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Reimagining College Is The Best Way To Get Adult Students To Come Back

While the growing movement to emphasize skills over degrees in hiring is critical to getting more people off the sidelines of our economy and into good jobs, there is still a shortage of applicants for crucial roles across the country that require college degrees. 

Last month, the Hechinger Report announced that “states want adults to return to college.” There are 36.8 million Americans with some college experience but not a degree, the article noted, and New Jersey, Michigan, Ohio, and California are just some of the states with new initiatives, or where colleges are working with non-profit partners, to get people who dropped out of college to come back.

The need is twofold: States need adult students to go back to college to fill these important, and often good-paying, jobs. Colleges need adults to go back to classes because, the article notes, there have been drops in college enrollment during the pandemic, and there is a significant drop in the total number of 18-year olds beginning in 2025. For colleges to keep the same number of students, they need to reach out to less traditional populations, mainly adult learners.

Unfortunately, as the Hechinger Report notes, “many roadblocks stand in the way.”

“The reasons they haven’t finished are many,” the article says. “They’re working full time; they’re caring for children, aging parents or other family members; they can’t cope with the bureaucratic work needed to re-enroll.” Or the financial barriers are too high.

Re-Imagining College To Make It Accessible

The state and non-profit efforts that The Hechinger Report describes are focused on giving support to adult students by helping them overcome the barriers that can make college inaccessible. Ohio, for example, has programs offering $5,000 of debt forgiveness to adult college students looking to re-enroll. The non-profit ReUp Education, which has a partnership with the state of New Jersey, offers one-on-one coaching to adults looking to return to college. It helps them navigate the complications and red tape of the higher education system.

This is all good work, and should be encouraged, but there is another approach: instead of finding more ways to work around the barriers that make college inaccessible … we can remove those barriers. Make college more accessible to everyone.

Calbright was created by the state of California not just to help students get access, but to reinvent community college in ways that eliminate barriers to access entirely. 

Calbright is free to Californians, which eliminates barriers of cost.

Calbright accepts all adult Californians with a high school diploma (or equivalent) who apply, and they can apply and begin any time during the year, which eliminates barriers of bureaucracy and timing. It also helps overcome psychological barriers to applying. As The Hechinger Report notes, “many adults face mental blocks about returning to college,” asking themselves, “‘What if they don’t accept me?’ ‘What if I’m not good enough?’ ‘What if I organized so much of my life to do this and they still say no?’” Calbright says yes.

Calbright is entirely online and will provide students who need them with wifi hotspots and laptops, eliminating barriers of location and technology.

Calbright’s Competency-Based Education system allows students to study at their own pace and on their own schedules, as quickly or as carefully as they need to go, eliminating barriers of scheduling and deadlines that are incompatible with many working adults’ lives. 

Calbright isn’t just high tech, it’s high touch, with each student having support teams who know them personally, along with access to communities and mentors, thereby eliminating the barrier of isolation that can make succeeding college so difficult for adults and non-traditional students.

Helping students overcome the barriers to access that traditional colleges put up is a good thing – but Calbright’s approach is to eliminate those barriers entirely, and we think that’s better. It means that thousands of adults can return to college on their own terms, giving their own lives and the state economy the boost they need. 

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