Helping Adult Learners Find Careers and Economic Opportunity

While most jobs require some col­lege or post­sec­ondary train­ing, near­ly 23 mil­lion Amer­i­cans old­er than age 25 lack a high school degree or equiv­a­lent credential.

The good news? Career path­way pro­grams — which com­bine adult learn­ing and job train­ing — can help.

On aver­age, career path­way par­tic­i­pants are employed, retained and paid at high­er rates than their sim­i­lar­ly edu­cat­ed peers. Addi­tion­al­ly, they acquire more cre­den­tials and col­lege cred­its, accord­ing to What Works for Adult Learn­ers, an Annie E. Casey Foun­da­tion-fund­ed report.

Down­load What Works for Adult Learners

These find­ings — com­piled by the work­force-focused non­prof­it JFF — are root­ed in a review of 16 career path­way pro­grams nationwide.

Despite deploy­ing dif­fer­ent approach­es, most of these pro­grams offer indi­vid­u­al­ized aca­d­e­m­ic and career coun­sel­ing to help par­tic­i­pants — many of whom were job seek­ers of col­or and low-income indi­vid­u­als — attain a high school diplo­ma, earn a spe­cial­ized cre­den­tial or sharp­en basic pro­fes­sion­al skills.

What Works for Adult Learn­ers shares rec­om­men­da­tions for state pol­i­cy­mak­ers, edu­ca­tion­al lead­ers, employ­ers and oth­ers seek­ing to estab­lish or expand sim­i­lar pro­grams. Advice includes:

• equip­ping state sys­tem lead­ers and prac­ti­tion­ers with advanced labor-mar­ket analy­ses so they can tai­lor their course­work and train­ing options to sat­is­fy employ­er needs;
• using a fed­er­al pro­vi­sion — called ​“abil­i­ty to ben­e­fit” — that pro­vides finan­cial aid to stu­dents who demon­strate com­pe­ten­cy to attend col­lege despite not hav­ing a high school diploma;
• lever­ag­ing local and nation­al learn­ing net­works to iden­ti­fy and advance promis­ing practices;
• cus­tomiz­ing inte­grat­ed train­ing for under­rep­re­sent­ed adults, such as Eng­lish-lan­guage learn­ers, indi­vid­u­als return­ing from incar­cer­a­tion and those who are devel­op­men­tal­ly disabled;
• redesign­ing career path­way pro­grams to pro­mote careers — not just entry-lev­el job placements.

The report also calls for addi­tion­al research on career path­way pro­grams, includ­ing eval­u­a­tions that exam­ine how out­comes may change due dif­fer­ences in a participant’s race, gen­der and income level.

“There’s clear evi­dence that career path­way pro­grams are effec­tive at clos­ing skill and wage gaps by prepar­ing adult learn­ers for work­place suc­cess — which, in turn, helps them sta­bi­lize their fam­i­lies’ finan­cial futures,” says Irene Lee, direc­tor of fam­i­ly eco­nom­ic suc­cess at the Casey Foun­da­tion. ​“We hope this report acts as a guide and encour­ages greater invest­ment at the nation­al, state and local lev­els to make adult skill devel­op­ment more preva­lent, effi­cient and effective.”

Casey fund­ed three of the pro­gram eval­u­a­tions reviewed for the report:

1. Accel­er­at­ing Con­nec­tions to Employ­ment Vol­ume 1: Final Eval­u­a­tion Report
2. The Arkansas Career Path­ways Ini­tia­tive: Phase One Research Results; and
3. Esca­lat­ing Gains: Project QUEST’s Sec­toral Strat­e­gy Pays Off

Read JFF’s Report