Adult Student Recruitment and Retention Plan

Charge

In winter 2024, the Oregon Community College Association worked with Student Ready Strategies, a higher education consulting firm, to sponsor a statewide survey targeted towards adult learners. COCC sent the survey to more than 2,000 students, and unfortunately, had a less than 1% response rate. Regardless, the College sent a team to a statewide meeting to review results from all institutions, share best practices and research in serving adult learners, and give teams an opportunity to develop potential action items for colleges to consider.

The action team noted that COCC is already actively engaged in many of the best practices to recruit and support adult learners. The team will share this work with the College so that it is more widely understood and recognized. Additionally, this team is meeting in a more informal fashion than other teams, especially since many best practices are currently happening as a routine part of everyone’s work.

Student Ready Strategies also shared an Institutional Policy and Adult Learner framework. These tools, along with other best practices, were shared with institutional leadership and the Guided Pathways team. The action team is developing a recommendation for committees such as College Affairs and Academic Affairs to implement the Institutional Policy framework at COCC as a means of ensuring an adult learner lens is used to evaluate and/or review policy.