There are more than 38 million people in the U.S. under 65 who have completed some college courses but did not receive a degree or certificate. On this episode, we get the perspective from two people about how to bring those learners back into the system.
There are more than 38 million people in the U.S. under 65 who have completed some college courses but did not receive a degree or certificate. Dozens of states have set ambitious post-secondary goals and part of reaching those goals includes bringing those back into the educational system.
On this episode, we get the perspective from two people about how to bring those learners back into the system. Terah Crews is the CEO of ReUp Education, an focused on that population. Illinois Representative La Shawn Ford (D), who chairs the Appropriations Higher Education Committee in the Illinois House, has worked on programs to get people to re-enroll in college in his state.
Crews discussed how ReUp is working with states to cast a wide net, not only for people close to finishing their degrees, but also for people who might need more support and alternative ways of taking classes, such as online courses. She also discussed some of the barriers people face and how states can help them get back on track to finishing their education. Ford explained that getting people back to school to finish a degree is key to upward mobility and legislation in Illinois is aimed at clearing some of the barriers people find to returning to school.
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Speaker 1 (00:12):
Hello and welcome to “Our American States,” a podcast from the National Conference of State Legislatures. I'm your host, Ed Smith.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
This is a massive group of Americans. Oftentimes it's not talked about in sort of the larger policy landscape, 43 million people. It works out to about one-in-five or one-in-six working adults.
Speaker 1 (00:33):
That was Terah Crews, the CEO of ReUp education and one of my guests on this podcast. ReUp is focused on the millions of Americans who have some college credits but no degree or credential. She's joined on the podcast by Illinois Representative La Shawn Ford, who chairs the Appropriations Higher Education Committee in the Illinois House.
Dozens of states have set ambitious post-secondary goals and part of reaching those goals includes bringing people with some college experience back into the educational system. There are more than 38 million people in the U.S. under 65 who have completed some college courses but did not receive a degree or certificate.
Crews discussed how ReUp is working with states to cast a wide net, not only for people close to finishing their degrees, but also for people who might need more support and alternative ways of taking classes, such as online courses. She also discussed some of the barriers people face and how states can help them get back on track to finishing their education. Ford explained that getting people back to school to finish a degree is key to upward mobility and legislation in Illinois is aimed at clearing some of the barriers people find to returning to school.
Here's our discussion starting with Terah Crews.
Terah, thanks for coming on the podcast.
Speaker 2 (01:51):
Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1 (01:53):
So we're here to talk about folks who go to college, but don't finish and don't get a degree, don't get a credential. I wonder if you could tell us about why you're so interested in this issue. What experiences you've had that make you interested in it, and how big a population of people are we talking about in the US who are in that situation?
Speaker 2 (02:17):
What originally drew me to this problem was actually something very much personal and the first person in my family to graduate college. But before that, I was actually a high school stop out and a college stop out as well. I saw what happened to my parents and watch them struggle without a degree in many ways. When I did go off to college, I went home to my community and saw so many people who had never made it to college or had started and not been able to finish and watch what it did to them, watch what it meant in terms of the opportunities that they had versus the opportunities that I had. So, when I had an opportunity to join an organization that was really focused on this, certainly not saw the opportunity for the organization, but saw a little bit of a pull on my heartstrings as well in terms of the population itself.
Speaker 2 (03:06):
So here's something interesting. This is a massive group of Americans. Oftentimes it's not talked about in the larger policy landscape, 43 million people, it works out to about one in five or one in six working adults. If you actually take it down to, depending on how you actually calculate what is and what isn't a working age adult means, if you go out to dinner, go out to some random restaurant, you see five people sitting together, you go out to them all. One of them actually has started college but never finished it. Put this into perspective. This is a larger population than AARP and I can tell you nowhere near the number of lobbyists advocating on their behalf. These people span all types of backgrounds. They're parents, they're veterans, they're first generation college students, they're almost all working adults at this point. They've moved on into their lives, but they have varying racial, geographic, socioeconomic backgrounds. This is rural Americans, this is urban Americans. This is one of these few things in our society today that spans all varying groups of people who started, whether they did one credit two credits or 110, it affects a large swath of the American population.
Speaker 1 (04:19):
So why do they drop out? What are the, and let me ask you too, to just clarify something. I think we commonly use the word dropout and you use a different word. And maybe you could just explain that.
Speaker 2 (04:33):
Since the founding of the organization, we've been focused on this population, so we've learned a lot about how they like to be referred to. So one thing we don't use the word student. Student denotes somebody who's young, 18 to 20 year olds, we use the word learner and we use the word stop out in place a dropout because it suggests that it's a pause, it's a moment in time. They took a pause, they took a stop rather than they dropped out. Oftentimes for many of these learners, it's feeling like they don't belong in college. That's a challenge. So slight shifts in wording can create a sense of like, oh, I can do this.
