States, localities, educational institutions, and employers around the country are exploring solutions to offer adults of all ages the postsecondary education and training opportunities they need to succeed and adapt to a fast-changing labor market. Below we highlight five of the most promising strategies being pursued that can help achieve that vision.

Support students’ success

When students start college, they face an array of confusing choices, lack support in homing in on their educational and career goals, and often spend time and money on coursework that isn’t aligned with their goals. Innovative efforts being scaled to help more students figure out their long-term objectives and best support them along the way include

• City University of New York’s (CUNY) Accelerated Study in Associate Programs (ASAP) which gives students a highly structured, intensively supported experience that combines blocked scheduling, robust advising, and more at no cost to students; and
• the “guided pathways” approach, adopted by more than 250 universities, which gives students a smaller number of options and clearer information about the direction they need to take to complete degrees.

Colleges are also reinventing how they deliver developmental and remedial education. Their strategies include integrating such instruction within college-level courses or offering “co-requisite” models, where developmental courses are taken at the same time as college-level courses. For example

• the California State University (CSU) recently began replacing noncredit prerequisite remedial courses with new credit-bearing or “stretch” courses that come with additional support.

Scaling and sustaining supports for students poses a significant challenge. Recently, though, several institutions have started to leverage technology to offer cost-effective support services at scale. Among the innovative solutions are

• Georgia State University’s use of predictive data analysis to forecast what students need in advising, course scheduling, and financial stability and wellness;
• Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation’s Integrated Planning and Advising for Student Success (iPASS), which helps students navigate the path to a certificate or a degree by combining advising, degree planning, alerts, and interventions. The tool also draws upon predictive analytics to help counselors and academic advisors know if a student is at risk of dropping out or failing; and
• Lone Star College’s Lone Star College Online, which provides academic advising, registration services, and tutoring online for students.

Provide alternative models of learning and credentialing

As the nature of work changes and student bodies become more diverse, education and training programs are offering high-quality learning options that can be integrated into people’s lives. At the heart of many of these efforts is the idea that students should be assessed based on the competencies they master, not their time in a classroom. Organizations leading the charge to promote wider adoption of this model include

• Lumina Foundation, which helped establish the Competency-Based Education Network (C-BEN), to support participating institutions in growing high-quality education options for students;
• the University of Wisconsin, whose UW Flexible Option invites students to “start any month, move at your own pace, and test whenever you’re ready;” and
• Salt Lake Community College, which is expanding competency-based education across disciplines to allow adult learners to earn credentials more quickly and at lower cost.

Competency-based models also include work-based learning opportunities such as internships, externships, and apprenticeships. Changemakers are exploring ways to offer these opportunities to more people and in more work settings and sectors. For example

• Apprenticeship Carolina is expanding apprenticeships in South Carolina through tax incentives, marketing the program to employers, and technical assistance for apprenticeship sponsors,  increasing its number of registered apprentices from 415 to nearly 3,000 over a decade;
• Kentucky is increasing the number and diversity of apprentices and expanding apprenticeships to new fields, including jobs in cybersecurity, health care, and software development; and
• the number of apprenticeship programs offered within the justice system tripled between 2000 and 2016, helping people leaving prison successfully transition into the labor market.

Online learning programs can give students access to education and skill-building programs on their own schedule, at their own pace, and (in some cases) adapted to their own learning needs. Such programs are often linked to competency-based models and are offered by both

• for-profit institutions like Capella University, which offers educational programs that are fully online; and
• nonprofit institutions such as Southern New Hampshire University, which grew from 2,500 students in campus-based programs to 90,000 students in mostly online programs over the past decade and a half.

Career pathways programs involve a series of structured steps and supports that give students the chance to earn credentials for entry-level positions, find jobs while they continue to participate in training, earn additional credentials, and ultimately advance into higher paid employment. Most efforts have focused on the first steps, but organizations are starting to focus more on the advancement side of the equation. For example

• Instituto del Progreso Latino embeds advancement within its Carreras en Salud (Careers in Health) program, helping students, especially graduates of the Basic Nursing Assistant programs, work toward an associate degree in nursing; and
• Generation’s Retail Career Advancement Program focuses on advancement by building the skills of entry-level frontline workers and helping them to develop credentials.

Better align education providers with employers

The future labor market will demand stronger connections between employers and education and training programs that equip people with in-demand skills. Local workforce development systems help bridge the gap between the skills employers demand and those developed in education and training programs. Examples include

• industry partnerships between educational institutions and employers, such as the National Fund for Workforce Solutions and the US Chamber of Commerce Foundation’s Talent Pipeline Management, which are defining and cataloguing the sets of skills that people’s credentials reflect, and strengthening employer-education partnerships; and
• the Greater Washington Partnership’s Capital CoLAB (Collaborative Leaders in Academia and Business), which is a joint effort of local colleges and business leaders to develop an IT certificate for undergraduate students in the  Washington, DC, region.

Technology is also playing an increasingly important role, helping employers, training providers, and workers understand the demand and supply of skills, and making credentials more transparent.

• Data-scraping technologies, like Burning Glass and Geographic Solutions, help state and local governments scan job postings and online resumes to determine if people’s skills align with available jobs; and
• Credential Engine is using a cloud-based registry to organize and make publicly available to students, employers, and institutions clear and consistent information on all types of credentials.

Major employers also are starting to reimagine how they support their workforce and advance people’s careers by expanding entry-level employees’ access to college and training. Among the private-sector leaders in this effort are

• Walmart, which launched partnerships with three universities to offer associate and bachelor’s degrees at low cost to workers;
• Amazon, whose Career Choice program helps hourly staff advance their careers by paying 95 percent of their tuition and fees and providing  on-site classrooms to make courses accessible for employees; and
• Google, which developed its own IT certification program, offered it on Coursera, and brought it to community colleges and other businesses looking to hire IT workers.

