Adult Student Education–A New Focus
While we really don’t talk about it often enough in higher education, our nation is in a state of crisis when it comes to the educational background of our adults in comparison to other countries. At this point the U.S. no longer leads (and barely even is part of the pack) of those countries who have the mostly highly educated workforce. And while we are all aware of this, it is only recently that national attention has been focused on this concerning issue.
As part of the effort to compete as a nation, The Lumina Foundation has recently stepped forward with an aggressive goal of increasing the nation’s number of people holding high-quality degrees and credentials to 60% by 2025. To break that down for you the U.S. will need to grant just over 22.9 million degrees between now and 2011. To see your individual state’s situation in relation to the percentage of adults in your state that currently hold a degree and the increase your individual state needs to meet this aggressive goal, take a look at www.luminafoundation.org.
With so much attention being placed on the need for a more educated work force in the United States, it seems to me that the focus on educating adult students will become more and more important on many college campuses. Along with our national conversation, there are also dollars that are being earmarked for institutions who can demonstrate a true focus on educating adults. I personally see this as another leveraging point for those of us who work with adult students in higher education already. Now is the time to bring this issue to the table on our own campuses and see what we can do to expand our current programming to offer more for adult students.
Photo by: lumaxart
