UNC System’s program to educate adult workers

Thanks for joining us this Saturday morning. We’re taking a break from campaigns and hurricanes to check back in on Project Kitty Hawk.
 
The initiative is the UNC System’s answer to a growing problem for universities everywhere: The nation’s demographics suggest college enrollment among traditional 18-24 year olds may decline over the medium- to long-term. Meanwhile, working adults in North Carolina without a college degree don’t have many in-state options for programs designed specifically for their needs. As a result, about 65% of North Carolinians enrolled in online degree programs have had to choose an out-of-state college or university, a rate that is much higher than the national average.
 
Project Kitty Hawk, seeded with $97 million from the General Assembly, is not itself a university. Rather, it provides technology and support services to existing UNC System schools, enabling them to launch their own online degree programs specially designed for adults.
 
The suite of services Project Kitty Hawk offers includes the actual digital platform on which instructors interact with students, post coursework, grade assignments, and the like. It also includes marketing to differentiate UNC System schools from other, mostly for-profit, online programs, and provides prospective students with access to admissions counselors who help them explore options, complete applications, and learn about financial aid. Once a student enrolls, Project Kitty Hawk matches them with a success coach that has a particular understanding of the unique challenges facing adult learners  and provides 24/7 IT support . All of this happens under the brand umbrella of the client university. Students enrolled in Project Kitty Hawk-powered programs will likely never know it.
 
This specialization matters. Adult learners are not at all like traditional 18-24 year-old on-campus students. Adults have jobs and families and obligations. They can’t just drive over to campus for six hours per day while also feeding their kids, caring for their parents, or working their job.
 
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Since we last covered Project Kitty Hawk this past winter, the initiative has grown markedly. This time last year, Project Kitty Hawk powered one degree program that enrolled 10 students. Today, there are 11 degree programs at three partner universities – ECU, NC Central, and Appalachian State – educating more than 550 students.
 
Project Kitty Hawk expects enrollment to only grow from here. Three additional degree programs are launching in January at Appalachian State, and the number of students enrolled in a Project Kitty Hawk-powered program could eclipse 1,500 by the end of the school year. The initiative’s re-enrollment program has also brought more than 2,800 students back to UNC System institutions who started a degree but never finished.
 
The numbers thus far bear out the premise that demand for UNC System degrees exists among North Carolina’s adult population – it’s just a choice of whether or not a university will serve them. Project Kitty Hawk enables institutions to make that choice with a suite of sophisticated services designed for adult learners.
 
The degree programs universities have rolled out through Project Kitty Hawk are designed to meet workforce needs. The initiative helps partner universities identify and build programs in areas valuable to employers – from advanced nursing to supply chain management to cybersecurity.
 
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It’s here, in the workforce development space, that a fully mature Project Kitty Hawk holds the most potential. The initiative’s scalable platform and specialization in adult learning will allow it to partner with employers and industries to leverage tuition assistance programs and meet  particular training needs.
 
Take the state’s health care industry as a hypothetical. There’s a national nurse shortage, and traveling nurses are incredibly expensive. In the future, Project Kitty Hawk may partner with, say, a hospital system to upskill their registered nurses through a Bachelor of Science in nursing program, helping the hospital retain their best nurses and empower them to take on new responsibilities. These partnerships would in turn prompt industry employers to seek out adults graduating from a Project Kitty Hawk-powered program. One can see the virtuous feedback cycle being created: Industry needs, though Project Kitty Hawk, better inform curricula, which in turn produces higher-skilled graduates for that industry.
 
Full maturity is off in the future, but the organization has set a goal to develop up to five employer partnerships this fiscal year. In the meantime, Project Kitty Hawk will build on this past year’s momentum by expanding its university partnerships, program offerings, and enrollment – and further cementing its reputation—and the reputation of our state—as a national leader in building a higher education system that meets the needs of adults and employers.