How Working Adults Persist in Graduate Education: Co-Regulation,Self-Monitoring,and Long-Term Engagement

Study Context and Advising System

This study was conducted in the Department of HPE at the Uniformed Services University (USU), which offers three graduate certificates, two master’s degree programs, and one doctoral program in health professions education. Since its establishment in 2015, the program has grown to support more than 200 learners annually. More than 99% of learners are enrolled part-time, and nearly half reside outside the local geographic region, including internationally. Learners are primarily mid-career clinicians, educators, and health system professionals who must integrate academic work with substantial professional and personal responsibilities. This context creates heightened vulnerability to delays and disengagement when expectations, timelines, or progress are unclear.

We examined a longitudinal learner-tracking and advising system designed to support learner progression across multi-year, part-time graduate pathways. The system was developed to provide shared visibility of learner goals, progress, and risks across learners, advisors, and program leadership. The system consisted of four integrated components: (1) an individualized program of study, (2) structured semester check-ins, (3) quarterly program-level learner reviews, and (4) an annual progress review. Together, these components created multiple, overlapping opportunities for planning, monitoring, and adjustment.

Individualized Program of Study

At program entry, each learner and advisor collaboratively created an individualized program of study using a standardized spreadsheet. This document lists degree or certificate requirements, planned courses, academic milestones, and target timelines. It was updated throughout enrollment as courses were completed or plans changed, and was accessible to both learners and advisors.

Structured Semester Check-Ins

At the beginning of each academic term, advisors contacted their assigned learners, typically by email, to confirm enrollment plans, review progress, and discuss any changes in professional or personal circumstances. Learners were encouraged to update their program of study before or during these interactions.

Quarterly Program-Level Learner Reviews

Advisors reviewed all assigned learners quarterly using a shared tracking spreadsheet. Each learner was assigned a status (green, yellow, or red) based on indicators such as progress, responsiveness, and academic standing. All advisors and program leadership met to review the whole learner cohort, prioritizing learners flagged as yellow or red. These meetings occurred approximately two weeks before the start of each academic term.

Annual Progress Review

Once per year, advisors conducted a structured review with each learner to address academic progress, workload, well-being, and plans. Advisors completed a brief written summary categorizing progress as “Meeting Expectations,” “Needs Modification,” or “Academic Concern,” and the summaries were reviewed by program leadership.

Study Design and Data Sources

We used a mixed-methods, descriptive design to examine learner experiences and program-level outcomes associated with this system. This design was intentionally aligned with a co-regulatory perspective, allowing examination of how regulatory processes were distributed across learners, advisors, and program structures over time. Data sources included semi-structured interviews with learners, program-level enrollment, completion, and certificate-to-degree transition data, and faculty-generated documentation from quarterly and annual review processes. The USU Institutional Review Board determined that the study was exempt (DBS.2021.295).

We designed the study as an explanatory case study rather than an outcomes evaluation. All learners in the department shared the same advising and tracking infrastructure, and admissions, funding, and institutional context remained constant, so we did not attempt to estimate the system’s causal effects on persistence. Instead, we used multiple data sources to examine how the system enacted practices and how learners experienced its role in supporting long-term engagement.

Learner Interviews

Nineteen current learners and program graduates participated in semi-structured interviews.

Participants were recruited through an invitation distributed via program email lists to current and recent graduates. Participation was voluntary, and individuals self-selected into the study. As a result, the sample reflects those who were willing and available to share their experiences, and may overrepresent learners who remained engaged in the program.

Interviews explored experiences with advising, progress tracking, and the perceived impact of the system on motivation, stress, and persistence. Interviews were analyzed thematically, and representative quotations were selected to illustrate common patterns in learner experience.

Because participation in interviews was voluntary and most respondents were current learners or graduates, the qualitative sample disproportionately reflects individuals who remained engaged in the program. Learners who disengaged, withdrew, or became non-responsive were not systematically represented. As a result, the interview data should be interpreted as capturing how persistence was experienced and made meaningful by those who remained connected to their learning trajectories, rather than as a comprehensive account of all learner experiences within the system.

Program-Level Outcomes and Faculty Perspectives

We examined enrollment, completion, and certificate-to-degree transitions for all learners enrolled between May 2018 and May 2024. Completion was defined as earning a graduate certificate, master’s degree, or doctoral degree. Certificate-to-degree conversion was defined as enrollment in a degree program following completion of a certificate. Faculty experiences were examined through records generated during quarterly learner review meetings and annual progress summaries, which documented advisor calibration, identification of learner risk, and collective decision-making about learner support.

