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• Northeast Wisconsin Technical College is part of a growing trend of technical colleges moving to shorter courses, and it’s among few to offer classes almost exclusively in an eight-week semester model.

• Administrators and instructors say the intensive pace helps students perform better and prevents them from dropping out when they face hardships outside of school.

• NWTC’s retention and graduation rates have improved since the college began offering shorter courses.

Halfway through his Monday morning class at Northeast Wisconsin Technical College’s Green Bay campus last month, Patrick Parise instructed his Introduction to Ethics students to hold up their fingers: one if they’re confused about the lesson, 10 if they’ve mastered it. When met with a sea of “jazz hands,” he moves on to review the next chapter.  

The students will take their final exam several days later, after absorbing major ethical theories and key philosophers’ views in just eight weeks — half the length of the traditional 16-week college course. 

That’s because NWTC leaders have overhauled nearly every course in recent years, accelerating them to move twice as quickly. Administrators and instructors say the intensive pace helps students perform better and prevents them from dropping out when they face hardships outside of school.

NWTC is part of a growing national trend of colleges moving to shorter courses, but it’s one of fewer to offer eight-week classes almost exclusively. Many others have recently flirted with the idea by piloting a smaller share of shortened course options. 

“Everybody wants shortened learning. Nobody wants to be in a class for 16 weeks anymore. That’s not the pace of learning,” said Kathryn Rogalski, the college’s vice president of academic affairs and workforce development. “That faster pace, that more intensive time together, I think, is making the difference.”

The schedule at NWTC splits the traditional semester in half — for example, rather than taking four classes over the course of 16 weeks, a student would complete two speedier classes in the first eight weeks, then complete two more in the latter half of the semester. 

Proponents of the approach say juggling fewer classes allows students to focus better while some worry the brisk pace makes it easier to fall behind. 

The transition required a heavy lift, which came with challenges. Some students say the swift pace required a learning curve, and administrators acknowledge that starting a new slate of courses every eight weeks can be intense. 

But data suggests the switch has brought positive change to the 23,000-student college. Retention rates are up, meaning fewer students are dropping out. Students are earning higher grades on average. More are graduating on time. 

Parise, who has taught at NWTC since 2007, says his students engage more in shorter courses. In the 16-week model, he would have taught the ethics students once a week. Now he sees them twice weekly, which reduces the material students forget between classes and strengthens relationships, he said. 

“I find classes develop a far better sense of a learning community,” Parise said. “That’s huge … in the classes that I teach, creating an environment where students feel safe and comfortable and share ideas and ask questions — I don’t know that you can teach somebody ethics without having an environment like that.”

Shortening courses to limit ‘stopping out’

In 2018, NWTC leaders contemplated how they could reduce the number of students who were “stopping out,” or withdrawing from their studies with the intention of returning later, at the six-week mark. 

At least one in three NWTC students rely on federal financial assistance to afford college costs, and many have jobs and families — meaning nonacademic challenges can easily derail the semester.

College leaders wanted these students to be able to “take a break when they needed to, but then not have to be gone a whole semester or a whole year before they could start back,” Rogalski said.

Breaking the semester up into smaller pieces could help, they realized. National research and data from a few short courses they already offered suggested students persist better in accelerated courses. Meanwhile, the eight-week course model was beginning to gain momentum at community colleges in Texas, showing promising results. 

“If (students) are in week six of eight, they can figure out those last two weeks of, ‘How do I figure out that child care? How do I find some transportation?’ And they can finish the courses that they started,” Rogalski said. “If they’re in week six of 16 weeks, it’s really hard for 10 more weeks to figure out how to make it through.”

So NWTC leaders went all in. By 2020, they shifted roughly half of classes to the model. By 2021, 93%. The college exempted select courses, such as clinical rotations in hospitals for nursing students, but otherwise asked all instructors to get on board. 

That sweeping overhaul across nearly every program is vital to seeing results, but it’s a feat few colleges have accomplished, said Josh Wyner, vice president of education nonprofit The Aspen Institute.