Expand financing for education and training

State and local funding and federal grants and loans to students provide the backbone of our higher education financing system. But public funding has not kept pace with rising college enrollment, increasing costs for students, many of whom aren’t able to cover their expenses even if they receive financial aid. Fresh solutions that might offer a path for curbing the student debt crisis are emerging nationwide, including

• College Promise programs, which pay tuition and fees not covered by other aid for students in community college degree and certificate programs;
• Income share agreements (ISA) like Purdue University’s Back a Boiler fund, in which students commit to pay a percentage of their future income for a set period in exchange for financial support for their education;
• ISAs offered through nonprofit social impact funds like Better Future Forward, which partners with college coaching programs.

Empower students to make informed choices

Until recently, students had few resources to help them decide whether a program of study would be worth their time and money, often choosing their college based on its reputation, advertisements, or campus visits. A mix of public and private actors are beginning to fill this void in information with fresh solutions, including

• the College Scorecard, the federal government’s report of the earnings of former students from most colleges nationwide;
• states like Virginia, which report earnings based on the major of former students who remained in the state after graduation; and
• PayScale, a website that provides the average self-reported salaries of a subset of the graduates of many colleges.

Drawing on conversations with an array of changemakers, we elevate five areas where data and analysis would help today’s education and training leaders, policymakers, businesses, and philanthropists advance an integrated system of lifelong learning and skill-building that equips America’s students and workers for success.

Equip institutions to scale effective education and training strategies

Colleges and training providers who want to scale up evidence-based approaches need better information about how to match supports to their students’ circumstances and needs, the costs of different models, and what effective implementation looks like in different institutional contexts. Many investments—from online learning and apprenticeships to local workforce programs—have achieved successful outcomes for students and employers. But too little is known about how best to scale them, both within and across institutions.  A program of research that consolidates and builds on lessons learned to date could provide timely insights and support continuous learning to help these institutions implement and scale proven programs that empower more students to complete degrees and earn industry-relevant credentials. Here’s how we can build that knowledge:

• assemble and share the latest evidence about promising education and training strategies, including what components are most important, how to provide comprehensive supports at scale, and how successful models can be adapted to work in more places;  
• assess lessons learned about technology-enhanced strategies such as predictive analytics and e-mentoring to determine what it would take to scale them; and
• produce a consistent set of cost and benefit measures for different education and training strategies so funders and educators can make more informed choices about how to invest.

Assess alternative learning models with a focus on equity

Leaders of higher education institutions and community-based training providers adopting new models of postsecondary education and training lack reliable evidence about what really works and for whom.  A rigorous program of knowledge-building and continuous knowledge-sharing focused explicitly on the effectiveness of new models for different types of learners could inform innovation and protect students.  Addressing gaps in knowledge in these areas would call for

• conducting rigorous evaluations of competency-based approaches, online learning, and other strategies to understand how they well they advance future opportunities for specific groups of students and career pathways; and
• interviewing and surveying students to understand their experiences with and perspectives on alternative postsecondary education models.

Document the skills employers demand

In order to offer postsecondary education choices that help adults of all ages gain the skills they need for a changing labor market, higher education and training providers need to better understand the perspectives and priorities of employers.  Colleges and training providers can glean much of this information when they engage in deeper partnerships with employers.  But better information about industry trends and about how employers think about investments in training would help postsecondary institutions who are just beginning to engage with industry, as well as those seeking to reach more employers and students.  Up-to-date and reliable information could also help advise students about occupations, sectors, and recruitment practices. And understanding private-sector investments in training could strengthen alignment between the postsecondary education system and employer-provided training. Achieving these outcomes would require

• partnering with employers to better document and share the full range of ways they invest in their employees’ education and training, and how they assess their return on investment;
• assessing partnerships between education and training providers and businesses to better understand how employers benefit;
• developing guides, tools, and indicators about proven approaches to improving workers’ skills; and
• mapping local workforce systems that connect employer demand with worker supply.

Better measure returns on students’ investment 

Policymakers and leaders of education and training institutions, public and private providers of education financing, and students and their families could all benefit from more information on the return on investment (ROI) from the range of educational and training programs available.  This would require

• building on efforts underway to create student-level longitudinal data systems that can generate institution- or program-level measures of return on investment;
• engaging state policymakers and higher education leaders in developing new ROI measures that are relevant and actionable for students; and
• engaging with students (and the next generation of potential students) to understand how they process information about their choices, what kind of ROI measures would be most meaningful and useful to them as they consider whether and where to go for postsecondary education or skill-building, and what additional support they need to navigate these decisions.

Inform responsible private financing

Income share agreements (ISA) and other private-sector financing models have the potential to supplement federal and state funding, making postsecondary education and training more affordable for more people. Federal and state legislators and regulators who want to create a policy environment in which experimentation is possible and consumers are protected from predatory actors don’t know enough about the potential risks—and how to mitigate them—or about how well ISAs may serve students with different backgrounds and different educational and career paths. Developing this environment calls for

• assembling evidence about common challenges faced by providers, both by convening ISA providers and surveying students who use them (including those now in repayment);
• drawing lessons from other areas, such as housing finance, about how to experiment with new financial products while protecting consumers;
• evaluating specific ISA-based interventions to determine their effects both when students are in college (e.g., on academic outcomes such as credits earned) and after they leave (e.g., on their financial health as they enter the labor market and enter repayment on student loans and ISAs); and
• developing open-source financial modeling tools based on ROI data to calculate circumstances under which ISAs will make sense for students and providers.

Based on the Lifelong Learning Catalyst Brief, written by Shayne Spaulding, Marcela Montes, Matthew Chingos, Ian Hecker.