Speaker 1 (05:07):
So back to that question of why, what are some of the common factors that folks you're talking to explain for why they're not going to finish school?
Speaker 2 (05:18):
The reasons are varied, but if you talk to most people, particularly in higher education, you say why people didn't finish. Oh, they couldn't cut it. They were struggling academically. That's not what we see though. What we actually see is the most commonly reported issue is financial burden. But if you take that at face value, it really misses the point. What really is driving it is some external stressor. Now that external stressor may be that a parent got sick, somebody who's only a few credits away from graduation, a parent got sick or a some other family member got sick. They may have gotten pregnant or have a child on the way. Those things created financial stress, but it was really a lot external factors in themselves that really pushed people to a place where they had to take a pause or a stop beyond the what caused people to do this.
Speaker 2 (06:11):
What we find is that after they've been out for six months to a year, doesn't really matter what forced them to do it in the past anymore. They're all generally thinking the same way. They're in the field, they're working, they're in their lives. So once they're about a year out, they no longer identify as a college student. They no longer think of themselves in that way. They no longer even think about what forced them to stop out. What they think about is what are the barriers in my life today that are preventing me from taking that step back?
Speaker 1 (06:45):
Well, that makes a lot of sense, a lot of common sense about the reason why people left and this change in attitude after you're out for a year. So that's real interesting and changes the way you approach, I imagine your organization ReUp that you lead. And with that in mind, tell us about the organization and how do you try to aid this population?
Speaker 2 (07:07):
ReUp was founded specifically to address this problem. What the original founders of the company saw 10 years ago, and certainly what we've seen as we've grown really a lot over the last four years is that this is a population that is by and large overlooked and for good reason, they're overlooked because they're very hard to find. Once they've been out for a year, they're very hard to engage and they're hard to support. And then once you get back in, they're hard to continue to support. So what our organization was formed to do was to address those problems. Today we work with about 180 colleges and universities around the country. We combine both real human engagement because the access to real humans to work through your background work through individual challenges is important with a lot of technology, a lot of data, and a lot of varying systems that really create personalized options for learners as they find their way back and through.
Speaker 2 (08:08):
Because we continue to support people all the way until they reach graduation. What's the point if they only stop out again? In the last three years alone, we've re-enrolled three 40,000 people and about 2 million people have access to the platform and the coaching today. What's been exciting over the last few years though is we realized about four years ago that working just with institutions really limited the impact and scope of what we could be doing. If we could partner directly with the state, centralized the strategy with the state, then you can provide a whole host of new things that really expand your ability to address those problems. I mentioned at the very beginning, if you partner with a state centric strategy, your impact expands really radically and you give learners a lot more optionality in the process.
Speaker 1 (09:06):
Well, let's talk a little bit about the policy side of this. One thing. I think anyone who works in public policy learns pretty quickly, is one size does not fit all. And as you've gone around the country and talked to students and institutions, I wonder if you've identified rural students need a different kind of support than suburban students or maybe other kinds students who are parents and students who are veterans, that kind of thing. I mean, is there a sort of customizable aspect of this?
Speaker 2 (09:37):
The way we've designed our approach is there are many different options and many different pathways for our learners. So we are proprietary, actually patented personas and systems that predict where learners will fall and what likely support that they need and what type of engagement is going to be most impactful in reaching them and continuing to support them. But those personas are modified and adjust throughout their process even before they roll. Some people engage with us for up to two years before they actually enroll in a program, but it continues to adapt in how we approach them. We don't go about it from a place of like, we're going to provide rural students this or suburban students this. We look at a host of different factors that then informs what type of approach we have. But most importantly in terms of the individual learners, we personalize it and we give them agency in it.
Speaker 2 (10:32):
We let them, we don't just tell them what they need, we listen to them, what they say that they need and then we provide the solution to it. What that means is some learners really heavy on coaching, they need a human there to work with them and talk through and text with as they're struggling through the process. For others, they need people available just when they have to reach critical inflection points or key challenges along the way and they want to navigate it through our technology and they want our technology to recommend solutions for them. If you want to do this at scale, if you want to address this problem, not in some of the niche subgroup, but really think about this in thousands of people going back in each state or region, you have to, as you said, personalize it to whoever the people are and you can't really sort of put identity metrics on top of it. It doesn't work quite that way.