Faculty perspectives were examined using documentary data generated through routine program processes, including quarterly learner review meeting records and annual progress summaries. These records included advisor-generated notes, learner status categorizations (e.g., green/yellow/red), and summaries of faculty discussions regarding learner progress and support needs. No formal faculty interviews were conducted.

These materials were analyzed using a qualitative descriptive approach. Records were reviewed to identify recurring patterns in how faculty identified learner risk, interpreted learner progress, and coordinated responses. Data were coded inductively, focusing on themes related to calibration of judgments, early identification of concerns, and shared decision-making processes. These themes were then used to characterize how faculty collectively enacted monitoring and support within the advising system.

Learner Progression and Completion

Between May 2018 and May 2024, 574 learners enrolled in the graduate HPE programs supported by the tracking system. Of these, 568 completed a certificate, master’s degree, or doctoral degree, corresponding to a graduation rate of 99%. Most learners initially entered through certificate programs. Over this period, 54% of certificate learners transitioned into a degree program. Among the 2024 cohort of doctoral matriculants, all had previously completed a master’s degree within the department.

The unusually high completion and progression rates in this program should not be attributed to the tracking system itself. Instead, they indicate that the case represents a high-functioning, resource-rich environment in which adult learners remained connected to their educational trajectories over extended periods. This makes the site helpful in examining how co-regulation is enacted when persistence is possible. The characterization of this setting as a high-functioning, resource-rich environment reflects the authors’ interpretation based on program features such as intensive advising structures, coordinated tracking systems, and sustained institutional support, rather than a formal comparative analysis. Prior research suggests that such structural supports are associated with improved persistence and progression (e.g., Kahu & Nelson, 2018; Tinto, 2012).

These outcomes describe the level of persistence and progression observed in this case across extended, part-time training pathways, including among learners who initially entered with limited commitment to a full degree trajectory.

Learner Experiences of Progress Tracking and Advising

Analysis of semi-structured interviews with nineteen learners and graduates revealed consistent perceptions of the tracking system as supportive, clarifying, and motivating. Participants described managing substantial professional and personal responsibilities alongside their academic work, often characterizing their lives as crowded with competing demands. In this context, the individualized program of study and regular advisor check-ins were perceived as reducing uncertainty and supporting planning.

Learners described the program of study as a roadmap that made expectations and timelines visible, allowing them to anticipate upcoming milestones and adjust plans when life circumstances changed. Several participants emphasized that this transparency reduced stress and prevented minor delays from escalating into crises. As one learner explained, “There are so many things on my mind,” and having a clear plan helped prevent the program from becoming another source of cognitive overload.

Advisor check-ins were described as both instrumental and relational. Learners valued advisors’ awareness of their progress and their proactive outreach, rather than waiting for problems to surface. One participant reflected, “I probably would not have done the program… I want to be able to prioritize my family… and having a supportive advisor who was able to give me different options was hugely instrumental.” Learners interpreted these interactions as evidence that the program was invested in their success as whole people rather than merely as students.

Together, these data suggest that the tracking system supported learner agency by making progress visible, normalizing help-seeking, and enabling learners to adapt their trajectories without disengaging.

Faculty Calibration and Early Identification of Risk

Faculty perspectives reported here are derived from analysis of program-generated records rather than direct interviews. Documentation from quarterly program-level reviews indicated that these meetings functioned as a central mechanism for aligning advising practices and maintaining shared awareness of learner status across the department. The traffic-light system was described as helping rapid prioritization of learners requiring attention, allowing meetings to focus first on those with the greatest need for intervention. Within a 60-min meeting, more than 200 learners could be reviewed in a structured and efficient manner.

The presence of all advisors and program leadership in these meetings allowed multiple perspectives to be brought to bear on individual learners, facilitating more nuanced and consistent judgments about progression and support needs. This process was used as a frame-of-reference training, promoting alignment among advisors in their interpretation of learner behaviors, performance indicators, and risk signals.

Records reflected that faculty reported that this structure enabled earlier identification of issues such as non-responsiveness, course failure, or emerging disengagement, allowing timely adjustments to course loads, advising intensity, or institutional support. The system also fostered a sense of shared responsibility for learner success, reducing isolation among advisors and strengthening collective decision-making.

Persistence as Co-regulated Identity Work

A central contribution of this study is its shift from an individualistic view of persistence toward a co-regulated model in which the work of sustaining engagement is distributed across learners, advisors, and institutional structures. This study examined adult learner persistence not as a function of individual motivation, but as a socially and institutionally supported process of sustaining commitment to a future learning identity across time. Over six years, working adults in this program maintained engagement through shifting work demands, family responsibilities, and life disruptions. Interview data suggest that this persistence was made possible not because learners were unusually self-directed, but because regulatory work was shared, visible, and legitimized through institutional structures. Rather than positioning persistence as a function of individual capacity alone, these findings illustrate how it is actively produced through ongoing interactions between learners and the structures that support their regulatory work.