“That’s really one of the things that we’ve appreciated about Northeast Wisconsin for years, is that they went to scale when they found something that worked,” Wyner said. “If the data show that students will benefit, they ask themselves the question … ‘Why would we continue to offer things in other formats?’”

Overhauling courses isn’t easy

Accelerating college courses comes with speed bumps. 

A sick student absent for a week misses double the instruction. Financial aid payment schedules must be retooled. Some high schoolers taking dual enrollment classes must manage the condensed schedule. Instructors must revamp their courses. 

Many colleges make the mistake of “simply trying to take 16 weeks of coursework and squeeze it into eight weeks,” Wyner said. 

“It can’t be the same class when it was in 16 weeks as it is in eight weeks. It has to look different,” Rogalski said. “I don’t think any college could be successful at this if they just shrunk their curriculum and just did exactly what they were doing, but did it twice as fast.”

When Nick Bengry transferred to NWTC from Lawrence University in Appleton to save money on tuition, it came with a learning curve. The university used a lengthier semester schedule, so he worried about the transition to more rigorous courses at the technical college. In the last year he’s found “some (classes) that are a little bit rougher” than others in the eight-week format, but feels like the workload ultimately “ends up being similar.” 

“Some classes like, the medical terminology class, were really fast-paced because of the way they were designed,” said Bengry, who plans to transfer to the University of Wisconsin-Madison next year and eventually become an emergency room doctor like his father.

He also finds it easier to schedule the requirements he needs for his biomedical engineering major while juggling a job at Bellin Health. 

“It makes it easier to fit the courses you need into your semester,” Bengry said. “Each course being only half the length means that if I need to fit a course into this semester, there’s more spots — it could be the first half or the second half.”

When students do struggle with their coursework, college staff has half the time to get them back on track before their class ends.

For example, in Kristin Sericati’s developmental reading and writing class, which helps students with lower literacy skills, “resource navigators” visit the classroom during the first week to meet one-on-one with every student and advertise services like tutoring or financial assistance. The college also has an “early alert” system that enables staff to intervene with helpful resources immediately if a student isn’t showing up to class or scores poorly on an assignment.

“A student is not waiting two weeks to have some sort of support that they need, which is now a quarter of their learning experience in that class,” Matt Petersen, NWTC’s associate vice president for ​​institutional research and strategic analytics, said. “We just can’t afford that. Our students can’t afford that.”

As they’ve worked out the kinks, NWTC leaders have returned some classes to 16 weeks. One microbiology class changed back when eight weeks wasn’t enough time to grow the bacteria needed for the students’ research. Now, about 86% of courses are accelerated, fewer than the share in 2022, and administrators say they’ll continue evaluating what works best. 

Boosting retention and graduation 

Seven years after leaders conceived the overhaul, data shows it’s paying off. 

Retention for full-time students, or the share of students who stay enrolled or finish their program from one year to the next, has shot up by 19 percentage points since 2018, when the college introduced eight-week courses. Now, 77% of full-time NWTC students continue in their studies, federal data shows. Nationwide, full-time community college students had an average retention rate of 63% in 2023, according to the National Student Clearinghouse. 

Retention rates for part-time students have shown smaller growth, rising from 56% to 59%. Part-time students regularly have lower retention rates than full-time.

In addition, the share of NWTC students who graduate within three years of enrolling has risen 3% to 46% since 2018. That’s well above the national average of 35% — and a tough data point to budge, according to The Aspen Institute.

Petersen said the change also correlates with an improvement in students’ grades, with hundreds more students now receiving a “C” or above in their courses. 

Plus, students who do have to temporarily withdraw are having an easier time getting back to their studies, said Sericati, the developmental writing instructor. 

“Before, if a student is in five classes and they come up against a life issue in week six and drop out of all of their classes, they now are on (academic) warning. They failed all of these credits,” Sericati said. “Now, if a student comes up against a life issue, they likely can complete those two courses that they’re in and not have that issue when they rejoin us again in another eight-week session.” 