Speaker 1 (11:32):
So as we think about those state actors who might be critical in scaling this to that state and regional level, what are some of the key things you've learned that might help these education leaders state legislators as they think about policy that would address this group of folks?
Speaker 2 (11:50):
The biggest thing I say is the great myth of this population is that you can only get the low hanging fruit back. You have to pick winners and losers right out of the gate. And here's what I mean by that. If you look at the best policy or practice best practices of this that are given to individual institutions, they say focus on people who are only a few credits away from graduating or focused on people who've only been out for less than a year. So why do they say that? They say that because it's cost effective, those populations are the highest likely to enroll. And what that best practice has done is it's narrowed our thinking on this to what is effectively like five, 6% of that 43 million. So for state acting policymakers, institutional or state, what I would say to them is you can address the whole problem If you approach this from a state centralized way, if you get as many of the people with some college, no credential within your state into a centralized outreach effort, give people options of what schools that they go to.
Speaker 2 (13:05):
And you don't limit yourself to some small subset because you only have one solution to offer them maybe just coaching or just messaging outreach. If you do all of the above, you can get economies of scale here and you can get impact on massive scale. A significant chunk of our learners have been out from over seven years. That's totally counter to again the supposed best practice. So I would say the number one thing I tell people is just reject that mint. You can make impact at really big scale. And a great example of this is one of our first state partners was New Jersey, where the numbers are still coming in for fall now and we're less than three years in and over 12,000 people have re-enrolled just in that state.
Speaker 1 (13:53):
Well, the long-term economic benefit to states that comes from people being more educated, then earning more and so on and so forth, certainly does come at scale. If it’s only a small increment, it's probably not going to have that much effect. Speaking of those decision makers, what's the role of the state policymakers, legislators in this case versus the institutions? The people who are running the state university, state colleges,
Speaker 2 (14:20):
Anybody can do this. Individual institution could say, we want to do this, we want to bring some of our learners back. We want to partner. We partner directly with many institutions just individually. It gets really impactful when the state policymakers get involved, and here's why. I already mentioned this before, you get a unified state strategy and your impact amplifies significantly. So, one of the challenges in working with an individual institution is they typically want all their learners to come to their original institution and they want them to go and generally, if it's a four-year institution, they want them to come back and finish a four-year degree. If it's a two-year institution, they want to finish a two-year degree. But what we know is that learners who've been out, particularly those have been out for a while, they want optionality. So, for state policymakers, you invest billions in creating this robust intricate network of programs, both short form credentials to four year and all the way up to Ph.Ds.
Speaker 2 (15:24):
If it's just an individual institution doing it, you're giving your residents only really access to go back to those original schools. But if you centralize it, then what you start to get is real magic. And then you can start to impact things in a way even sort of tailored to the individual workforce challenges of your state. It becomes from an enrollment decline solution to a workforce pipeline solution. And the great example I like to say is someone who may have started an engineering degree, notorious for very high stop out rates, may only have made it one or two semesters in, been out six or seven years. With a statewide strategy, you could map that person back to say a welding degree at a local community college, which chances are almost every state in the country, you don't have enough welders. And that's a really great job that somebody can support their family and contribute to the economy. So when you work with an individual institution, certainly there's a lot of impact, but for a state policymaker, they see it in a much more holistic way. I can address my institution's struggling decline. I can focus on my workforce pipeline and address a population that's more likely to be on title map, less likely to be contributing to my tax base. And simultaneously I'm accomplishing simply multiple things at the same time and removing the sort of disincentive that exists in just an institutional partnership.
Speaker 1 (16:57):
That's a pretty good argument
Speaker 2 (17:00):
We've found most people like it.
Speaker 1 (17:03):
Lemme ask you, you mentioned New Jersey and I'm wondering what that or other kind of innovative approaches to this situation that you're seeing around the country that people might learn from?
Speaker 2 (17:15):
Two real examples of how we've seen organizations partner with us and now I'll talk about forming best practice. Primarily when organizations or states partner with us, they're approaching from one or two directions. They're partnering it from what we call a top down approach, which is what we saw in New Jersey. They came in right out of the gate and said, we want to do this and we want it to be really impactful. We want this to be goal of that administration and 17 schools signed up within the first six months. About half the schools in today I, there's people enrolled, they're having about a 2 ½ X direct economic impact in terms of tuition dollars every 12 months and I think they estimate about an 8X indirect economic impact. And any of our friends from New Jersey are listening to me and I've got that wrong.
