The adult learner doesn’t fit into a neat category. This is not a population of one-size-fits-all. The estimated eight million adult learners in the U.S. do have at least one thing in common – they are learners who have not followed the traditional pathway from high school to college to career.

“[Adult learners] can be lots of different ages. They could be student parents who are 20. They could be midcareer professionals. There are all kinds of subcategories of adult learners,” says Beth Doyle, Ed.D., senior vice president for initiatives and solutions for CAEL (Council for Adults and Experiential Learning), which works with educators, employers, and community leaders to help adults achieve long-term career success.

“We do know there are some consistent things that are going on, which is that they have lots of responsibilities outside of their learning, whether those are work responsibilities or caretaking responsibilities,” she explains.

“Sometimes they’re looking after generations,” adds Caroline McKinnon, director of SkillRise and adult education, an ISTE initiative that helps organizations incorporate edtech into adult education programs.

“They already have at least one job. Of course they’re lifelong learners, but they have to fit it in around what they’re already doing,” she says. “They’re juggling so much. They are saying, ‘Well, I can take this much else on because I want to improve. I want to approve the opportunities for my kids.”

“You can see this population as being really at the frontline of where our social safety nets are inadequate,” says Christina Yancey, vice president of workforce programs with the American Institutes for Research (AIR) – a research nonprofit.

She says, “These are a lot of individuals with high mobility that have received early education in other countries. There’s a lot of individuals where English is their second language, where the early systems have failed them, whether that’s here in the U.S. or in their countries of origin.”

Calls for Improvement in the Adult Education System

Organizations supporting adult education say there are pathways to opportunities but suggest that the system, as it stands, needs to improve in order to give adult learners their best chance at economic mobility and success.

Doyle says, “Workforce development boards often think about career pathways, but they often think about pathways into entry-level jobs because that’s what they’re mandated to do. They’re not often tasked with thinking about extended pathways. What happens next? And employers don’t always pick up that banner either.”

She also adds employers can be key in the space, “Employers can be really helpful – not just offering tuition assistance but being able to participate in building career pathways or showing clear progression. ‘If you have this kind of credential or degree, you can move into these kinds of jobs.’ When the employer can make that very clear and then offer financial support for people to get there, it can be extremely powerful.

“Adults need career relevance. They need to understand where this is going to take them in their career.”

McKinnon says, “There needs to be more money spent on workforce associations, libraries, job coaching, because it’s for our benefit – in a time when we have a labor crisis. We have a huge percentage of the population – whether it’s because they don’t have the right paperwork or they don’t have the right certification – who are not getting these jobs.”

She also explains the need for employers to have a greater skills-first mindset, “Companies are ‘hiring in’ as opposed to ‘hiring up’ and so they’re going to lose this talent pool because we’ve put too much emphasis on having the right background, having the right degree, having the right thing.”

Yancey says, “There is a workforce system through the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA) that provides federal support for [adult] education programs. When you look at those investments and the breakdown of how much resources get put into these programs, it’s really quite inadequate.”

Regarding learn-and-earn as another viable pathway, Yancey explains, “If we’re looking at something that is really balancing both employer needs and worker interest, it’s important to enter into programs like formal apprenticeships or apprenticeship models where the worker is gaining something that allows them to have something that’s transferable as a skill and where they can potentially earn an income while getting trained.

“You need intermediaries or support to be connected with these specific lanes of opportunity. But they are increasing, and we continue to see this as being a growth area.”

Support for the Adult Ed Instructor

Yancey explains that many adult education programs are administered through county and state networks, with funding following the public school system model. But explains there is a lot of turnover in the educator population and not enough resources in place to support them.

Yancey says, “These educators are not only balancing the fact that they’re working in an industry where the support for their resources is limited, but they’re also supporting individuals that are in very different need structures related to the kinds of skills that they need to learn to be successful.”

She also mentions that integrated education and training (IET) curriculum supports contextualized learning that could be impactful for this population, “but the amount of programming for adult education that does have an IET focus is only about 5% of the total programming.”

Yancey points to an AIR initiative that addresses supports for instructors – the California Adult Literacy Professional Development Project (CALPRO). “We support all of the state leadership development for the California Department of Education, and through that work we develop training and supports for ongoing professional development for teachers in California.”

Obstacles to Higher Education Pathway

One postsecondary pathway option is enrolling in a two- or four-year college. Around 30% of currently enrolled college students didn’t enter college until their 20s or later. More than a third of undergraduate students are at least 25 years old.

With so many in the adult learner category, CAEL recommends that postsecondary institutions look at ways to better serve adult learners.

“If colleges are not structured to provide [initial enrollment and onboarding] to adults in the way that adults can process them in the course of their busy lives, that can be a big obstacle,” says Doyle.

Improvements could include “credit for prior learning, both as an affordability mechanism to save people money on the path toward the degree and from an academic empowerment perspective of feeling like they have the learning, the expertise to make it through college.”