As colleges like NWTC share their success with shorter classes, the model is building momentum, said Karen Stout, CEO of Achieving the Dream, a nonprofit focused on community college success. For example, Western Technical College in La Crosse began transitioning to seven-week courses in the summer of 2024. 

“It is such a relief, actually, to see that this made a positive difference,” Rogalski said. “Students who probably never imagined that they could be successful in college …  They haven’t aspired to complete a degree or go on to a university, and now we’re seeing that these students have this hope that they didn’t have before. And within eight weeks, they’re seeing that they have been successful.”

Miranda Dunlap reports on pathways to success in northeast Wisconsin, working in partnership with Open Campus.

This college’s strategy for preventing dropouts? Classes half as long is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

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The Trump administration is releasing billions of dollars in withheld grants for schools, the Education Department said Friday, ending weeks of uncertainty for educators around the country who rely on the money for English language instruction, adult literacy and other programs.

President Donald Trump’s administration had suspended more than $6 billion in funding on July 1, as part of a review to ensure spending aligned with the White House’s priorities.

While the majority of funding on hold was for K-12 education, federal dollars make up a greater share of the adult education budgets.

The withheld funding included $715 million nationwide for adult education and literacy programs, which help adults complete high school, learn English and improve their literacy skills, among other services. In Wisconsin, adult education providers and technical college leaders lamented the funding freeze earlier this month in interviews with Wisconsin Watch. In a state where 340,000 adults lack a high school diploma, they said the nearly $7 million in adult education funds promised to Wisconsin were crucial in efforts to bolster a thin workforce, and they warned canceled funding would prompt layoffs and program scale-backs.

The Wisconsin Technical College System applauded the Trump administration’s announcement on Friday.

“The system is glad the administration has decided to release the funds previously approved by Congress to fund adult education in Wisconsin,” Director of Strategic Advancement Katy Pettersen said in a statement. “The system and our colleges remain committed to providing education for all students, including those who are seeking adult education to help them find family supporting careers.”

The funding freeze had been challenged by several lawsuits as educators, Congress members from both parties and others called for the administration to release the money. Congress had appropriated the money in a bill signed this year by Trump.

Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul, a Democrat, was among leaders in 24 states suing the Trump administration over the frozen funds. 

Last week, the Education Department said it would release $1.3 billion of the money for after-school and summer programming. Without the money, school districts and nonprofits such as the YMCA and Boys and Girls Club of America had said they would have to close or scale back educational offerings this fall.

The Office of Management and Budget had completed its review of the programs and will begin sending the money to states next week, the Education Department said.

A group of 10 Republican senators on July 16 sent a letter imploring the administration to allow the frozen education money to be sent to states, saying the withheld money supported programs and services that are critical to local communities.

“The programs are ones that enjoy long-standing, bipartisan support,” U.S. Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va., said Friday. She pointed to after-school and summer programs that allow parents to work while their children learn and classes that help adults gain new skills — contributing to local economies.

In withholding the funds, the Office of Management and Budget had said some of the programs supported a “radical leftwing agenda.”

“We share your concern,” the GOP senators had written. “However, we do not believe that is happening with these funds.”

School superintendents had warned they would have to eliminate academic services without the money. On Friday, AASA, an association of superintendents, thanked members of Congress for pressing to release the money.

The uncertainty around the funding was an unnecessary distraction for schools, said U.S. Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash.

“Instead of spending the last many weeks figuring out how to improve after-school options and get our kids’ reading and math scores up, because of President Trump, communities across the country have been forced to spend their time cutting back on tutoring options and sorting out how many teachers they will have to lay off,” Murray said.

The grants that were under review included $2 billion in grants for teachers’ professional development and efforts to reduce class size; $1.3 billion for after-school and summer learning programs; $1 billion for academic enrichment grants, often used for science and math education and accelerated learning; $890 million for students who are learning English; $376 million to educate the children of migrant workers; and $715 million to teach adults how to read.

Miranda Dunlap of Wisconsin Watch reports on pathways to success in northeast Wisconsin, working in partnership with Open Campus.

Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit and nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters to get our investigative stories and Friday news roundup. This story is published in partnership with The Associated Press.

Trump’s Education Department says it will unfreeze billions in grant money for schools is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

Reading Time: 7 minutes

Click here to read highlights from the story

• The Trump administration has frozen $715 million in previously appropriated adult education funds nationwide, including $7 million in Wisconsin. 

• That’s left program staff scrambling to figure out how they’ll continue providing free services that prepare people for the workforce, such as helping people learn English and educating people in prisons and jails. 

• Education leaders say the cuts could kneecap efforts to grow Wisconsin’s thin workforce.

• Attorney General Josh Kaul has joined a coalition that is suing the federal government over a freeze he calls “unconstitutional, unlawful, and arbitrary.”

On a recent Wednesday evening, a handful of adults sat around a table in a classroom at Madison College’s Goodman South Campus. They chatted about the week, their plans for the weekend and, finally, the day’s discussion question: Are human rights universal? 

The Literacy Network’s “Transitions” class is designed as a final step for immigrants with advanced English skills, preparing them for college or careers. Students spend a year learning to set goals, write resumes and interview for jobs. On this day, the lesson was about finding reliable sources for their next big assignment: a college-style oral presentation on a historical human rights struggle.

The Madison-based adult education nonprofit has surpassed many of its goals in recent years, with particularly high enrollment in Transitions. It scored a $72,000 annual federal grant to grow the program from 100 to 150 students.

But in June, the organization learned the money wasn’t coming.  

On June 30, the Trump administration said it was withholding the nearly $7 million Wisconsin was previously set to receive for adult education — threatening programs that help adults complete high school, learn English and improve their literacy skills, among other services. 

If the funding isn’t distributed, the shortfall could shrink remedial programs in a state where around 340,000 adults don’t have a high school diploma, Wisconsin providers warn.

“Reducing funding from programs that have been proven to be effective — and impact not just individuals but whole communities — is really short-sighted,” said Literacy Network executive director Robin Ryan.

The administration has frozen $715 million in adult education funds nationwide, its largest blow to community college program funding to date. It’s part of $6.8 billion in total federal education funding frozen while the administration ensures “taxpayer resources are spent in accordance with the President’s priorities,” a U.S. Department of Education memo said. 

While the majority of funding on hold is for K-12 education, federal dollars make up a greater share of the adult education budgets. That’s left staff scrambling to figure out how they’ll continue to provide their free services, which range from helping people learn English to educating those incarcerated in prisons and jails. 

Sixteen technical colleges and seven community organizations in Wisconsin have received federal funding through a competitive process for adult education and literacy programs. More than 17,000 people attended these institutions for services during the 2023-24 school year, many of whom are people of color or are from low-income backgrounds.

“To me, that’s something that we should be doubling down on and tripling down on, not cutting funding,” said Wisconsin Technical College System President Layla Merrifield.

Wisconsin leaders are fighting to get the promised funds. On Monday, Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul, a Democrat, joined 23 other states in suing the Trump administration, calling the freeze “unconstitutional, unlawful, and arbitrary.” 

“The Wisconsin Technical College System Board has already begun canceling professional development activities, and staff layoffs may soon follow, further disrupting services,” Kaul said in a statement. “This sudden funding loss leaves Wisconsin’s technical colleges facing budget shortfalls that threaten the stability of these essential programs.” 

Trump officials allege ‘dismal’ results

Funding fears began swirling in the adult education community months ago. In early May, President Donald Trump sent Congress a fiscal year 2026 budget outline that called for the elimination of grants under the Adult Education Family Literacy Act, asserting the funding produces “dismal” results. Organizations braced for the possibility of not receiving federal funding beyond the next year. 

“K-12 outcomes will improve as education returns to the states, which would make remedial education for adults less necessary,” the administration’s discretionary funding request read. “The budget redirects resources to programs that more directly prepare students for meaningful careers.”

