What It Is

The Municipal Action Cohort launches in March and continues through 2025. Each city will receive customized data, marketing, strategic planning, and additional technical assistance to develop policies, practices, and programs that lead to greater economic equity in their communities through engagement of adult students. NLC’s and CAEL’s combined experience and expertise will provide cities with assistance in the following areas critical to the success of adult learners and workers, particularly those with some college and who may be close to a terminal credential:

Why It Matters

Too many adult learners and workers are economically immobile, and the lack of a postsecondary credential is a key obstacle to inclusive prosperity. As of 2021, barely over half (53.7 percent) of adults aged 25-64 nationwide had earned a credential beyond high school. The Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce projects that by 2031, 72 percent of jobs in the U.S. will require postsecondary education and/or training. And according to National Skills Coalition research, more than one-third of workers today lack basic digital skills even as more than 90 percent of today’s jobs require competency with digital skills.

White adults are more likely to hold a bachelor’s degree or higher, an inequity that has left generations of traditionally underserved populations without means to achieve their full potential and perpetuated generational poverty. More than 40 million Americans completed some college but no credential. Many of them are nonetheless burdened with debt even as they lack a work-relevant credential and a path to economic mobility. However, within these challenges lies great opportunity that can be realized if we make systemic improvements to the barriers preventing equitable access to education-employment pathways. Systemic improvement begins at the individual level – individual learners, workers, and the communities and cities whose prosperity depend on them.