Rethinking Education Delivery

As the landscape of education is forever evolving, so is the profile of the college student. You’ve probably heard the term “non-traditional student” and most likely someone you know comes to mind, but this encompasses more than the guy at work who went back to college for a promotion. Just who is this “non-traditional student”?

The National Center for Education Statistics shows that this moniker is most commonly applied to any student over the age of 24, but there is more. Most of these adult students have families and full-time jobs, along with other life circumstances that can interfere with successful degree completion. In addition to their personal life, many put college right after high school or maybe didn’t graduate college at all. Brighton College is aware that a lot of these students may find the right time and the right funding to pursue a college degree despite any of these challenges, however, many may not find these opportunities. For that reason, Brighton College wants to find ways that we can stand in the gap to provide career training to those that may need a more efficient way to improve their situation through affordable and accelerate certificate programs that lead to employment.

How is Brighton College standing in this gap for the non-traditional student?

One way is through connecting with non-profit agencies that offer education and training to select members of their communities to help them improve their current condition. Our goal is not just to supply education, but to provide it in a manner to maximizes community member access and their flexibility in completing the program.

We can maximize community member access by re-thinking our approach to how we charge for our training and support services. To do this we designed a couple of different delivery models by considering the budget or donor contributions of our community partners. These are also designed to increase the number of individuals that these agencies can afford to put through career training, to maximize their impact in their community while minimizing their overhead. They also consider what support and employment-related services that the agency currently offers, so that Brighton’s services can be added or removed from its programs, as it would help the client. This way we can design a plan that saves them money, either by keeping training costs low or so they don’t have to invest in a new hire to provide support services.

What do these models look like?

The site license model is designed for organizations that are training more than 200 or more individuals in a year or for those that want to provide a donor with a tangible application of their dollars. This license allows the agency to offer unlimited access to all the training programs that Brighton College has access to over the course of the agreed time, like 6 months of course access.

The other option is a subscription model, and can be used by all organizations, but is a good fit for agencies that are training less than 200 individuals each year. The benefit of this model is that it sets the cost of certificate training to a fraction of what it would cost at most other schools. While it isn’t unlimited access, it can allow individuals to complete training in more than one area, or in some short-term courses that help their skill set and resume.

Why is Brighton College offering such affordable education?

At this point you may think that this is too good to be true or that there must be something wrong with Brighton College’s education, but you can be assured that the college is nationally accredited, state-approved, and provides training that leads to recognized industry certifications, to the extent that we’re working with a national company to provide training that fills their employment needs. The reason that we’re happy to adapt our training to the needs and financial concerns of our clients is that we deeply understand that the more individuals that partner agencies can afford to train, the more we can positively impact the lives of those we want to serve. We are not here to charge the highest tuition we can, but instead to stand in the gap for the non-traditional student so that they can be successful. If we do this right, we have helped them, their families and the community.

Will you join with us to reach as many as we can afford to train? You’ll find more information HERE.