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This October, The Center and Education Northwest will release Powering Michigan's Future: Adult Learners and the Road to 60 Percent, a full update to our landscape analysis of adult postsecondary attainment in Michigan.
The report goes well beyond enrollment counts. For the first time, it pairs state success rate data with new evidence on who Michigan's potential adult learners actually are, what stops them, and which strategies have the strongest track record. It closes with a Roadmap to 2030 laying out what Michigan's postsecondary ecosystem needs to accomplish in the next four years and how The Center will help get there.
The completion gap is the story. Adults ages 25 to 34 who enter a Michigan community college succeed at roughly 35 percent after six years, compared with 47 to 49 percent for the student population overall. At public universities the adult rate is 66 percent after eight years against 82 percent overall.
1.38 million adults are already interested. CollegeAPP data identify 1.38 million Michigan adults ages 25 to 64 without a degree who have at least a moderate probability of enrolling. That is roughly half of all Michiganders in that age range without a credential.
Nearly all of them are on a tight budget. More than eight in ten potential adult learners earn under $75,000, and more than a third earn under $30,000. Basic needs support is not an amenity for this group.
Adult learners are carrying several barriers at once. In a MiLEAP survey of 9,433 Reconnect applicants, more than 60 percent were balancing full-time or multiple jobs, 48 percent named paying for college a major obstacle even with tuition and mandatory fees covered, 40 percent cited health concerns, and 31 percent each reported housing and food insecurity.
A Roadmap to 2030. The report closes with six priorities for the ecosystem, from knowing and implementing what works, to building a Michigan-specific evidence base, to sustaining the infrastructure past a single grant cycle.
Watch your inbox in October!
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