CAEL also recommends that colleges reexamine how they approach advising and coaching their older students. “If it’s too structured [toward] traditional students, adult learners don’t use it. We know that it’s beneficial for adult learners. [But] it has to be holistic and take into account their life circumstances, as well,” says Doyle.

She adds, “When you start one little program that helps adult learners in isolation, it’s kind of like putting snow tires on your car. But if the engine won’t work in the cold weather, then the snow tires are no good.”

CAEL recently completed yet-to-be released research with several Texas institutions that put that framework into action, says Doyle. “Many of these institutions were surprised to find how many of their learners were adult learners because they were not actually breaking them out in any meaningful way in the data reporting that they were doing. By changing that, they really did change the mindset at the institution about this population.”

She also notes short-term credentials can lead to an associate’s degree and beyond, “We’re very big fans of stackability and it connects to credit for prior learning. A great short-term credential for somebody is to have some kind of short-term digital skills training.”

Adult Learners’ Need to Understand Existing Skills

McKinnon mentions newly released SkillRise research, “We recently completed a project where we’re actually talking to job seekers and adult learners to say, ‘Well, does this technology resonate with you? Is this what you need to move forward?’”

The research takeaways confirm job seekers’ need for digital skills training and growing awareness of how skills-based tools can be used to advance in school and at work.

“I think the bigger issue when it comes to adult learners is they don’t understand what their skills are,” says McKinnon. “Nobody has told them, ‘You have these amazing skills.’”

Regionally Specific Opportunity for the Adult Learner

Gladeo Inc. is a California-based public benefit corporation focused on edtech and workforce tech solutions. Michelle Cho, co-founder and CEO, explains, “Our mission is to build a more inclusive, equitable, and prepared workforce.”

She explains, “We provide K through 12, community colleges, government agencies, workforce agencies with regional career navigation platforms.”

Last year, for its expansion into support for adult learners, the organization was named – by the U.S. Department of Education – the grand-prize winner of the Future Finder Challenge. “When we were doing the Challenge, we learned a lot about this hidden market, this hidden population that had been very, very much neglected,” says Cho.

“I think the reason why there’s a huge focus is because we’re having a labor shortage in many different industries – health care, pharmaceuticals, infrastructure. We need everybody to fill the pipeline. Even the silver tsunami – older people, too. There are a lot of jobs that are not getting filled, so they’re reaching out to all populations for those jobs.”

Cho echoes other interviewees saying adult learners aren’t always aware of their own skill sets, “We create tools like, ‘What skills do you already have based off of your job experience and your life experience?’ And this is where we’re extremely inclusive.”

She stresses navigating workforce resources can be a daunting process. “There’s a job board here. There’s a WhatsApp for training. As a user, as an adult worker, that’s really complicated. We consolidated into one and we’re connecting the whole ecosystem into one platform.”

Cho explains how the platform process – which is based on county data – can work, “What can you do in your region, let’s say, in health care in two months? You can be a phlebotomist. Where can you get trained? Here’s where you can get the certificate. Here’s the job. Here’s the labor market data.

“We have maps that help you while you’re a phlebotomist. What can you do for night school, getting an associate’s degree to now be, let’s say, an LVN (licensed vocational nurse)? So, then you start to advance in your career.”

Gladeo – which launched in Los Angeles County before expanding to other counties in California – now has a presence in Colorado, New York, rural Tennessee, and is getting underway in the Texas panhandle.

Cho invokes a sense of purpose for learners, “The research does show when you do something that fits your personality, your passion, and what the world needs, you actually do thrive, and you do better in your career. I’m really into that Japanese philosophy of ‘ikigai’ (purpose).”

Looking Forward – ‘More agency for adult learners’

“When it comes to supporting education in a way that’s meaningful for work, know that these students often have their competing issues related to their economic stability. They need to be working,” says Yancey. “To the extent that we’re able to support them with skills and development that’s directly related to helping improve their economic stability, we see that as being just so critical.”

Doyle acknowledges, “I think we’re still pounding on doors. I’ll be honest. I think that, again, it’s converting talk into action. I think there’s a lot more recognition of adult learners, but then how are you actually going to change what you’re doing to serve them?”

McKinnon says, “There is definitely reason to be optimistic because I would say that 10, 15 years ago, learning was very pigeonholed in the sense that you went, you learned and you moved on, got a job.”

She says that it’s a step in the right direction as we’re hearing more conversations about lifelong learning and skills. “There’s going to be a lot more agency for adult learners to be able to tailor their education more to what they need.”

McKinnon adds, in the right hands, she hopes some stumbling blocks will be removed if “AI is going to kill the cover letter and, in some ways, the resume.”

She offers a parting thought, “Adult education is opening a door to a world possibility. Students will step through it, and they’ll use it in whichever way that they want to. And most adult learners will step through that door, and they’ll find a world that wasn’t open to them before. And it’s beautiful.”