Giving precedence to adult learners of color improves the educational experience for everyone.
Adult learners of color demonstrate focus, adult learners ambition, and resourcefulness, constituting a substantial portion of community college students. However, deeply ingrained historical policies, practices, and beliefs act as barriers, hindering many of these learners from accessing an enhanced education and its advantages.
Adult learners
These barriers have resulted in an uneven educational landscape, leaving community colleges with fewer resources and reduced capacity to fully support adults of color. Despite these challenges, community colleges persist as pivotal agents of opportunity, yet additional efforts are essential to ensure the optimal service and support for these learners on campus.
Over the past two years, Lumina has been a key supporter of the REACH Collaborative—Racial Equity for Adult Credentials in Higher Education. This collaborative actively collaborates with community colleges to facilitate the attainment of associate degrees and other credentials for adult students of color by identifying and dismantling racial barriers. The REACH framework, continuously evolving, is guided by three fundamental principles.
Credential-to-Degree Pathways: These eliminate unfair obstacles to lucrative, family-sustaining careers, addressing the common interruptions adult learners of color often encounter. The speed and stackability of these pathways offer a practical response to the challenges these learners face.
Bundled and Sequenced Supports: These deliver essential academic and non-academic resources, ranging from tutoring to transportation, throughout a student’s educational journey. Ensuring adult learners of color receive necessary support when and where they need it, both inside and outside the classroom, enhances the effectiveness of education for everyone.
Culturally Sustaining Practices: These provide adult learners of color with the encouragement and affirmation they need to persist, conveying that their experiences matter, they possess the capabilities required, and they can trust their colleges to facilitate a quality education and its associated benefits.
Since its inception, the REACH Collaborative has assisted over 140 schools in six states—California, Colorado, New York, North Carolina, Texas, and Virginia—in developing and implementing pathways tailored to aid adult learners of color. These pathways empower students to earn credentials and progress toward degrees leading to high-quality employment in rapidly growing sectors.
Lumina Foundation recently granted new 18-month funds totaling $5.7 million to states and partners engaged in the REACH Collaborative, enabling them to build upon the progress achieved in the six REACH states. Additionally, this funding will support a more focused approach to racial equity through REACH Deeper, a cohort of 10 community colleges receiving additional coaching and support to expedite their advanced progress.
When colleges adopt pathways, supports, and practices specifically designed for adult learners of color, it benefits everyone. Institutions enhance their capacity to increase enrollment and degree attainment, and empowered graduates contribute to more diverse and robust workforces. This approach ensures that everyone receives the necessary tools to learn, grow, and thrive.
