ACE Partnerships Solve Human Capital Shortages for K-12 Schools, Community Colleges, Healthcare, Businesses

As of 2024, American College of Education Partnered With More Than 2,500 Organizations to Create Solutions That Provide Top-Quality Online Programs and Train or Upskill Workers to Fill Crucial Positions

INDIANAPOLIS, INDIANA / ACCESS Newswire / June 18, 2025 / In 2024, American College of Education (ACE) expanded its partnership reach to more than 2,500 colleges, school districts, healthcare systems and other businesses. The expansion demonstrates ACE's commitment to making a world-class education available to all and helping its partners solve persistent human capital challenges.

As organizations across both the public and private sectors struggle to recruit and retain talented employees, ACE provides bespoke education solutions that enable employers to recruit, retain and upskill their employees.

"By working together, ACE and our partners provide employees with access to greater career opportunities. At ACE, we are fully committed to helping to strengthen the talent pipeline in this manner across education, healthcare and other fields," said ACE President and CEO Geordie Hyland.

ACE, founded in 2005, is uniquely positioned to provide quality, affordable and accessible online graduate degrees, undergraduate degrees, doctorates and certificates in education, leadership, healthcare and business. In 2024, ACE demonstrated its value to students with an eighth consecutive year of no increase in tuition charges. ACE's affordable tuition enables nearly nine out of 10 students to graduate without debt¹.

ACE built its first cohort of students through a partnership with a public school district in Illinois, which sought a flexible and affordable way to create a pipeline of skilled educational leaders.

Today, ACE continues that legacy with partnerships that transform colleges, schools and hospitals nationwide. In Central Texas, ACE worked with Temple Independent School District to address the statewide and national shortage of K-12 classroom teachers. As part of the partnership, the school district facilitates career advancement for its staff by recruiting and supporting employees and teachers through ACE's online programs.

"We have seen many of our staff excited about the opportunity to advance their careers from paraprofessionals to licensed educators. There is a sense of pride within the cohort of teachers in the program, and it's terrific to see that," said Adrian Lopez, Temple ISD's director of employee relations.

ACE also partnered with Rio Salado College, one of the 10 Maricopa Community Colleges in Arizona, to develop flexible and affordable content-specific graduate credit options for the training and licensure of high school dual enrollment teachers. "ACE has proven to be a valuable and responsive partner," said Rick Kemp, dean of instruction and partnerships. "The graduate credit content area instruction and prior learning assessment options provided by ACE meet a critical need in providing viable pathways for dual enrollment teachers toward meeting their credentialing requirements."

ACE's partnerships also help hospitals and healthcare groups solve the national nursing and healthcare worker shortage. In Arizona, ACE partnered with GateWay Community College, also part of Maricopa Community Colleges, to create a new RN to BSN to MSN pathway. This pathway enables nursing students to transfer credits from their BSN (Bachelor of Science in Nursing) program into ACE's (MSN) Master of Science in Nursing program - shortening their time to completion by six months to a year and bringing nurses into the job market more quickly.

"Working with the ACE team to create a seamless, efficient pathway for a concurrent enrollment program for the RN to BSN (at GateWay) to ACE's MSN was a wonderful and collaborative experience," said Dr. Margi Schultz, nursing faculty administrator for Maricopa Community Colleges. "The ACE team is responsive and student-focused. We have had significant interest from our students and look forward to building and expanding upon this initial partnership."

ACE has also partnered with a healthcare system to help address its leadership development needs. Its nurses and employees who complete the internal leadership program can seamlessly apply earned credits to an ACE degree program, thereby reducing program completion time and cost while maximizing on-the-job training and development.

ACE serves its broad spectrum of partners by developing customized solutions, not uniform, one-size-fits-all benefit options. "We work with our partners to identify their unique, specific needs and then collaborate with them to develop effective solutions," Hyland said.

Those solutions may include benefits such as direct bill, tuition reduction, seamless credit transfer pathways from a program the partner offers to one of ACE's programs, transcription of coursework the partner offers into academic credit and more. ACE's higher education partnerships are sometimes eligible for concurrent enrollment, where their students can simultaneously complete schoolwork at their college and ACE to expedite completion.

ACE's partnerships deliver a value proposition for both students and businesses: Students benefit from degrees that allow them to advance their careers while maintaining their jobs, family life and financial stability, while employers benefit from having more capable and motivated employees and incentives to keep them in the organization.

"For 20 years, ACE has been collaborating with employers to build human capital pipelines that address staffing gaps with advanced degrees and/or certifications," Hyland said. "Our partnerships prove what's possible when institutions come together to provide students with the flexible, affordable and high-quality education opportunities they need."

To learn more about how ACE partnerships can benefit your organization, visit ace.edu.

¹ Internal research completed in March 2025

American College of Education

American College of Education (ACE) is an accredited, fully online college specializing in high-quality, affordable programs in education, business, leadership, healthcare and nursing. Headquartered in Indianapolis, ACE offers more than 60 innovative and engaging programs for adult students to pursue a doctorate, specialist, master's or bachelor's degree, along with graduate-level certificate programs.

SOURCE: American College of Education

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