learners recognize the value of these opportunities, they may lack access to them. At four-year institutions, while 70% of first-year learners expressed interest in a paid internship, only 25% of seniors reported completing one. At community colleges, over two-thirds of learners said they wished to participate in work-based learning, while only 14% of learners actually participated in work experience as part of their education program.”
Businesses value these experiences as much as students. Writing in University Business, Riipen president Dana Stephenson noted, “Work-based learning is now widely recognized as a crucial component in preparing students for success after graduation,” and four out of five employers say they’re more likely to hire recent graduates who have had a work-based learning opportunity like an internship or apprenticeship.
Dr. Shannon McCarty, Calbright College’s Vice President of Learning & Instruction, has put it succinctly: “Experiential learning isn’t optional.”
McCarty added: “Learners want to practice what they’re learning and prove their skills before hitting the job market, and they want to do so in real workplace settings. They’re not just looking for knowledge. They want confidence and job readiness from day one.”
But how to best provide that? For all the research showing how important work-based learning experiences are, there is comparatively little research showing how students — especially adult learners — can get the most out of them, and how work-based learning can be designed most effectively.
That’s where the College Futures Foundation and Calbright partnership come in, and will learn directly with adult learners how work-based learning can best lead to economic mobility for these students.
Working with College Futures Foundation and the other partners, Calbright will:
- Test different approaches to bridging education and employment through work-based learning
- Generate evidence on which factors deliver greatest impact and outcomes for our population of learners.
- Develop actionable insights to support scaling and inform future policy.
And ultimately determine how to enhance economic mobility for adult students.
