Barry Nickerson

When I joined CAEL in 2016, my prior work experiences in postsecondary education and in workforce training had taught me one difficult lesson: policies and processes seldom work in the best interest of our students. As advisors, coaches, instructors, and mentors, much of our work involves helping students circumnavigate the red tape they encounter when navigating a process. I often found myself thinking, Why does this have to be so convoluted?

Short term training and accelerated learning are all the rage currently, but education has never fit a mould. Flexibility is key to retaining student attention, especially when it comes to timing Throughout my time at CAEL, I have worked with postsecondary educators grappling with the same fundamental question. “How do we grow adult learner enrollment?” Faculty and staff often say they wish for some way to receive feedback from those who ultimately chose not to enroll.

Properly preparing learners for their careers means dismantling higher education and reimagining it completely. An Experimental University uses data and research to analyze its student body and faculty and adapt their offerings to meet their needs. Our entire higher education system is dreadfully inefficient. As a result, too many students fail to acquire adequate college-level knowledge and analytic skills or drop out.