Speaker 2 (18:02):
please correct me. In Michigan, we saw a different approach. They actually went bottom up. It was really a coalition of the willing of schools, four-year regional schools that came together and said, we need to do this. Then the state started to step in and support it and we've seen that grow a little bit slower but still really impactful. Five thousand people enrolled in the last two years as it continues to emerge and grow. In some ways that's not even the most important thing about this. I think the thing that really excites me is we're starting to see a forming perspective of best practice that is state centralized strategy. In the past, what we saw was a single policy was developed that may create a scholarship for a subgroup or something like that, and it had very limited impact. What we're seeing at the larger level, whether it's bottoms up or top down, is state centralized strategy is the best way to create real impact and dollar for dollar best ROI for the state.
Speaker 1 (19:03):
Well, let me close out on a question for you about NCSL's Task Force on Higher Education. Now, they've been particularly interested in this population, made some recommendations for how states and institutions can best support the student population or rather learner population. And I wonder if you found any of the task force recommendations, particularly something that you think is the right way to go?
Speaker 2 (19:28):
Absolutely. So first off, we're thrilled that the task force is even getting attention to this. I started at the beginning to say this is a larger population than AARP and none of the lobbyists. In fact, when we started three years ago, there was nobody advocating at the state level. So, we're just thrilled that most state legislators, somebody in that legislator is talking about it. Today, we're at least certain, at least in 20 states, somebody at least one person is talking about. So first off, we're thrilled and we're thrilled that the task force has picked it up as this great opportunity. A few things come out, jump out to me though when I read the task force recommendations that we very much 100% behind. One is that re-engagement of adult learners should be a core state strategy. This represents an opportunity not just for schools but for the workforce pipeline, but for the state coffers, but for people to find pathways to get value out of something that they started but didn't finish and likely have some debt associated with it.
Speaker 2 (20:29):
Love that focus. Second is that this is not just an enrollment decline issue. That's where the bigger point has been missed over the years is that higher education has been, they're missing enrollment and these are people that need help. And it's so much more than that. It means so much more for the state. So we'd love to focus on this. It's not just an enrollment decline solution. The call out of credit transfer and recognition for prior learning as well is especially important. As I mentioned in the beginning, words matter and how we engage people matters here. And if we talk to these people and tell them everything they did in the past doesn't matter because of some bureaucracy that was maybe designed for an 18-year-old. It's really demoralizing. So focus on policies that enable credit transfer, that recognize credit for prior learning and really recognize that these people have gone on to do other things and should get some recognition for it.
Speaker 2 (21:37):
It's especially important. And the final thing, there's really a focus on removing administrative barriers, and I already mentioned that in the past one, but what we do when we partner with our states is we map every policy within the state and we actually show that and benchmark that and look at how performance affects individual schools. So we're excited to see the task force call that out and say, this isn't just about policies at the state level. This is also about policies at the individual school level of how do you create incentives to change policies that were designed, very well intended, but they were designed for that 18 to 22-year-old group and not necessarily as applicable for the 35-year-old single mother who's also taking care of their aging parents and trying to finish their degree so they can have a better life for their child.
Speaker 1 (22:29):
Well, I've done a few higher education podcasts where I have learned that the student population that I thought was not the student population that is. So I think that's a really great point to make and thank you so much for going through this. I think this is something that a lot of legislators will find interesting. Thanks a lot, Terah.
Speaker 2 (22:48):
Thanks Ed.
Speaker 1 (22:50):
I'll be right back after this short break with Representative Ford.
Speaker 3 (23:00):
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Speaker 1 (23:57):
Representative Fort, thanks for coming on the podcast. Great to have you.
Speaker 4 (24:01):
Glad to be here for such an important topic.
Speaker 1 (24:05):
Yeah, as you suggest this topic of the millions of people who have some college experience but never got a credential or degree is really a critical issue in a lot of places. And I wonder if you could just tell me why it's an important issue to you and to your constituents.
Speaker 4 (24:19):
I'm a chair of Higher Education Appropriations in Illinois, and this issue is deeply personal to me as an African-American male wanting to push more men into higher education. It's not cliche that education is key, but education, taking a look further is a key driver of opportunities and economic mobility. And so many of my constituents have started their higher education journey, but faced those barriers to continue.
Speaker 1 (24:57):
Well, there certainly are a lot of barriers and I wonder, there's about 38 million people under 65 who have not gotten their credential or their degree. And I wonder how large a group that is both in your district, in Chicago and in Illinois generally
Speaker 4 (25:14):
In Illinois, we see the number residents who have some college experience but lack the degree in Illinois. The studies show that in many of our communities, the percentage of individuals in this situation can exceed about 30%. This, of course, is particularly true in underserved areas where educational attainment directly impacts economic opportunity. And we talked about the barriers being financial, personal or academics that prevent people that stomp out of college getting in the way of them attaining their degree.
