Disconnected Youth and Working Adults

Meet the 21st Century's Newest College Grads

October 17, 2008, 10:00am - 12:00pm

The baby boomer generation's looming retirement and the requirement of college-level skills to compete in today's fast-changing economic landscape have recharged our public dialogue about postsecondary education. However, this dialogue focuses too much on making college affordable and not enough about making sure students finish their degrees.

These problems demand approaches for college access and success. In particular, the college access and degree completion challenges of out-of-school youth and working adults are miner's canaries. That is, they point to the innovations that are needed to make our system of postsecondary education student-focused and able to deliver custom learning experiences across agencies and institutions to yield student success.

Join the Center for American Progress as it releases two new papers that lay out policy recommendations for an innovation process that addresses the access, learning, and completion needs of disconnected youth and working adults.