At CAEL, we believe that partnerships - the joining together of people and organizations for mutual benefit – are critical to the success of our mission to improve access to education for adults. Nowhere is this more important than in the link between the public sector and other organizations such as businesses, labor unions, educational institutions and foundations.

By helping to facilitate partnerships between the public and private sectors, CAEL leads the way in developing entire communities of adult learners. Our areas of expertise with public/private partnerships extend to designing industry consortia, developing innovative financing mechanisms for worker education, research (both data collection and evaluation) and incubating innovative learning projects.

CAEL is committed to promoting policies and practices that provide adult learners with access to quality lifelong learning opportunities. We believe that:

• Access to quality lifelong learning has become and will continue to be a key determinant of an individual's employability and upward mobility.
  
• Education and training opportunities must become universally accessible to all incumbent workers including the disadvantaged and the working poor.
  
• Improving access requires both financial assistance and user friendly information on the quality and variety of learning options.
  
• The labor force is an opportunity for strategic investment by both the public and the private sectors.
  
• Workforce development systems need to be reinvented, streamlined and focused on serving the needs of all individuals, both job seekers and career changers, as well as employers.

Much of CAEL’s work in the Public Policy arena is focused on several
key initiatives, including:

• Lifelong Learning Accounts (LiLAs): Individual asset accounts to finance education and training so that workers can upgrade their skills to meet the needs of business and industry while helping to advance their own careers and earnings potential.
  
• CAEL Healthcare Career Lattice: The growing need of an aging “baby boomer” generation is creating an enormous shortage in qualified health care workers. Challenged by this critical necessity, CAEL, in collaboration with the US Department of Labor (DOL), has implemented a unique education and training program in five pilot sites across the country.
  
• WorkforceChicago2.0: WorkforceChicago2.0 is a collaborative initiative to benchmark, recognize and share winning employee learning strategies that build a culture of performance, productivity and pride, enhancing the competitive edge in human capital with positive business results.
  
• State Indicators Project: CAEL has received a continuation grant from Lumina Foundation for Education for its state indicators project to examine state-by-state performance on enhancing educational access and success for adult learners. The award will support CAEL’s on-going work to develop a set of measures which can be used by states, researchers, and others to more systematically document how well states are serving adult learners. A policy framework helps support the data set for states.