By: Salma Reyes – Regional Manager, Partner Success
Published by Acadeum
In the evolving landscape of higher education, two-year colleges share many challenges, including nurturing student success while adapting to the unique needs of their geographic settings, funding disparities, offering courses that fit student degree plans, and limited local enrollment pools.
An article in the Chronicle of Higher Education titled “Why Fixing the Transfer Process Is an Equity Issue for Colleges” noted that “while four out of five students who start at a two-year college hope to complete a four-year degree, fewer than one in five do so.” Amid these challenges, collaboration among colleges through the Acadeum network is proving to be a game changer in helping colleges reach the modern-day learner.
The League for Innovation Online Course Sharing Consortium, powered by Acadeum, enables Board and Alliance institutions to seamlessly share online courses to support students and solve institutional challenges.
This article showcases how partnerships within the Acadeum network are bolstering enrollment, keeping students on their academic pathways, attracting modern-day learners with on-demand certifications, and ultimately opening doors for a brighter future in higher education.
Keeping Students on Their Academic Pathway and Increasing Scheduling Flexibility
Through Acadeum’s expansive network of over 475 colleges and universities, institutions can now collaborate with like-minded colleges to expand academic capacity, improve student progress, and generate new revenue.
Through course sharing, students access fully online courses with scheduling flexibility. Course sharing also offers options to advisors trying to fill a schedule, whether it’s trying to get a student to full-time status, offering one last course in an academic pathway, filling in the gaps for elective courses, or accommodating working students.
Course sharing allows students to regain academic standing, overcome barriers to completion, and progress over intersessions or summer terms while improving scheduling flexibility. In addition, leveraging a network and peer institutions helps ensure access and equity across the student base.
Course sharing benefits student athletes, scholarship students, adult learners, and essentially any student in need of a course that their institution cannot offer.
Creating On-Ramps to Attract New Learners and Incorporating In-Demand Certifications
Many students seek hands-on experiences and professional certifications on their academic journey. As educational leaders know, pathways for learners are no longer linear, and providers are filling gaps with short-term, low-cost alternatives that have only made the education-career continuum more complex and confusing for learners to navigate.
Partnerships with the Acadeum Skills Marketplace offer institutions critical advantages for creating and supplementing programs and also incorporating professional certificates into a pathway that will serve learners at all stages.
Through collaboration within the Acadeum network, colleges can embed in-demand certifications to support the modern-day learner and meet rapidly changing workforce needs, including managing stackable credentials for industry certification, workforce development certificates, credit certification, credit degrees, and associate degree transfer to a four-year degree.
Charting the Future
Collaboration between member institutions in The League for Innovation Online Course Sharing Consortium empowers colleges to quickly and affordably offer industry credentials, helping bridge the gap between education and employment.
It’s essential to tackle the challenges facing colleges together because they are not easy to solve independently. Collaboration within a network helps colleges respond to the challenges in the landscape while offering the modern-day learner access to high-quality courses and in-demand certifications.
Ready to expand the academic capacity at your institution while marketing to the modern-day learner? The Acadeum team can provide one-on-one implementation and strategic support, identifying immediate and affordable opportunities to maintain a competitive advantage.
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