Understanding Your Future Adult Learner

To help our partners recruit and serve their future adult learners, EAB surveyed more than 2,000 current and prospective adult, graduate, online, and professional students about the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and their enrollment plans. The following pages include lessons from the survey as well as strategies that will help your institution respond to these trends.

Ultimately, the research and recommendations in this report are intended to help your institution become nimbler and better able to respond to both future crises and the day-to-day realities of the recruitment ecosystem.

1. The impact of COVID-19 on your future adult learner

Thirty-five percent of all surveyed students said the COVID-19 pandemic impacted their education plans. But the ways in which the pandemic affected students and their journeys to enrollment vary significantly.

For some, the pandemic accelerated their desire or ability to return to school. But for others, the pandemic was detrimental to their ability to pursue or complete their education. These students said changes in work or family responsibilities, financial hardship, illness, inability to travel, and increased stress negatively impacted their ability to explore or enroll in a graduate program.

Hear More From Students, in Their Own Words

2. Recruit and support students from underserved groups

The pandemic’s impact was especially acute for students of color. More than half of Asian students surveyed said the pandemic impacted their education plans. African, African American, and Black students were also unequally impacted by the pandemic, with 45 percent of students in this group indicating COVID-19 affected their plans to pursue graduate education. In addition to students of color, nearly 60 percent of international students who planned to pursue graduate studies in the United States said the pandemic changed their education plans, compared to 28 percent of their domestic counterparts.