Miyaka Mackie went straight to college after she graduated from high school. She started at Fayetteville State University in North Carolina, but quit after a little more than a year.
That was 28 years ago. Since then, Mackie married, had four daughters and finished her associate degree at Richmond Community College. In 2020, she enrolled at the University of North Carolina at Pembroke with the intention of finishing her bachelor’s degree, but health issues forced her to stop going.
This fall, Mackie reenrolled at UNC Pembroke as a junior. She has 13 more classes to take before she finishes her degree in sociology.
“I don’t care if I’ve got to take one class at a time,” she said. “I’m going to finish.”
Mackie, 46, is among almost 2,800 former University of North Carolina System students who have reenrolled after stopping out. A minister and full-time administrative assistant, Mackie attends classes online in the evenings after work.
“I want the degree as a personal accomplishment,” Mackie said. “I love my job, but I’ve spent half my life working on this degree.”
In 2021, the North Carolina General Assembly allocated $97 million to start Project Kitty Hawk, a nonprofit ed-tech startup that would contact students like Mackie. The initiative launched in May 2023, and, as of late August, Project Kitty Hawk had reenrolled almost 2,800 students who had started college at one of the network’s universities but left without finishing their credentials. Most of those students are from North Carolina counties that are considered underserved by higher education, according to Andrew Kelly, director of Project Kitty Hawk and former executive vice president for the UNC System.
The initiative came about after North Carolina officials realized the state needed more workers with college degrees, said Kelly. The UNC System has 17 separate institutions, including 16 universities and one high school.
The former students Project Kitty Hawk reaches out to are part of a growing nationwide population. In 2022, about 37 million working-age adults in the U.S. had some credit but no credential, up almost 3% from 2021.
Projects similar to Project Kitty Hawk are underway in other states, including California Reconnect, a coalition currently focused on re-enrolling students from 13 public colleges. Over the next two years, the initiative aims to broaden that scope to 30 higher education institutions in the state.
College officials nationwide have increasingly focused on enrolling stopped-out students as they brace for the demographic cliff, a decline in high school graduates expected to start in 2025 due to declining birth rates during the Great Recession.
“We can’t rely on students coming out of high school to earn degrees,” Kelly said. “What about these folks who already have some credit?”
Project Kitty Hawk partners with ReUp Education, one of several companies that work with colleges and universities to contact former students and coach them through re-enrollment. ReUp Education counselors reached out to 103,000 former students from ten universities in the UNC System. Of those students, 40% had stopped out within the past five years, 35% stopped out between six and nine years ago, and another 25% left college more than 10 years ago.
Reenrolled students brought in about $4.5 million in tuition for the system last year, Kelly said. That figure might be an underestimation, he added, because it doesn’t include some student fees.
Because many reenrolled students don’t need a lot more credits before they can graduate, UNC System officials expect to see another $5 million in tuition from the current population of reenrolled students over the course of their studies.
Most reenrolled students registered at UNC Pembroke, UNC Greensboro and Western Carolina University. The most common fields of study for returning students are business, health sciences, social sciences, interdisciplinary studies and computer sciences.
A new approach for reenrolled students
The UNC System hasn’t historically done a good job serving adult students, Kelly said. Part of Project Kitty Hawk includes adding more online courses, which appeal to reenrolled students who are older and may be working jobs or taking care of family members.
“This is all about providing individuals with an opportunity that enables them to experience greater labor market advancement,” Kelly said. “Some careers require a degree.”
It isn’t realistic to expect a reenrolled adult student to show up for in-person classes during the day, said Asher Haines, associate provost of UNC Charlotte’s professional studies school.
While most undergraduate students at UNC Charlotte are enrolled in primarily campus-based programs, older returning students are often drawn to fully online programs, he said. UNC Charlotte saw 286 students re-enroll last year. This year that number went up to 333. Of those returning students, 18% chose fully online programs, and those online students are, on average, 11 years older than the campus-based students, according to Haines. Only 2% of incoming first-year students enrolled in online courses last year, as compared with 25% of reenrolled students.
Over the summer, he said, the university hired 20 additional academic advisers in part to serve the growing number of reenrolled students. These advisers reach out to students to explain how to transfer credits from other colleges and military experience, change majors, manage their time and get academic support.
The university also offers an Adult Student Ambassador Program for returning undergraduates. Students ages 25 and older serve as mentors to help reenrolled students find the social and academic support they need to adjust to being in class and stay until graduation.
“These students are juggling other life priorities,” Haines said, “and often school isn’t number one.”
Mackie’s instructors have been flexible about extending deadlines when emergencies come up, she said. When her daughter had to go to the hospital on the day an assignment was due, Mackie’s instructor told her not to worry and to turn her work in when things were settled.
“They gave me the extra time that I needed,” she said. “That meant a lot.”
Many students who leave college before completing their credentials do so because they struggled to understand the institutional system, said Katy VanVliet, senior vice president of learner services for ReUp Education.
ReUp Education counselors text and email former students to see if they would like to consider reenrolling in college. What often ensues, VanVliet said, is a long series of conversations to coach students through the process.
“We ask them what got in the way of them finishing the first time and then what’s motivating them to reenroll,” VanVliet said. “The timing has to be right. It doesn’t do anyone any good to come back to school only to stop out again.”
It can take as many as 60 communications with a ReUp Education counselor before a former student reenrolls, VanVliet said. And it isn’t unusual for counselors to stay in close contact with reenrolled students all the way through graduation. Some have weekly check-ins with counselors.
Common questions students have had, VanVliet said, related to transferring credits from other schools, bringing up their GPA and dealing with financial holds blocking them from registering, which could be because of an old parking ticket or library fee.
“We aren’t academic advisers or financial planners,” she said, “but we do help bring the language of higher education to first-generation college students who don’t have an understanding of how the system works.”
Some feedback from reenrolled students is important for universities to hear, VanVliet said. Many universities, for example, provide scant information online for students considering reenrolling.
“People don’t feel welcome back if there’s no place for them to click,” she said.
Clarification: This story has been updated to clarify student interest in online courses and online programs.
