The history of Adult Education (AE) graduate programs spans almost a century, yet many programs have experienced significant challenges in recent years to remain viable. The purpose of this paper is to understand the struggles AE graduate programs encounter in building, maintaining, and growing programs in North America. We conducted two separate research investigations, in 2015 and in 2022/23, to explore these issues. Our findings reveal program challenges to remain viable, as well as strategies faculty and administrators have utilized to strengthen their programs. [For the full proceedings, see ED648717.]