College leaders adeptly balance the competing needs of their institution. For years, colleges have held a dual mission: Prep workers for employers and equip students to transfer to four-year institutions for degree obtainment. Nevertheless, these dual missions split into two distinct tracks creating bureaucratic barriers. These walls make moving between obtaining a career-centric certification and a traditional degree difficult for students. Sadly, students of color and at-risk have the most to lose. Still, higher-ed leaders can take steps to bridge the gap between non-credential and credit courses to improve credentialing.

Staying in college and graduating presents challenges for many students, particularly community college students. According to Think Impact, Inc., a 3.8 billion loss happens each year from college dropouts. Therefore, college leaders for 2-year and 4-year higher-ed institutions must make strides to ensure students become college graduates. Students may come from low-income families and face barriers that traditional students do not face. Thus, college leaders apply these four strategies to help community college students to become college graduates.

The curriculum attracts students and engages the surrounding community. However, colleges risk losing new students and opportunities in their community when the curriculum process is slow. Besides that, universities risk missing fresh ideas from faculty when the process is cumbersome. Here are five points higher ed leaders should know. 

Americans spend on average 12 hours a day consuming media, ranging from television and advertisements to social media and video games. Yet, many people lack media literacy skills to discern fake news from real news. They do not understand how images may affect their emotions or opinions. Since college students are among this group, college leaders can prioritize these 6 components to teach media literacy.

Well-designed microlearning solves several the curriculum process problems for higher-ed leaders and their teams. Corporate training departments have long embraced microlearning for its perks of retention, mobility, and more. Higher-Ed is beginning to see the benefits of this strategy, too. Still, does microlearning belong in Higher-Ed? Read on for how l higher-ed leaders benefit by using microlearning in their curriculum development process.

Adult learners who enroll in online courses have unique needs. They often have to balance coursework with full-time employment, family responsibilities, and multiple competing interests. With that in mind, colleges, universities, and adult education publishers can make necessary changes to attract and retain adult learners. Therefore, higher ed leaders should consider the following strategies for building an online college curriculum for adult learners that succeed.

Colleges continue to convert more courses to online learning. Classes could be emergency remote learning or re-evaluated curricula. With this transition, some faculty members experience hesitancy, moving classes they taught for many years to online courses. Professors guide their students to the course objectives; they do the teaching. As subject matter experts, these instructors may not understand the complete role of the instructional designer in the teaching and learning process. Instructional designers (IDs) are experts in course design and embed the best practices to produce courses effectively for online learning. IDs realize the differences between face-to-face and online learning. Yet, a disconnect continues to exist between these two groups. College leaders can employ these four points to build a stronger connection between the faculty and instructional designers.