A smiling woman looking down at her smartphone. She's sitting on a couch within a modern looking space with exposed brick that is painted white.

BUILDING EVIDENCE AND ENABLING CONDITIONS FOR CHANGE

Aligning Learning and Training
Systems for Today’s Mobile Learners

Learners today are more mobile than ever. It is common to accumulate job-relevant skills across a range of formal and informal educational experiences. However, as learners move between institutions or complete training through multiple sources, they may find that their previous experiences do not amount to a completed credential.

Postsecondary education institutions’ policies and practices have yet to fully catch up with the mobility of learners and the diversity of their prior learning experiences.

Exacerbating the challenges learners face in getting credit for all their relevant learning and skills, systems of postsecondary education, workforce, and corrections operate in silos. Learners whose lives intersect with multiple systems can face additional barriers to a high-quality credential when those systems fail to connect.

By linking infrastructure and coordinating across systems, we can improve learners’ ability to move between institutions while successfully completing credentials of value.

Molly Lasagna, Senior Strategy Officer, shares information on the work of the New England Board of Higher Education.

By linking infrastructure and coordinating across systems, we can improve learners’ ability to move between institutions while successfully completing credentials of value.

Sharing Best Practices to Support Learner and Credit Mobility

Learners can acquire skills and college credits by moving between jobs, sectors, places, institutions, and even types of institutions. Learners from low-income backgrounds are more likely to face barriers when getting their prior learning counted toward a degree, which contributes to lower rates of degree completion.

Ithaka S+R is collecting best practices from postsecondary education institutions that are taking proactive and comprehensive approaches to recognizing and applying credits for learners’ previous educational experiences. Their pilot project, focused on aligning policies, practices, and technological tools within postsecondary education systems, aims to help institutions learn how to support learner and credit mobility, thereby saving learners time and money while increasing their chance of success.

Building Rural Education-to-Employment Partnerships

When education and training programs closely match local employers’ needs, then learners have a direct path to a good job in their communities. This is especially important in rural communities, where a lack of partnership across sectors, outdated training programs, and high turnover in postsecondary education leadership can prevent this alignment.

CivicLab, a project of the Columbus Learning Center Management Corporation, is developing education-to-employment partnerships in 10 rural communities. They are bringing together workforce leaders and postsecondary education and training providers to build sustainable, integrated talent development ecosystems for rural learners.

Expanding New England’s Capacity for Postsecondary Education in Prison

Throughout New England, only 1,000 out of the 128,000 incarcerated individuals have access to postsecondary education in prison. The New England Board of Higher Education is collaborating across and within six New England prison systems to increase the quantity and quality of their postsecondary education offerings. This approach will build capacity within the region to maximize the availability of Pell Grants for incarcerated learners.

Creating Meaningful Pathways for Incarcerated Learners

In partnership with our grantees, we are committed to improving pathways for learners with a history of incarceration. The Virginia Interfaith Center for Public Policy (VICPP) is exploring cross-sector partnerships as a strategy for expanding postsecondary education in prison. The Virginia Department of Corrections system serves only three percent of college-eligible learners each semester. VICPP’s goal is to scale education programs eligible for Pell Grant funding across the state’s prisons.

To do this, VICPP will undertake a wide-ranging public awareness campaign. They will educate key stakeholders on the benefits of educational opportunities in prison, which includes providing accurate, accessible information to incarcerated learners.

VICPP will also establish a statewide coalition of leaders in postsecondary education, corrections, economic development and business, politics, and faith-based organizations as well as justice-impacted individuals themselves. The coalition will help develop and advocate for high-quality educational offerings in Virginia’s prisons.

Share