Integrating Adult Education and Career and Technical Education under Hostile Institutional Leadership: Faculty Strategies for Protecting Students and Programs

Abstract

In many colleges and universities, efforts to modernize Career and Technical Education (CTE) and adult education collide with institutional cultures that are resistant, politicized, or openly hostile. Faculty who attempt to align programs with contemporary standards, licensure requirements, and adult learning principles may encounter procedural obstruction, misrepresentation of policy, and top-down decisions that undermine student success. This article examines how integration of adult education and CTE can still move forward under hostile leadership, drawing on andragogical theory, lifelong learning, and faculty governance traditions. The discussion centers on three interrelated strategies: (a) grounding curricular integration in external standards and accreditation frameworks, (b) designing coherent pathways that make adult learners’ needs visible and non-negotiable, and (c) exercising collective faculty agency to resist noncompliant or harmful models while documenting student impact. Rather than offering a simple “how-to” recipe, the article highlights tensions between institutional politics and professional ethics, and argues that faculty in adult and CTE contexts have a duty to protect learners and the public interest even when doing so is uncomfortable or risky. Implications are offered for faculty leaders, unions, accreditors, and administrators who seek to support robust, integrated adult and CTE pathways in environments where leadership is unstable or misaligned with educational values.