By Katie Lannan

The University of Massachusetts will partner with a California-based university system to scale up its online educational programs with the goal of serving more adult learners, the schools announced Tuesday.

The partnership between UMass Online and Brandman University is expected to be finalized later this year. UMass officials said they are still working through its details.

The move comes amid the disruption caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, and UMass officials said millions of adults in Massachusetts and across the country will need flexible, high-quality and affordable online education alternatives as they seek to recover from economic dislocation.

The COVID crisis has actually put quite an emphasis on the need for this, UMass Online CEO Don Kilburn told the News Service. During the recession in 2008, 2009, programs for working adults fully online programs went up significantly, because people were trying to get those skills to get back in a competitive workforce. Now you have the double whammy of people not really wanting to get in their car and head to a campus necessarily.

Kilburn said the partnership will present adult learners both in Massachusetts and across the country with an ability "to actually get a degree in a program that was built for if you're a working adult," accommodating their needs and schedules.

Brandman is based in Irvine, California, and it was established by Chapman University in 1958 to educate active-service military personnel. Kilburn described it as one of the best, if not the best, colleges that is actually geared toward working adults.

Chapman University President Daniele Struppa described the partnership with UMass as "an ideal fit for Brandman's next step."

"Brandman is destined for national prominence as a leader in education for working adults, but it is increasingly clear that Chapman has taken it as far as we can," Struppa said in a statement. "The time has come for Brandman to expand its reach."

The arrangement will strengthen UMass Online's technology platform and support services, according to the university. Kilburn said the partnership does not carry a cost for UMass or the state.

Adults in underserved communities will be a key target group for the new partnership, according to a press release from UMass. The university cited a Strada Network survey that found most American adults 62% are concerned about unemployment, but that percentage is higher among African Americans (68%) and Latinos and Asian Americans (72%).

University of Massachusetts system president Marty Meehan used his 2019 state of the university address to announce plans to create a new online college focused on adult learners.

Quality, affordability and flexibility in higher education are needed more than ever to address the troubling lack of economic mobility, Meehan said in a statement Tuesday. Through this partnership, we will deliver for the citizens of the Commonwealth and for learners across the nation. Given the realities of the COVID-19 pandemic and the vivid impact of racial inequality, a venture that previously seemed important to us is now nothing less than essential.

The COVID-19 pandemic and associated social distancing requirements forced colleges and universities to move their traditional, in-person classes online to finish the spring semester, and many schools are now looking ahead to incorporate more online and remote learning into their fall plans.

All of us in higher education discovered how important distance learning is when the pandemic made on-campus classes impossible, Katherine Newman, the UMass systems chancellor of academic programs, said in a statement. But to scale up online education, we are going to need to do much more than translate our current curriculum to Zoom. We need to grow an affordable, flexible form of online education.

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University of Massachusetts scaling up online learning, partners with Californias Brandman University on adu - MassLive.com