A new report by National University looks at how interest in adult degree programs has changed in recent years and how colleges serving non-traditional students show up on key federal metrics. It combines search‑trend data with institution‑level metrics on earnings, debt, repayment, and completion to answer a simple question: when adults choose degree pathways that fit their lives, what do publicly available metrics say about earnings, debt, and enrollment patterns at adult‑serving institutions?
Key Takeaways
- Demand for adult degrees is clearly rising, with a peak of 87.6 in November 2025 (over 33% increase year over year).
- The median annual earnings 10 years after entering college are about $39,166 for adult‑serving schools versus about $31,519 for traditional‑serving schools.
- Schools with more part‑time students tend to show higher median earnings in the federal data.
How is Demand for Adult Degrees Changing?
From late 2020 to late 2025, online search interest in “adult degree” has steadily increased, with the sharpest jump in the most recent year. The Google Trends search index shows relative search interest, where 100 is peak popularity for a term, and 0 means minimal or no interest during the selected period.
- Most recent 12‑month average search interest: 56.17
- Prior 12‑month average: 42.01
- Change in the average level: about a 33.7% increase
- Peak value: 87.6 in November 2025
These trends suggest that more adults are actively exploring degree options online (keep in mind, search interest may not directly translate into applications or enrollments).
What Do Adult‑serving Institutions Look Like in Federal Data?
Colleges that serve many part‑time students are doing something distinctive in federal data: they are building pathways around busy lives, work schedules, and family commitments. When you compare these adult‑serving institutions to more traditional campuses in U.S. Department of Education College Scorecard data, they enroll a much higher share of part‑time students and show different patterns on earnings, debt, repayment, and completion at the group level.
In this analysis, adult‑serving and traditional‑serving schools are defined using the share of students enrolled part‑time as a proxy for how “adult‑focused” the institution is.
- Adult‑serving vs traditional‑serving is defined using part‑time enrollment share as a proxy for “adult share”:
- Adult‑serving: top 20% of schools by part‑time share
- Traditional‑serving: bottom 20%
- Sample sizes:
- Adult‑serving group: 1,125 schools
- Traditional‑serving group: 1,500 schools
- Median part‑time share:
- Adult‑serving: 64.5% of students are part‑time
- Traditional‑serving: 0% of students are part‑time (essentially all full‑time)
Standard completion measures in these datasets were designed around full‑time, first‑time students, so they may not fully capture the paths of learners who attend part‑time, pause, or complete at a different institution. All of the figures below are median values per student drawn from federal data sources and are reported at the group level; they describe patterns in publicly available data and are not guarantees or predictions of individual results.
Median annual earnings 10 years after entering college (for students who received federal aid):
- Adult‑serving schools: about $39,166 per year
- Traditional‑serving schools: about $31,519 per year
In parallel, search interest in “adult degree” is up by roughly one‑third year over year, with a clear peak in late 2025, which suggests that more adults are actively exploring degree options online. Looking at these data alongside the distinctive enrollment patterns of adult‑serving institutions helps put that growing interest into a clearer, data‑informed frame, without making claims about any individual student’s experience or results.
Methodology
This analysis combines a demand signal from Google Trends with institution-level outcomes from the U.S. Department of Education’s College Scorecard dataset (downloaded from https://collegescorecard.ed.gov/data/). The goal is to describe how interest in “adult degree” has changed over time, and how group‑level metrics differ between institutions that appear more oriented toward adult/nontraditional enrollment and those that look more traditionally structured.
Google Trends Series Construction
We looked at Google Trends for the U.S. search query “adult degree” over roughly the last five years. Google Trends reports an index from 0 to 100 for the selected geography and time window, where 100 represents the peak popularity of the term in that period, not an absolute search count.
- Summary statistics used in the report include:
- The peak month and peak index value
- A comparison of the most recent 12‑month average to the prior 12‑month average as a simple “recent lift” indicator
Scorecard Institution Sample and “Adult‑serving” Definition
Institution outcomes come from Most Recent Cohorts Institution in the College Scorecard release. Because Scorecard does not include a single institution‑level “percent adult learners” field, the analysis uses part‑time enrollment share as a practical proxy for an institution’s adult‑serving orientation.
- Institutions are ranked by part‑time share, and two comparison groups are formed:
- Adult‑serving institutions: top 20% (top quintile) by part‑time share
- Traditional‑serving institutions: bottom 20% (bottom quintile) by part‑time share
- This creates a clear contrast between schools with strongly nontraditional enrollment patterns and those that most closely resemble full‑time traditional models.
- The middle 60% of institutions is excluded from the two‑group descriptive comparison to keep the contrast sharp and interpretation straightforward.
Key Limitations
Several constraints are important for interpreting the results:
- Google Trends provides an indexed measure of relative search popularity, not actual enrollment counts.
- The adult‑serving label is based on part‑time share, which is an imperfect proxy and does not directly observe student age.
- Scorecard outcomes apply to specific cohorts and often only to federally aided students, and some fields are missing for certain institutions.
For these reasons, the analysis is presented as descriptive evidence of patterns and tradeoffs, not as a definitive causal evaluation of adult‑serving versus traditional‑serving institutions, and not as a guarantee of any particular outcome for individual students.
