The Council for Adult and Experiential Learning (CAEL) is a national, nonprofit membership organization that works to improve education-to-career pathways for adult learners. CAEL helps organizations succeed by providing expertise, resources, and innovative solutions that effectively support adult learners as they navigate between education and employment.

CAEL provides a range of services for its members including:

• Initiative support and technical assistance: help partners with diagnosing a problem, defining a strategy to resolve it, generating and maintaining momentum, developing a staff capacity plan to sustain that momentum, establishing data collection and analysis, and strategic planning and convenings.
• Postsecondary education: assistance related to Credit for Prior Learning, including accelerated programs, attracting and supporting adult learners, assessing institutional effectiveness in serving adult learners,  developing strategic partnerships with employers and the workforce system, aligning curricula with workforce needs.
• Workforce & economic development: improving the social and economic mobility of adult learners; strategic partnership development; data gathering and analysis; goal setting and tracking; accelerating credential completion by recognizing on-the-job and other non-institutional training and by incorporating stackable credentials.
• Employers & industry groups: developing strategic partnerships with higher education and training providers, developing talent pipelines in partnership with regional stakeholders in workforce development and education, training and education program analysis and improvement, strategies for implementing employee career guidance and support platform.
• Industry-education partnerships: building coalitions among businesses, industry organizations such as chambers of commerce, and postsecondary institutions to maintain healthy workforce talent pipelines necessary for economic growth.

Examples of current initiatives include:

• Great Lakes Renew: CAEL is partnering with several organizations across six states in the Great Lakes Region to increase innovation in waste water management and workforce development in the industry.
• Latino Adult Student Success (LASS): Through a community of peer institutions CAEL gathers data to help increase student success in the adult Latino demographic, including releasing a report of the 2022-2024 academy.
• Energy Providers Coalition for Education (EPCE): Since 2000, CAEL has managed a coalition of energy companies and educational institutions who work together to provide energy programs that are pathways for the energy workforce.

Resources

Strategic Overview

Video Library

Adult Learners & Workers Ecosystem