Prior work on student persistence has emphasized the role of competing demands, time scarcity, and engagement in shaping attrition (e.g., Kahu & Nelson, 2018; Tinto, 2012). These models help explain why working adults are vulnerable to delayed progression and disengagement, but offer less insight into how some learners remain engaged despite these pressures. Our findings suggest that institutionalized co-regulation provides a mechanism for managing these challenges. By distributing the work of planning, monitoring, and adaptation across people and tools, the system examined here enabled learners to remain connected to their educational trajectories even when individual capacity for self-regulation was constrained.

Classic models of self-regulated learning emphasize learners’ capacities for planning, monitoring, and adaptation (Garrison, 1997; Zimmerman, 2002). These models largely conceptualize regulation as an internal, individual capacity. Our findings suggest that these capacities are fragile when embedded in mid-career adult lives. Learners described being cognitively and emotionally saturated by professional and personal responsibilities, leaving limited capacity for the invisible labor of tracking requirements, anticipating bottlenecks, and recalibrating timelines. In this context, the individualized program of study functioned as an externalized regulatory system, stabilizing learners’ sense of where they were and where they were going. Rather than replacing self-direction, this tool preserved it by offloading cognitive demands that would otherwise erode persistence.

Regular advisor check-ins and structured annual reviews extended this support from planning into meaning-making. These interactions created routine opportunities for learners to interpret delays, renegotiate expectations, and reaffirm commitment to their educational goals. Importantly, these moments did not frame adjustment as failure. Instead, they normalized the reality that adult learning trajectories must bend in response to life circumstances. Research on co-regulation has primarily focused on short-term, task-based interactions in classroom or collaborative learning settings (Hadwin et al., 2018; Järvelä et al., 2016). Our findings extend this work by demonstrating how co-regulation can be institutionalized across multi-year educational trajectories. In this case, co-regulation was not episodic or interaction-bound, but embedded in program structures that continuously supported planning, monitoring, and adaptation over time. The co-regulatory structures examined here were not neutral supports. Quarterly risk categorization, shared visibility of progress, and leadership oversight also functioned as forms of institutional monitoring. For learners embedded in a military-affiliated culture, this visibility likely carried normative pressure to remain engaged. Co-regulation in this context therefore operated at the intersection of support and surveillance, a duality that warrants critical attention in future research.

Rethinking Persistence in Adult Graduate Education

The high rates of certificate completion and transitions into degree programs observed in this cohort are best understood through this lens. Many learners entered the program without an initial commitment to a full degree, instead testing whether graduate study could be integrated into their lives. The ability to begin with a limited commitment and later extend engagement reflects adaptive persistence rather than linear progression. Adult learners were able to keep a future-oriented learning identity alive long enough for deeper investment to become possible.

This reframing challenges common institutional definitions of persistence that equate success with uninterrupted, on-time completion. For working adults, persistence is better characterized as the sustained capacity to remain connected to a learning trajectory despite pauses, slowdowns, and shifts in priorities. The structures examined in this study supported that capacity by keeping goals visible, relationships intact, and adaptation legitimate.

What This Study Can and Cannot Claim

The descriptive outcomes reported here cannot be attributed solely to the tracking and advising system. Admissions practices, institutional resources, and the military-affiliated context likely contributed to learners’ persistence. The strongest evidence from this study lies in the qualitative accounts of how learners used shared planning tools, advisor relationships, and routine progress reviews to manage uncertainty, reduce stress, and sustain engagement. These mechanisms are theoretically consistent with models of self-regulation and co-regulation, but causal claims about their independent effects require further study.

This study contributes to multiple strands of literature. First, it extends models of self-regulated learning by demonstrating that regulatory processes in adult learners are not solely internal capacities, but can be externally scaffolded through institutional structures. Second, it builds on persistence research by identifying a concrete mechanism, co-regulatory infrastructure, through which learners manage competing demands and sustain engagement over time. Third, it expands co-regulation theory beyond short-term interactions, illustrating how regulatory processes can be distributed across people, tools, and routines over multi-year trajectories.

Co-regulation in this context was likely intensified by the hierarchical and mission-oriented culture of military-affiliated education, where visibility, accountability, and responsiveness carry normative and professional weight. The mechanisms described here may therefore operate differently in civilian programs with weaker advising authority and fewer structural ties between enrollment, employment, and professional advancement.