Changing Higher Ed

E326 - Adult Learners: Redesign, Don't Just Recruit

Published: August 25, 2026

Duration: 36:26

Institutions recruiting adult learners are inserting them into schedules, deadline policies, and course structures designed for 19-year-olds, then treating the resulting attrition as a student problem. The barriers doing the damage are recent design decisions, not fixed features of higher education, and several of them cost almost nothing to remove.

In this episode of the Changing Higher Ed® podcast, Dr. Drumm McNaughton speaks with Dr. Evan Kropp, executive director of distance education at the University of Florida's College of Journalism and Communications. The conversation covers what has to change structurally when adult learners stop being an enrollment c...