Education Insight Podcast Interview

by Growing Inland Achievement | Oct 14, 2025 | EDUCATION INSIGHT

Student-Ready Strategies Founder and CEO Sarah Ancel joined Growing Inland Achievement’s Education Insight podcast to explore one of higher education’s biggest opportunities…supporting adults who have left college or never had the chance to start.

In this conversation, Sarah discusses the difference between “stop-outs” and first-time adult learners, the limitations of current outreach efforts, and how truly Student-Ready systems will shape the future of higher education.

Excerpt from Education Insight

Education Insight: Bringing Dropout & Stop-out Students Back to College

Season 6, Episode 7

"Colleges across the country are bracing for an enrollment cliff, as fewer students graduate from high school and continue on to higher education. But what about the millions of adults who never started college at all? In this episode of Education Insight, host Lacey Kendall talks with Sarah Ancel, Founder and CEO of Student-Ready Strategies, about how colleges and universities can better reach and support these adult learners—often overlooked in higher education’s recruitment and retention efforts. Sarah shares insights on why adult learners are critical to addressing the enrollment crisis, the barriers they face when considering higher education for the first time, and what institutions can do differently to welcome them into the fold . . . "