Launched in 2025, the Center for Academic Innovation is a national nonprofit organization focused on improving higher education pathways and outcomes for adult learners. The organization works with colleges and universities, higher education systems, employers, and other partners to develop and implement approaches that recognize the experiences and learning adults bring to postsecondary education and reduce barriers to credential completion.

The Center's work focuses on:

• Adult learner strategy
  • Helping institutions and systems develop flexible, learner-centered approaches designed around the needs and circumstances of adult students.
• Credit for prior learning
  • Supporting policies, practices, assessment processes, crosswalks, and pathways that recognize college-level learning acquired through work, military service, training, industry credentials, and other experiences.
  • In 2026, the Center became the new home of Prior Learning Assessment Inside Out (PLAIO), an international online journal focused on theory, research, practice, and policy related to the assessment and recognition of prior learning. The journal provides a forum for peer-reviewed research, invited papers, practitioner perspectives, interviews, and other resources examining how learning acquired outside formal education can be assessed, recognized, and carried forward.
• Military-connected learners
  • Developing pathways that recognize military learning and support transitions between military service, education, and civilian careers.
• Adult learner voice and enrollment
  • Incorporating adult learner experiences and perspectives into institutional strategies designed to improve engagement, enrollment, persistence, and credential attainment.
  • Employer–higher education partnerships
    Helping employers and higher education institutions connect workplace learning with academic credit and develop education pathways that support employee advancement and workforce development.

The Center also works with institutions and statewide systems to align policies and practices related to adult learners and credit for prior learning. Its approach emphasizes recognizing learning wherever it occurs, connecting education with workforce needs, and creating pathways that allow working adults to build on knowledge and experience they have already acquired.

The organization also supports adult learners directly through its scholarship program and publishes resources and learner stories intended to inform institutional practice, research, and policy.

Resource

Website: https://www.centerforacademicinnovation.org/