Overview

Launched in August 2026, the Adult Learner Lab (ALL) is a national hub for research, innovation, and systems transformation focused on improving outcomes for adult learners. Housed within the Belk Center for Community College Leadership and Research at North Carolina University, the Lab brings together applied research, practitioner partnerships, leadership development, and capacity-building to help institutions and systems increase adult learner enrollment, persistence, and credential attainment.

The Lab is organized around four interconnected areas of work:

• Reducing time to credential — including credit for prior learning, flexible program design, streamlined advising, and other approaches that reduce the time and cost required to complete a credential.
• Ensuring every learner earns a credential of value — connecting educational pathways to labor-market demand, employer needs, and adult learners' economic mobility goals.
• Providing personalized supports — improving advising, onboarding, communications, and wraparound services based on the experiences and needs of adult learners.
• Driving organizational change, scalability, and continuous improvement — helping colleges and systems move beyond individual programs or pilots toward sustainable institutional and system-level transformation.

The ALL represents an emerging model of ecosystem stewardship: bringing research, practitioners, institutions, policymakers, and funders together to identify system barriers, test interventions, evaluate results, and scale what works. Its work includes applied research and evaluation, learning networks, strategic partnerships, tools and frameworks, and pilot projects.

Background

Adult learners are increasingly important to North Carolina's educational attainment, workforce, and economic-mobility strategies. The state's community colleges are already seeing significant adult-learner participation in workforce and continuing education. The 2026 Adult Learner Guidebook reports that adult learners in the North Carolina Community College System grew by 10% between 2020 and 2022, while enrollment in workforce development and continuing education programs grew by 19%. It also reports that approximately 70% of North Carolina's adult learners prioritize workforce and continuing education programs.

This makes adult learners particularly important as North Carolina responds to changing employer skill requirements, technological change, demographic shifts, and the growing need for people to reskill and upskill throughout their working lives. North Carolina is also entering an especially important period for short-term and workforce-oriented credentials. The state's implementation of Workforce Pell creates new opportunities—and new responsibilities—for colleges, workforce systems, employers, and policymakers to determine which shorter-term programs provide meaningful value and lead to employment and economic mobility.

ALL shifts the conversation from "How can we help adult students succeed in existing systems?" toward "How should the systems themselves change to work better for adult learners?" The initiative recognizes that improving adult learner outcomes cannot depend solely on better advising or individual student support. It also requires examining program design, credential structures, policies, institutional processes, employer connections, financing, recognition of prior learning, data systems, and the transitions between learning and work.

Partners

• North Carolina State University
• Belk Center for Community College Leadership and Research
• North Carolina community colleges/NC Reconnect participating colleges and partners
• College and system leaders, policymakers, researchers, and practitioner

Funders

• John M. Belk Endowment

Resources