The shock came two months later, when Trump’s administration withheld the money adult education providers had budgeted for the upcoming year — funding already approved under the Biden administration. 

Ryan of the Literacy Network felt déjà vu when she heard the news.

The Trump administration in April informed her it was canceling a different previously approved grant: $74,000 to help prepare students with green cards to take the U.S. citizenship test. 

“It used to be you would always fight for the next budget, the next grant, but once you got a grant, you knew you had it,” Ryan said. “Since this administration started …we’re in a new climate.”

Monday’s lawsuit argues Trump officials are violating the law in refusing to spend the money. The administration has not indicated whether it will eventually release the frozen funds. 

Ryan isn’t holding her breath, and she’s preparing for the worst. 

Adult education departments at technical colleges receive most of the adult education dollars allocated to Wisconsin. They are being  “extra tight” with their budgets, said Peter Snyder, associate dean of adult education at Moraine Park Technical College. Snyder expects community organizations — like Literacy Network — to feel the impacts of cuts even more because more of their work centers on adult education. 

“With our Technical College System colleges, we’re doing a lot of other work, so for us, it’s more of a matter of managing what we have,” Snyder said. “My heart goes out to those other programs that are doing really great work that are solely reliant on that funding.”

Milwaukee Area Technical College runs the state’s largest adult education program, serving more than 12,000 students between the 2020 and 2022 school years. It’s currently missing $800,000 in promised grant dollars, plus around $500,000 in other funds that were contingent on the federal money.  

“The loss of (this) funding would result in a significant negative impact for supplying the region’s talent pipeline and would negatively affect our students’ economic mobility and career success,” MATC spokesperson Darryll Fortune said in an emailed statement. 

Worsening workforce woes

Education leaders say the cuts could kneecap efforts to grow Wisconsin’s thin workforce.

In the 2023-24 school year, the most recently available data, more than 2,700 Wisconsin adult education students earned a high school equivalency credential, and over 2,500 enrolled in college or workforce training, preparing them for jobs for which they may not have otherwise qualified. 

Literacy Network associate director Jennifer Peterson said programs like the Transitions class are a wise investment. 

Recipients of these federal dollars must test students throughout their studies and report how many achieved at least one of the benchmarks the federal government tracks, which include raising scores by approximately two grade levels, earning a high school equivalency or enrolling in postsecondary education. 

Of the 77 Transitions students tested over the past three years, 71% showed that type of improvement. 

The funding freeze unfolds as Wisconsin employers struggle to find workers qualified for jobs in many key industries. 

“This is definitely not a case of not aligning with the priorities, because the priority is labor, and that’s what this work is doing,” Peterson said. “Wisconsin needs more workers and will continue to need more workers.”

Anna Mykhailova, a cardiologist who fled Ukraine after the 2022 Russian invasion, landed a new job after taking the Transitions class. 

Licensing laws make it complicated for many foreign-trained medical professionals to practice in the United States, so Mykhailova took what she learned in the class and became a phlebotomist — someone trained to draw blood — at SSM Health St. Mary’s Hospital in Madison. 

She later moved up to a role as a cardiac sonographer, taking ultrasounds with the skills she’d used as a doctor in Ukraine. Literacy Network, where she still attends tutoring to improve her English, awarded her scholarships to cover the cost of her board certification exams.  

Mykhailova’s husband Sasha Druzhyna, who worked as an anesthesiologist in Ukraine, took the same class. In fall, he’ll start a graduate program at the Milwaukee School of Engineering to become a perfusionist, a specialist who operates a heart-lung machine during open-heart surgery. 

That class won’t expand without the frozen funds, and Literacy Network has already cut some classes. 

Message to public: Please help 

Trump’s move to withhold already-appropriated funding surprised even those who have seen priorities ebb and flow under previous presidents.  

“This has historically, for many decades, been very stable funding that has strong bipartisan support. It has been, up until now, pretty outside of political winds blowing,” Peterson said. “It’s a big change in our field.”

