Connecting People to Opportunity
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Connecting People to Opportunity
The Hickory metropolitan area is in the midst of a profound economic transformation - a transformation that is reshaping the area’s economic base and remaking traditional pathways to prosperity. In this transformed economy, success favors people and places possessing rich stores of skills, education and talent.
Yet a sizable number of the Hickory area’s 360,000 residents are ill-equipped to navigate this new economic landscape. Some 76 percent of local adults lack a postsecondary credential and are constrained in their ability to compete for quality jobs. Moreover, adults who wish to further their education or acquire new skills through completion of a four-year college degree or graduate degree find their options limited due to the area’s relative lack of public colleges and universities.
To fill those gaps, a consortium of civic leaders established Hickory Metro Higher Education Center in 2002. The center enhances the educational attainment and economic development of the region by providing a venue where local residents can earn undergraduate and graduate degrees from colleges and universities across North Carolina. The goal: to provide adult learners with convenient access to educational opportunities that otherwise would be unavailable locally.
The center has grown rapidly since opening its doors in 2003. Today, eight colleges and universities offer a total of 111 degree programs through distance-learning and on-site instruction. To date, some 600 individuals have earned a degree or certificate through the center.
To assess its impact during its first five years of operations, the center commissioned a survey of the individuals who have earned postsecondary degrees and/or certificates through its partner colleges and universities. The study aimed to identify the factors that lead people to enroll in and complete a course of study, the impact that program completion has on graduates’ lives, the satisfaction of graduates with their experience and the demographic characteristics of graduates.
Survey responses indicate that the typical graduate is a primeage adult (ages 25-54) who enrolled to earn more and/or advance in a job or career. Most students earned a postgraduate credential in an education-related program, typically one offered through Appalachian State University. Nearly every graduate reports being employed, and most claim to have increased their earnings. Furthermore, almost all graduates describe the experience as “extremely worthwhile” and say that the flexibility of class schedules and the convenience of the center’s location were vital to their decision to enroll and ability to succeed.
At the same time, the survey also raised six questions that the center’s leaders must address if the center is to have the broad regional impact envisioned by its founders.
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Yet a sizable number of the Hickory area’s 360,000 residents are ill-equipped to navigate this new economic landscape. Some 76 percent of local adults lack a postsecondary credential and are constrained in their ability to compete for quality jobs. Moreover, adults who wish to further their education or acquire new skills through completion of a four-year college degree or graduate degree find their options limited due to the area’s relative lack of public colleges and universities.
To fill those gaps, a consortium of civic leaders established Hickory Metro Higher Education Center in 2002. The center enhances the educational attainment and economic development of the region by providing a venue where local residents can earn undergraduate and graduate degrees from colleges and universities across North Carolina. The goal: to provide adult learners with convenient access to educational opportunities that otherwise would be unavailable locally.
The center has grown rapidly since opening its doors in 2003. Today, eight colleges and universities offer a total of 111 degree programs through distance-learning and on-site instruction. To date, some 600 individuals have earned a degree or certificate through the center.
To assess its impact during its first five years of operations, the center commissioned a survey of the individuals who have earned postsecondary degrees and/or certificates through its partner colleges and universities. The study aimed to identify the factors that lead people to enroll in and complete a course of study, the impact that program completion has on graduates’ lives, the satisfaction of graduates with their experience and the demographic characteristics of graduates.
Survey responses indicate that the typical graduate is a primeage adult (ages 25-54) who enrolled to earn more and/or advance in a job or career. Most students earned a postgraduate credential in an education-related program, typically one offered through Appalachian State University. Nearly every graduate reports being employed, and most claim to have increased their earnings. Furthermore, almost all graduates describe the experience as “extremely worthwhile” and say that the flexibility of class schedules and the convenience of the center’s location were vital to their decision to enroll and ability to succeed.
At the same time, the survey also raised six questions that the center’s leaders must address if the center is to have the broad regional impact envisioned by its founders.
- Is the success of graduates related to the center’s educational delivery model or the particular characteristics of its graduates?
- Are the area’s unemployed or disadvantaged workers being served adequately?
- Is the region’s educational attainment expanding or simply deepening?
- Are the needs of the region’s private-sector employers being met?
- Do education graduates and/or the education industry possess unique characteristics that make it more likely for an individual to pursue, persist in and complete a course of study?
- Is the center’s success scalable?
- Develop an understanding of why many students fail to enroll in and others fail to persist in a course of study.
- Intensify strategies with the community colleges for preparing unemployed and disadvantaged workers for college degree-completion programs.
- Improve data management capabilities.
- Foster deeper commitments to postsecondary education from non-education fields in business and industry.
- Intensify relationships with the education field.
- Maintain and expand a focus on the needs of incumbent adult workers.
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