In December 2024, in collaboration with the Pennsylvania Department of Education, we launched the Adult Learner Re-Engagement Community of Practice. Since then, participants from colleges and universities across Pennsylvania have come together regularly to share resources and expertise as they work to re-enroll students with some college credits but no credential.

Because engagement with adult learners can involve multiple departments and people at different times, goal-setting has been important in helping participants structure and track their efforts. Together we are centering these on:

  • Assess and Identify
  • Connect and Engage
  • Enroll and Retain
  • Support and Graduate

These goals reflect the broader interests that many institutions have in better understanding the students who have stopped out and simplifying their pathway to credential attainment wherever possible. Since the community first met in December, many participants have used session learnings to make their goals more specific to certain outcomes or student needs. These revisions also reflect the importance of making the most efficient use of schools’ limited resources and time; the process for student identification and engagement, in particular, can be demanding if certain infrastructure isn’t already in place.

Assess and Identify

To assess and identify students to re-engage, institutions often have to develop specific criteria (e.g., students with at least 90 credits who left in good academic standing), which requires coordination with various offices to gather information on completed credits, administrative holds, and more. Additionally, institutions must determine whether these students have earned credentials elsewhere. Participants from two institutions have described how they’ve refined their goals around how to identify potential adult learners and set their recruitment targets:

  • A participant from a small university in Philadelphia refined their initial recruitment goal using the SMART framework, which we covered during the first session. The goal outlined a multi-channel re-engagement plan to recruit 15-30 students for each adult learner program for Fall 2026.
  • A participant from a southwestern Pennsylvania college shifted their goal focus to re-recruiting former stopped out students instead of mapping the re-enrollment process. After creating an identification plan, they plan to cross-reference the research office’s database with National Student Clearinghouse data to filter out former students who completed a credential somewhere else.

Connect and Engage

Web pages can be an important first step in connecting with stopped out students if they are designed with the adult learner’s needs in mind. Often, important information about things like cost, support services and program flexibility are buried. Two participants described how they are setting—and executing on—goals to meet this need:

  • A two-year college in eastern Pennsylvania went from doing a general revision of the adult learner admissions page to focusing on better marketing existing resources. After realizing that a high percentage of the student population are learners with some college credit and no credential and that support resources aren’t centralized, they are now using survey feedback from returning students to determine the key resources to feature on that page.
  • Another participant from a southeastern Pennsylvania university also aimed to revise web pages for adult learners and re-enrollees, but encountered limited bandwidth from the communication team. They secured support from senior leadership members to build institutional buy-in. They plan to complete webpage review in the spring and share design recommendations in the fall.

Enroll and Retain

A key challenge for adult learners is finding programs with flexible schedules that can fit around work and caregiving responsibilities. Clear information on class format and timing can influence a student’s decision to re-enroll and persist, but institutions often struggle to offer this flexibility. Our participants have also taken a look at whether the programs they offer meet the needs of adult learners:

  • A participant from a Philadelphia university reviewed existing academic programs to assess whether they would meet the needs of adult learners and provide workforce-ready degrees. Now, they are developing two degree options that can be taught asynchronously, with faculty helping to design a rotation of courses for an eight-week format.

Support and Graduate

Supporting adult learners to graduation may require institutions to provide additional wraparound services, which require coordination across departments to meet the diverse academic, financial, and personal needs of these students. Once students are enrolled, participants are focusing on their support needs to help get them to the finish line.

  • The participant from the Philadelphia university, recognizing that students with some college, no credential may require additional support, is meeting with offices that offer student services to determine who can provide guidance to adult re-enrollees.
  • A participant from a college in southeast Pennsylvania is establishing a cross-department committee to streamline credit evaluation and credit for prior learning processes while coordinating communication between financial aid, registrar, and academic affairs offices in order to provide more comprehensive support for returning students.

Moving Forward

The Pennsylvania community of practice participants are making great strides towards their goals using the shared knowledge and resources from each session. Student identification, engagement channels, recruitment strategies, and program design are all crucial to enrolling students and supporting their persistence. By gathering information on former students who haven’t completed their credential or degree somewhere else, institutions can focus on outreach to those who may be more interested in returning. Curating engagement channels like webpages to outline clear next steps and core resources can help sustain the initial connection as institutions work towards getting students to enroll and register for classes. Offering programs and course formats designed for returning students with jobs and caretaking responsibilities can also make enrolling more appealing to students and improve their chances of completing the credential. As the community of practice continues through the fall, we hope to see more institutions consider the needs of their adult learners and align offices and departments to build on existing policies and programs to encourage their enrollment and graduation.