Staff at Neighborhood House of Milwaukee had already found a way to do without these funds before the news came down. The nonprofit offers ESL and citizenship classes for around 150 immigrants each year, many of them refugees from the Middle East, Southeast Asia and Latin America. 

The organization previously received a $75,000 annual federal adult education grant, but staff didn’t submit all the necessary paperwork when the latest applications were due, so it wasn’t expecting a fresh round of funding. The organization instead turned to private donors and other grants — a shift others who long depended on federal funding may soon need to make, too. 

Liliane McFarlane, who manages the organization’s International Education program, said the organization raised enough to replace the federal funding for a year. 

The Literacy Network is bracing for the possibility of additional federal cuts. It relies on three other federal grants, with about 15% of its $2.6 million budget coming from Washington.   

“We consider all of that to be endangered,” Ryan said.

For now, Ryan said, the goal is just to keep all programs afloat and hope so the organization can scale up during a future presidential administration.  

“We are hoping that this is a Trump administration duration of difficulty,” she said. “We are very much reaching out to the public and saying, ‘Please help us. These are important, effective programs that affect the whole community and help people thrive.’”

Natalie Yahr and Miranda Dunlap report on pathways to success in Wisconsin, working in partnership with Open Campus.

Trump funding freeze threatens programs that prepare thousands for jobs in Wisconsin is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

Reading Time: 2 minutes

If you live in northeast Wisconsin, I want to hear about your experience forging your path to meaningful, family-sustaining work.

But first, let me introduce myself. I’m Miranda Dunlap, and I’m Wisconsin Watch’s new reporter covering pathways to success in the region. That means I’ll write stories about how local people prepare themselves for their dream jobs and what roadblocks stand in the way. 

I’m a native Michigander, and I previously spent two years reporting on community colleges and K-12 education for Houston Landing in Texas. I’ve spent countless hours learning about the experiences of people pursuing affordable education and training to change the trajectory of their life. That was after community college opened doors in my own career. Completing a year’s worth of credits at my local institution helped me afford enrolling at a university and shaved thousands of dollars off my total student debt. 

I’m Wisconsin Watch’s second pathways to success reporter but the first journalist hired specifically to serve northeast Wisconsin. My colleague Natalie Yahr covers pathways from a statewide perspective, and I’m focused on reporting for Brown, Calumet, Door, Kewaunee, Manitowoc, Marinette, Oconto, Outagamie, Shawano and Winnebago counties. Based in Green Bay, I hope people will see me as more than a trusted source of information, but also their neighbor — someone who will ensure Wisconsin Watch’s work reflects the perspectives of local residents.

My goal is to produce journalism that confronts your challenges, highlights resources and opportunities for economic mobility and answers your burning questions.

You can expect my stories to explore barriers that prevent them from finding sustainable employment, and I’ll examine whether leaders and higher education institutions are investing in solutions and tools to overcome these obstacles. I’ll do it all with an eye toward the unique identities of northeast Wisconsin communities. 

As I dig into this beat, I’m particularly interested in hearing from people with nontraditional routes to the workforce — or those who face added barriers to success. That might include incarcerated or formerly incarcerated people, those from low-income families, folks living in rural, under-resourced communities or workers returning to education to switch careers. 

I hope you’ll point me in the right direction by answering some of my questions. 

What do you think I need to know about northeast Wisconsin to understand the challenges that people and communities here face when it comes to economic stability and mobility?

What are your career dreams — to fulfill your own professional goals and support your family? What, if anything, is standing in the way? 

Have you attended a community or technical college in the region, such as Northeast Wisconsin Technical College or Fox Valley Technical College? If so, what was your experience?

Are you a local employer struggling to find skilled workers to fill your jobs? What would help?

Do you know of an organization or institution successfully guiding people toward the skills and information they need to succeed? 

Your insights and experiences will shape my reporting. You can share them with me by filling out this form.

Miranda covers pathways to success in northeast Wisconsin in partnership with Open Campus. Reach her via email at mdunlap@wisconsinwatch.org.

Help us report on local workforce challenges and opportunities in northeast Wisconsin is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.