Lincoln University is collaborating with the Missouri Department of Social Services on a pilot program for its Employment Academy, a one-year certificate program that combines credit-bearing online coursework with internship opportunities across Missouri.
The inaugural spring semester of the program saw 11 students taking online courses across five “cohorts” or concentrations, including cybersecurity, direct care, office administration, accounting and administrative associate.
After completing two eight-week online sessions, students with a 2.5 GPA or above are eligible to complete a paid internship program during their second semester. Students who are not eligible for or interested in an internship can continue with another semester of coursework to graduate in the same amount of time.
Program Director Blaire Hines says the goal of the employment academy is to offer nontraditional students a pathway to career advancement that does not disrupt their daily life.
“We still have this unique balance of making sure that we are not uprooting these learning from their lives and being able to provide them that educational advancement,” Hines said.
Hines says she is still working on securing internships for the fall internship program starting August 18.
Darius Watson, the assistant provost for academic innovation, outreach and research for Lincoln University, first spearheaded the project at its inception almost two years ago. He says the program can also expedite the pathway to career advancement for students who do not want a four-year degree.
“We have a lot of students who come here looking for opportunities for growth and advancement, but they don’t necessarily have any idea what that vision is,” Watson said. “If higher education is a highway, this is a potential offramp.”
Watson says the program is currently working with UMKC to develop another cohort that would specialize in manufacturing positions for cobalt and lithium mining in the state. Watson and Hines are both interested in scaling the program to serve students outside Missouri.
HBCUs carry the burden of creating equity
Lincoln University is one of 19 land-grant HBCUs in the country, meaning that it receives a large portion of its funding from the state to be used specifically for agriculture research and workforce development. Watson says the Department of Social Services was instrumental in closing funding gaps for the program since much of the university’s funding can only be allocated for agricultural programming.
“We have no access to USDA funds because they have to be targeted so narrowly at agriculturally defined disciplines,” Watson said. “If it wasn’t for the Department of Social Services stepping up and providing $200,000 in seed money to get this program off the ground, it wouldn’t be off the ground.”
Michael Steven Williams, a professor of higher education at MU, says often-under-funded HBCUs have a particular financial incentive to broaden their student population by investing in short-term programs like the Employment Academy.
“(HBCUs) have been forced to be innovative in different ways because typically your HBCU is under-resourced in comparison to the local, large four-year institution, the one that necessitated its creation in the first place,” Williams said.
He said the equity-focused mission of an HBCU makes it liable to carry the burden of creating equity across higher education as a whole: “Their founding and their need for existence comes from the fact that Black people were generally excluded from the general educational prospects in post-secondary education. It’s not surprising to me that an HBCU is innovating in that type of way because HBCUs have been asked to innovate in those types of ways throughout their existence.”
Watson says the Employment Academy is directly tied to the university’s mission as an HBCU to serve under-resourced and nontraditional students.
“We’re giving them opportunities that they, frankly, would not normally have easy access to,” Watson said. “We’ve thrown the doors open much wider than they might normally be by developing these partnerships and spaces that might not normally exist.”
Responding to a new market of students
Amid higher costs and trickier job markets for four-year degree graduates, colleges are moving toward short-term programs that balance prospective students’ goals for education and career preparedness with their financial needs. The last three academic years have seen record-breaking highs in undergraduate certificate enrollment, according to a report from the National Student Clearinghouse. In contrast, the report states that enrollment in both undergraduate and graduate degrees has declined in the last three years.
Brad Curs is chair of the department of Educational Leadership & Policy Analysis at MU. He says the proliferation of these programs reaches back to the 2008 recession.
“There was sort of a pushback of students toward higher education with increasing debt loads, and this worry that the returns of education weren’t as large as everyone told them,” Curs said. “COVID accelerated it because institutions were forced to shift to online education, and it pushed programs to figure out how (they) can continue to do this online.”
Curs says colleges also stand to gain financially from shorter-term programs that would bring in a more diverse student body.
“I think universities are responding to a decline in what would be traditional-age college students,” Curs said. “It does open the door to students that maybe wouldn’t be able to join a traditional four-year Bachelor’s program at Lincoln University.”
