Helping Adult Learners Succeed | 040 | Designing for Real Life
Learn how data can inform adult learner outcomes.
Sometimes one sharp insight is all we need to hold on, reset, or reengage with purpose.
Practical takeaways pulled from the Student Success Podcast, so you don’t have to listen to the whole episode (unless you want to).
Episode with Kathy Booth: Show Notes | Apple | Spotify
Most “adult learners” at community colleges aren’t actually unusual. They’re the majority.
But our systems still treat them like exceptions, as if they have time to sit in class all day, follow linear academic sequences, and wait years before seeing economic benefit.
As Kathy Booth shared on the Student Success Podcast, the reality is this:
Adult learners are managing work, family, finances, and school. If we don’t design for that complexity, we lose them.
And when we lose them, we lose our communities.
Key Insight #1: Redefine Adult Learners
We tend to define “adult learners” by age. That’s too narrow.
Many of our so-called “traditional” students are working full-time, caring for family, or managing household responsibilities.
This is not a special subgroup.
This is the student body.
Action Step:
Design for the students you have, not the ones we used to imagine.
For example, take a guided pathways program map and redesign it for someone who can only attend nights and weekends. Could they access student services or the library? Now imagine that they need to get to a well-paid job quickly. How long would it actually take them to finish the program?
Understand your students. Their..
Work schedules
Caregiving responsibilities
Time availability
Enrollment goals
Key Insight #2: Focus on Flexibility
Rigid schedules push students out.
Flexible structures pull them in.
What helps:
Short-term, stackable credentials
Evening, weekend, hybrid, and modular courses
Partnerships with employers and workforce agencies
Audit your course schedules through one lens:
“Can a working adult reasonably do this?”
If the answer is no, the structure, not the student, is the barrier.
Action Steps:
Identify three CTE programs associated with high-demand occupations and mock up how that program could be completed in one term.
Identify a transfer-oriented program that is attractive to adults like business and map out how much time an individual could save if you offered year-round course taking (no summers off).
Determine the feasibility of leveraging your early childhood education programs to provide onsite childcare.
Identify how your counseling team could partner with workforce entities to determine which public benefits they are eligible for to cover living expenses.
Key Insight #3: Leverage Skills Builder Data
“Skills builders” are students who take one or two courses to get a raise or improve job security. They often succeed then disappear from our radar.
We label it attrition.
They consider it success.
The opportunity:
Skills builders have already demonstrated success at your college. You can grow enrollment and strengthen stackable credential pathways by contacting them and alerting them to the jobs they would be eligible for if they built on that single course by completing a related certificate.
Action Step:
Use DataVista resources to clarify how you can identify and better serve skills builders.
Key Insight #4: Prioritize Equity
Adult learners, especially students of color and low-income students, face the steepest systemic barriers and yet they are often directed to programs that teach only narrow technical skills. This widens the opportunity gap because they may not have the 21st Century skills that will be necessary for career advancement.
We need to:
Connect skills to long-term advancement, not just short-term wages
Align liberal arts + technical skills for mobility into management
Action Step:
Support students in short-term programs to identify the 21st Century skills they have obtained in class and in their lives that will make them a more compelling candidate. Support them to articulate the skills they have related to the careers they want.
Equity without specificity is decoration.
Key Insight #5: Build Clear Career Pathways
Most adult learners don’t have the luxury of “figuring it out later.” If they can’t see where a program leads, they stop.
Action Step:
Integrate labor market data and salary ranges directly into:
Advising/counseling conversations
Syllabi
Canvas shells
Classroom slides
Clarity expands aspiration.
Key Insight #6: Engage Faculty in the Change Process
Faculty are the most influential messengers in the building.
But they must be equipped:
With labor market insights
With real examples of applied learning
With language that connects course outcomes to real jobs
Action Step:
Offer short, practical workshops:
“How to Connect This Course to Career Pathways (5–10 minutes a week)”
Small faculty moves → big shifts in relevance.
Key Insight #7: Move Beyond Pilots
Pilots feel good.
But they don’t change systems.
Action Step:
Adopt a Guided Pathways or systems-change approach so improvements become structural, not episodic.
When we design for the whole, not the exception, the outcomes shift for everyone.
The Bottom Line
Adult learners are not the outliers. They are the center of our mission.
When we:
Design for real life
Prioritize flexibility
Strengthen advising
Build visible career ladders
And support faculty in the work
We don’t just improve retention.
We expand mobility.
For families. For communities. For generations.
Reflection Questions
How would your college look if it assumed students are balancing work + life + school?
Where could flexibility be expanded without new funding?
How can faculty become co-designers of student success, not just participants in it?
Let’s connect on LinkedIn.
Onward…
Dr. Al Solano
Founder, Continuous Learning Institute | About
Host, Student Success Podcast
A meaningful test of success is how helpful we are in contributing to our fellow human being’s happiness.
I realize that the US is a different academic context, but at my mid-size university in Canada, most of my students have these challenges, regardless of age. There are a few lucky/privileged students that don’t have some subset of these challenges but overall, they’re doing more with less, managing jobs, children, and often households in parallel with their studies, and have never been more concerned about their futures.