As I was pulling together this issue, I reflected on the attention that military students are receiving in the literature. I, too, have previously authored articles on the topic of advising and working with the military student population. I reviewed The Journal of Continuing Higher Education's (JCHE's) previously published articles concerning military students, and discovered that working with the military student has been a focus of continuing higher education over the past four decades. In Citation1992, JCHE published an article by Victor M. Williams and Mary L. Pankowski titled “The Military's Challenge to Continuing Higher Education.” The highlighted problem areas included (a) transferring credit between institutions, (b) evaluating military training/courses for college credits, and (c) general lack of knowledge by university administrators and faculty of the characteristics of military and veteran students. I wish that I could say that we have resolved all of these concerns in the past 25 years. Through the help of the American Council on Education and the Council for Adult and Experiential Learning, the higher education community has made great strides. However, there is still something missing and we are trying to address it with a plethora of publications on the topic.
Higher education has not been alone in trying to bridge the gap; the U.S. Army has been working on this as well. In December 2015, Army University held a symposium at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, and invited higher education institutions from across the United States to participate. In attendance myself, I saw many colleagues I have known over the years, and we were eager to learn about this new entity called “Army University.” Well, I cannot say I left there with many answers, so as an editor, I was pleased to receive an interesting manuscript by Kem, LeBoeuf, and Martin titled “Answering the Hottest Question in Army Education: What Is Army University?” In reading the manuscript, I found Army University is about building or facilitating pathways for service members and civilians to improve their skills and complete educational pursuits so they can contribute to the armed forces and to civilian society. I believe that the heart of continuing higher education is about understanding the adult learner and finding ways to remove barriers and provide opportunities for growth and education—and this is also the essence of Army University.
Our major articles in this edition span a variety of interesting topics, ranging from the impact of a college degree to research on remedial writing for nontraditional students. In their article about the return on investment of a college degree, Bowers and Bergman examine the financial impact of a college degree on the adult workforce and why adult students are not pursuing college degrees despite the statistical evidence. Their work is important when viewed against the backdrop of the growing evidence indicating that more college-educated workers will be needed in the future, and many of those workers will have to come from an educationally improved adult population. This potentially growing adult student population is also the target of many of the online educational programs being offered today. In their contribution to this issue, Bourdeaux and Schoenack use qualitative methods to discover why students enroll online, what their expectations are for their instructors, and what specific behaviors by instructors are viewed positively or negatively. Their research indicated some specific answers to the expectation and behavior questions, which allowed them to provide our institutions with recommendations on how we can better meet the needs of our online students. Littlepage and Hepworth's work investigates whether an institution's commitment to the social welfare of students aids social integration, and whether it has an impact on student success—measured in the form of class grades. They build on work that indicated that such commitment to social welfare has a positive correlation to student persistence to see if that relationship is similar for another student success outcome. Relles, in her article on rethinking remediation, explores an -experiential learning model as it relates to writing remediation for nontraditional learners. Of note is her differing view of nontraditional learners, as she focuses not only on the age of the learner, but also on other factors that make a student nontraditional—including race, ethnicity, income, generational status, and citizenship. Her reference to “multiple lines of difference” should give us all pause as we consider how we define nontraditional students and how we plan to support them. The results of her study show promise for such learners, but just as importantly bring into question the emerging policy changes that shift support for remedial writers toward required non-credit coursework.
The best practices examined in this edition are timely and tie in well with the Army's quest to improve military and veteran student learning and certification opportunities. Because there are two sides to the conversation about enhancing higher education institutions' service to military students, in this issue, Dillard and Yu give guidance on being a “veteran-friendly” institution in the Best Practices section. Many of our institutions have banners on our webpages that claim we are “military-friendly” or “veteran-friendly,” but how many really live up to this claim? Dillard and Yu set out to provide their audience with instructions on how to create a truly “veteran-friendly” institution. What follows is a valuable list of best practices for institutions to implement that are designed to improve the experience of their military and veteran students. From creating a student veteran's organization with its own space, to providing the right continuing education for faculty and staff concerning the uniqueness of student veterans, their work is focused on improving our ability to back up the claim of being “veteran-friendly.” In their article examining another potential method for granting advanced certifications, Gambescia, Lysoby, Perko, and Sheu may have an idea helpful for the Army and other certifying bodies. They relate the experience of the National Commission for Health Education Credentialing (NCHEC) in utilizing an experience documentation process to qualify already practicing health educators, instead of the more traditional testing or clinical observation processes. This process, done over a limited two-month period, proved to be very successful and accelerated the certification process for the new Master Certified Health Education Specialist program. A further discussion of using such an experience-based process in health education degree programs examines its possible role in lieu of practica for students with experience in the field.
The last three standard sections of JCHE also make interesting contributions to our practice. In the Prior Learning Assessment (PLA) corner, McKay, Cohn, and Kuang analyze prior learning assessment data from 13 Colorado community colleges. All institutions need to be able to document their PLA procedures, and this excellent article provides ideas that you can apply to your institution. Bonhomme's Notes and Trends section includes interesting current items to explore. Finally, Schulte's Distance Learning Exchange contribution gives a thought-provoking history of the credit hour, and then examines all six major regional accrediting bodies' criteria for the credit hour. I think you will find these useful resources.
This edition of JCHE has great variety and offers information and ideas that should be of interest to faculty and administrators alike. As always, I'm interested in hearing from our readers with suggestions for future editions and ideas that will motivate the conversation about continuing education in our communities.