Research Methodology

States and community colleges are developing strategies to support adult students in re-enrolling, persisting, and ultimately earning a credential that leads to a good job. Our goal was to document efforts to re-enroll adult students who had stopped out of community colleges at the institutional, nonprofit, business, and state levels. Three research questions guided our analysis:

1. What strategies are colleges and third-party vendors using to encourage adult learners to re-enroll at community colleges?
2. What policies are being designed at the state level to encourage adult re-enrollment, and how do they interact with implementation at the community college level?
3. What does the evidence show about the effectiveness of adult re-enrollment interventions?

Grounded in these questions, we conducted a comprehensive literature review, incorporating academic and gray literature, policy documents, and government publications. We then collected and synthesized information on efforts at the state level, within individual community colleges, and through third-party vendors to facilitate adult re-enrollment. Next, we analyzed outcome data from publicly available evaluations of re-enrollment initiatives.

We considered the literature review and landscape analysis complete once our data collection consistently led back to sources already consulted. Patterns and recurring institutions identified in this secondary research informed our selection of interviewees—individuals who have played significant roles in policymaking, program development, or implementation of re-enrollment strategies. We conducted 15 semi-structured interviews. Each was led by at least two New America staff members, lasted an average of 45 minutes, and was recorded. The interview protocol was designed around a set of guiding questions, with flexibility to pursue other topics as they arose.

These interviews gave us firsthand perspectives and allowed us to explore strategies, challenges, and successes that key actors in the adult learner re-enrollment field have encountered while working to re-enroll adult learners. We discussed motivations behind specific initiatives, barriers faced by institutions, and contextual factors shaping the effectiveness of different approaches. Interviewees also shared practical examples of implementation, evidence of impact, and critical lessons learned. Additionally, we collected information on ongoing partnerships, networks, funding models, enabling policies, and long-term sustainability challenges.

The next section synthesizes data on efforts by individual community colleges and third-party vendors to facilitate adult re-enrollment. We focus on initiatives documented in gray literature published within the past decade, with particular attention to sources released after the COVID-19 pandemic. In response to enrollment declines during the pandemic, many community colleges shifted their focus to re-enrolling stopped-out adult students. The research included in this section centers on adult students who have left community college, strategies to re-engage them, and policies designed to support adult re-enrollment.

Finally, we present the findings of our analysis on state-level adult re-enrollment programs. After surveying state strategies and their funding sources, we provide a sense of how these state initiatives fared and suggest considerations for future work to help better engage and enroll adults in community college.