Institutions must pivot from providing lifelong learning and continuing education programming as ancillary offerings to making them central to the institution’s mission, argues Jess Lambrecht (University of Wisconsin Green Bay). Lambrecht notes that many institutions currently suffer from fragmentation across their departments: Continuing education, registrar’s offices, and academic affairs may all operate under different assumptions and cater to different target audiences. She argues that divisions must cooperate to gain a comprehensive view of learners and the various pathways that may lead them through, and back to, an institution. Institutions should then focus on long-term data, she says, to understand learners’ engagement over a lifetime rather than focusing on a single point in time.