Speaker 1 (25:56):
What are the economic impacts? You've got all these folks who have a lot of potential, have not been able to finish getting their degree. What are the effects both on them economically and on the state? Your district? Generally,
Speaker 4 (26:12):
When you think about it, the college attainment or some higher education degree is what we call economic mobility. It gives you the ability to rise up in society and in the workforce, and when you have more people attaining college degrees, it strengthens our workforce in our communities overall. So, it's those individuals that actually have very few credits to attain their bachelor's degree. And I've seen so many people so close. In fact, just a day ago yesterday, I met with a young man that actually wanted to continue his degree, but he's short of attaining his college degree and he can't do it because he owes the university money. He can't go back to the university to get his degree. We have to do more in Illinois because we ranked 50th in re-enrolling individuals back into college. So we're doing a lot to try to re-enroll. We've invested in Illinois re-enrollment strategy called Stop Out. So, we're planning to keep the talent and the tuition in state by bringing in $4 million to a program to go after our students that have stopped out.
Speaker 1 (27:50):
Tell us some more about that. Tell us some more detail about the kinds of legislation Illinois has and how you see this working out.
Speaker 4 (27:57):
Anytime you invest $4 million and you work with our public universities to pay off, you remember I talked about paying off fees and fines and old debt. That's what our program Illinois re-enrolled strategy is to make sure that we find these individuals to help them close the gap. The state invested in FY 25 re-enrollment funds to pay off debt for some of these students at their colleges.
Speaker 1 (28:31):
That's very interesting. I think when people think about people not finishing their degree or not going back, they think about family responsibilities and jobs and that kind of thing. I think the notion of owing money that you can't go back until you pay it off. It's just not something that's front of mind for most of us. So that's a really interesting point. Let me ask you this. With the kind of budgetary pressure states, are you able to make this a priority? Are you able to get the support for it even in that climate?
Speaker 4 (29:02):
Yeah, we've been able to invest in strategies to do that. So we are doing everything we can to work with our public universities, mostly to bring the workforce back. When you talk about college affordability and reducing debt, it's easier to make sure that we bring those individuals that's not in need of four whole years to pay that tuition they've already paid for, they're in debt. And so if we want to increase our workforce, then let's go after those that are very close to attaining that degree, get them in the workforce and strengthen our workforce while uplifting families and Illinois and the IBHE and our community college board, the governor and the speaker and the president and all the advocates re-up, they're working hard to make sure that we get students back in college. The other thing that we are supporting also is hybrid and online degrees where we allow for individuals to enroll in certain programs that's not associated with our public universities, but they actually could be enrolled in a online program to finish their degree.
Speaker 1 (30:31):
Representative. As we close up here, one of the things that we like to use this podcast for is to give our elected officials the opportunity to share some advice with other elected officials. So as you think about your colleagues around the country, I mean everybody has this situation, what would you advise them in terms of how do you get everybody kind of pulling in the same direction on this, whether you're in California, Illinois, Mississippi, wherever.
Speaker 4 (30:57):
As a politician, we all know the best way to represent is to listen to the needs of the community, and we need to tackle the cost of college. We need to work together on making sure that there's a strategy across the board for re-enrolling. So engaging with local residents and our public universities and our community colleges, the residents to understand the challenges they face in completing their education. So collaboration is always the key for getting things done. And so collaborating with the educational institutions, the business community has to be at the table. They need help. And so bringing the collaboration of the business community, community organizations to create a pathway that we could achieve success, it's important to note that it has to be tailored per state, per individuals because it depends on how much the state is going to spend for programs to re-enroll the stump outs in their universities and in their state. So that's why it's important that we work together with the community and listen to their needs.
Speaker 1 (32:22):
Well, I have to tell you every time I ask a version of that question, the answer is always pretty much the same. Listen to the people, whether it's in your district or your colleagues in the legislature. So I think that's great advice and I thank you for taking the time to talk about this really important topic representative.
Speaker 4 (32:40):
Well, Ed, I hope we work together with you, the press as well to open up new doors for millions of individuals across the nation in higher education.
Speaker 1 (32:53):
I've been talking with Terah Crews of ReUp Education and Representative Le Shawn Ford of Illinois about efforts to bring people back to college who have some college credits, but no degree or credential. Thanks for listening.
You can find NCSL podcasts wherever you get your podcasts. This podcast are American states dives into some of the most challenging public policy issues facing legislators, our occasional series across the aisle, feature stories of bipartisanship. Also check out our special series, building Democracy on the history of legislatures.