Demographics can be destiny, especially in the case of higher education.
A generation ago, universities and colleges were awash in qualified applicants, and one of the big struggles was having enough space for an expanding student body of young adults fresh out of high school.
But today? “Most students enrolled in college are adults,” says John L. Comerford, president of Otterbein University. “It shifted a few years ago.”
Those adult students don’t live on campus, and since many of them have jobs and families, they aren’t able to attend class at the same times or places with conventional students.
“People think of higher education as a leafy green campus with 18- to 22-year-olds living in dorms—and that’s still part of what we do,” Comerford says. “But the demographics have been changing. If you look at the trend lines, there just aren’t going to be enough 18- to 22-year-olds to go around for all the colleges and universities in Ohio.
“States like Ohio are overbuilt for higher education,” he said. “As some colleges get desperate for students, it becomes like having too many airlines with too many empty seats. As private colleges get desperate for students, they get closer to giving away seats. For a private university, that’s a tough thing.”
Educational institutions in Central Ohio are responding to the changing student body—and the evolving needs of these new, adult student learners—through a variety of offerings.
Some are continuations or expansions of past courses, while others are groundbreaking efforts. They range from flexible, industry-aligned options and certificate offerings to master’s degree programs that cater to adult lifestyles.
At Otterbein, the Coalition for the Common Good is “still in the pilot stage,” Comerford says of the school’s 3-year-old partnership with Antioch University to create a system of affiliated, independent, not-for-profit higher education institutions. “We have brought a number of Antioch University grad school programs to Central Ohio in clinical mental health, MBA and others. But, again, it’s dozens, not hundreds, of students so far.”
Some programs are entirely in person while others are online only. On weekends and in the summer, Otterbein’s buildings are open, allowing for plenty of in-person classes. “So, we’re doing it without adding overhead,” Comerford says. “We’re [offering classes] through the existing teachers at Otterbein and Antioch.”
Otterbein and Antioch have signed at least a half-dozen deals with corporations to create workforce development programs combining customized job training with higher education accreditation.
In one of those deals, HR staffing and solutions organization InnoSource designed a two-week program called InnoSkilling in partnership with the Coalition for the Common Good and Advanced Drainage Systems Inc.
“This program is foundational to InnoSource and what we do,” InnoSource CEO Chad Delligatti said last year when the program launched.
It’s been successful in the early stage: The first class of students all still work at ADS, and their productivity is up 40 percent.
Classroom and Real-World Learning
At Columbus State Community College, executive in residence Scot McLemore spent a large portion of his career with American Honda Motor Co. anticipating where the industry was going and developing relevant training. “Back around 2014, while I was with Honda,” McLemore says, “we realized that we were not going to be able to offset the talent loss we were going to experience.”
A large cohort of workers approaching retirement, as well as a declining interest among potential employees in working as a technician or engineer, were raising alarms. So, McLemore helped Honda lead the way in partnering with Columbus State to develop the Earn and Learn program. The initiative aimed to provide students with an opportunity to have paid work experience while completing their academic program.
Since the program launched, “things have definitely gotten more interesting,” McLemore says. Today, the Modern Manufacturing Work-Study Program at Columbus State combines classroom and lab learning with a paid apprenticeship at a local industry partner. “One of the great things about the intent behind the Modern Manufacturing Work-Study was not to just satisfy Honda, but to satisfy the industry need for a multicraft workforce,” he says. “Looking back now, it was a great approach, knowing that this demand was only going to increase.”
While the Modern Manufacturing Work-Study program is similar to earlier efforts, “it’s at a much larger scale. Biotech, pharma, EV and others weren’t here in 2015. So, Columbus State is paying close attention to our industry partners, and to what will enable a student at Columbus State to be most successful.”
Schools Aim to Meet Industry Needs
Around the same time that Columbus State was first partnering with Honda, Franklin University recognized demand was increasing for shorter courses serving industry needs.
As an institution that serves a predominantly adult student body, Franklin University has “always had shorter offerings,” President David Decker says, although some of those did not earn students college credits. “We started integration of it into our curricula about eight years ago.”
The basic idea is simple: While the needs of corporations have always been filled by degree programs, some short-term needs can be addressed by a smaller set of academic programs.
“But validation of those is very important,” Decker says, both for industry—which must be assured that a worker is skilled—and for employees, who may want to apply those credentials to a future degree on their way up the corporate ladder.
“The content and material in demand in these types of offerings is not a big mystery—IT, cybersecurity, AI, health care informatics and others—but what makes the programs really useful for corporations and for students is having configured them to meet both requirements,” Decker says.
Franklin has a multitude of offerings to serve those needs, as well as a huge number of corporate partners. “Franklin is always looking to see what the next move is,” he says. “AI is coursing through everything, of course. Franklin Works is our internal unit that arranges and implements agreements with corporations. We have about 100 corporate partners—Huntington, OhioHealth, Nationwide Children’s, among them—many, many of the biggest corporations in town.”
Doubling Down on Online
Meanwhile, the biggest university in town has moved aggressively into serving the needs of adult students. A year and a half ago, Ohio State University hired Jason Lemon as vice provost and dean for online learning.
When he was in a similar role at the University of Cincinnati, Lemon saw the school’s 14 online programs, then serving 1,800 students, grow to 115 programs with nearly 8,000 students.
“It’s a significant effort and will have significant impact,” Lemon says. “OSU is engaged in not only being the state’s flagship in quality and research, but in creating a dynamic impact for people of all 88 counties.”
Lemon has hit the ground running. “We are experiencing double-digit growth in online degree program enrollment year over year,” he says. “There are more than 50,000 enrolled in noncredit professional development courses. That’s significant engagement. And we’re on track over the next five years to double our online student population.”
Students can earn online associate, bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degrees, as well as undergraduate and graduate certificates, in areas ranging from cybersecurity and data analytics to environmental science, social work and more.
As with other educational institutions, Ohio State has “pretty significant engagement with local employers,” Lemon says. “They are coming to us and saying, ‘We’ve been here in Central Ohio for 10 years and have observed trends in our own employee population. We don’t want them to leave us, so can you help us create a bridge for our highest potential folks, and allow us to move them forward in their careers?’ ”
While OSU will always offer the traditional undergraduate “rite of passage,” Lemon says his job is to make sure everyone realizes that the school has something to offer them. “We often talk about lifelong learning—it’s almost cliché—but really for the rest of your life, there’s a continuous learning process that plays out in every industry.
“So, as a university, we’re looking at short- , mid- and long-term needs of the community and employers, because we do have the ability to do online and nontraditional courses, and that makes us more flexible.
“It’s a given that the marketplace is constantly evolving, so why would we think education is static? The job I have today did not exist when I graduated. Now it’s a fundamental component of education that every institution has to engage.
“One of the things that’s really happening in the university environment is recognizing that either we need to be responsive to the inquiries and demands of learners and the people who employ them, or the learners will go elsewhere.
“It’s not the easiest path. People have professional responsibilities, home responsibilities, and maybe community responsibilities. So, when people get to a certain point in their lives, as a university do we say, ‘Does that disqualify them?’ or do we say, ‘Why not imagine ways to support their growth?’ ”
Tim Feran is a freelance writer.
This story is from the March 2025 issue of Columbus CEO. Subscribe now.
This article originally appeared on Columbus CEO: Columbus-Area Colleges and Universities Adapt Their Offerings to Serve Adult Students
Reporting by Tim Feran / Columbus CEO
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