Completing college presents steep challenges for many working adults, who need to manage costs while also balancing their home and work lives. Adult students’ lagging college persistence and completion rates led Shasta College to launch its Accelerated College Education (ACE) program. ACE offers a promising approach to reducing common barriers that often prevent adults from achieving their postsecondary goals.
From Practice to Policy: How Institutions Accelerate Adult Completion and Fuel Prosperity is the second publication in California Competes’ policy brief series focused on institutional innovation.
key findings
Accelerated pathways shift the paradigm from a focus on improving students’ college readiness to improving colleges’ student readiness
Increasing enrollment on-ramps, predictability, flexibility, and compressed term formats may increase the likelihood of completion for working students
Employers and students alike could benefit from maximizing investments in college-based workforce training
Incentivizing reciprocity of credit between colleges could increase completion for millions of swirling students
Read our first publication in the series, From Practice to Policy: How Institutions Leverage Data to Improve Outcomes.
