Dr. Evan Kropp thinks a lot about who adult learners are and what they actually need from the institutions they trust with their time and money in his role as executive director of distance education at the University of Florida’s College of Journalism and Communications. Like many leaders across higher education, he is particularly focused on the more than 40 million Americans who hold some college credit and no degree — people who came to higher education with real goals, encountered systems that weren't built for them, and left without the credential they came for.
For this group of students, he believes, online education can be a vehicle for access and an equalizer of opportunity in ways it isn’t necessarily for 18 to 22-year-olds who are going to school for the first time and still need more hands-on guidance.
“I think you’ll find people who will disagree with me on that one,” he admitted in a recent interview.
But for working professionals, caregivers, veterans, and career-changers, Kropp said institutions would do well to realize that these are people for whom a single misaligned enrollment decision has consequences that ripple across their finances and their families. Institutions must actually examine their systems — their enrollment practices, their credit transfer policies, their advising structures — and ask honestly whether those systems are built for the students who need them most, he said.
Shifting the Focus from Enrollment to Student Goals
“The first thing that needs to change from the business of education is that we are talking to students about their goals from education,” Kropp said. “We need to talk to prospective students openly and honestly about what we offer as a program, what their goals are, and whether or not enrolling aligns with their goals. "Enrolling for enrollment's sake does no one any good.”
In Louisiana, higher ed leaders are balancing similar tensions from a different side of the coin: Reconciling the fact that while institutional budgets stand to benefit from unclear transfer pathways, students lose when the state’s institutions do not come together to agree on a shared core curriculum and direct transfer pathways.
