Adult Learner Transitions

Adult Transition and the National College Transition Network

While adult educators have always encouraged students interested in college to go on, recent research shows just how important postsecondary education really is for adult learners. Most jobs with a family-sustaining wage and benefits now require that adults get more education. So, the General Educational Development (GED) credential -- while an important accomplishment, will not open the doors to economic security unless it is used to go on to further education and training. See TCALL’s Web page on Economic Benefits of the GED for more on this research.

Adult educators often hear from their students who do go on to college that it is tough going. Adult students must balance family and work responsibilities along with classes and homework. They often drop out before the end of the first semester. And, many students who take the college placement test find that they need several semesters of “below college-level” courses before they can enter their major. Research has shown that students do learn important skills in developmental or remedial courses at college but, if they require a year or more of remedial reading at college, they are not likely to reach college-level work (Adelman, 1999; at National Cross Talk. It doesn’t have to be this way.

The National College Transition Network (NCTN) was created to address these issues. The goal of the NCTN is to support adult education staff and programs in establishing and strengthening ABE/ESL-to-college transition services through technical assistance, professional development, collegial sharing, advocacy and increased visibility for this critical sector of the adult education system. While most of our 800+ members are adult educators, we also have college faculty and staff, researchers, and workforce professionals as members.

If you take a look at NCTN’s Web site you will see our report on models of adult transition available on the home page. The paper was produced in collaboration with the National Center for the Study of Adult Learning and Literacy (NCSALL). While the study was designed to describe adult education transition programs and strategies but not collect specific outcome data, it was clear from our interviews with over 28 programs from around the country, that transition services made an important difference in access and persistence in college for their students.

Our website includes a wide variety of teaching, counseling, professional development, research, and policy-development information. Our original NCTN Briefs have been developed by practitioners working in adult transition programs. For example, college requires that students be able to tackle complex reading assignments. With our Research-to-Practice brief, Strategies to Facilitate College-level Reading Comprehension, you will find a variety of reading strategies that your students can use right now (see http://www.collegetransition.org/promising/rp5.html).

In the Promising Practice, Transition Student Portfolio, download the list of things all students need to organize if they are interested in going to college. We even have an entire website designed especially for students called College for Adults.

The NCTN is committed to developing the emerging field of adult education transition. As part of our work, we offer a free individual membership. This membership includes the NCTN eNewsletter that arrives in your email every two to three months. This newsletter tells you about our newest publications, as well as other new resources available from the field. You can read more about our free membership by following the membership links on our home page or by emailing a request to NCTN@worlded.org. We look forward to hearing from you. If you attened COABE 2007 in Philadelphia this spring (March 26-28), we hope you attended our NCTN Transition Strand, a series of 8 workshops on all aspects of transition. And, if you were not at COABE, you will find the workshop materials in the Professional Development section of the website later this spring. Materials from the last two years are there now.

Cynthia Zafft, Director, National College Transition Network (NCTN) at World Education, 44 Farnsworth Street, Boston, MA 02210, 617.482.9485 Office, 617.482.0617 Fax, czafft@worlded.org. Cynthia has been the director of the NCTN since its inception in 2003; prior to that she directed several federally funded college transition projects for women and older youth with disabilities. Along with overseeing the two NCTN websites, Cynthia spends her time organizing the professional development and technical assistance provided by the network around the country, including a transition conference strand at COABE.