Degree Programs
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“Although degree attainment rates in the United States have been relatively stagnant over the past decade, nearly every other industrialized nation has seen drastic increases in the number of adults holding college degrees”
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This comes from the NEW DIRECTIONS FOR ADULT AND CONTINUING EDUCATION online periodical. This chapter, written by Angela Gast, was interesting in the way it explained what I already felt about adult and continuing education. That it is a complicated choice for people, but has some real value if you do decide to continue your education (which I am doing myself)
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“This chapter examines current trends in adult degree programs and services that aim to increase degree completion rates among adult students, with a specific focus on public research institutions, where, unlike many community colleges and for-profit institutions, adult education sometimes is located on the periphery of the institution’s mission.”
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I include this to give the scope of what they’re trying to do and also because the last line about adult education being moved to the periphery I feel is true in several ways. First, there is less pressure for an adult with an established career to continue their education as there is for a young person (high school or early 20’s). This makes sense because this group of people are those who typically do go on to get higher education. I’m not arguing that this is in any way wrong or bad. It’s great and I’m all for the young people of the world becoming educated. What I think is wrong and bad is how we feel like when we finally graduate with that bachelors, or masters or even PhD that we’re done forever. I agree it become much more difficult to pursue an education full time once you have a career and a family etc but I don’t think it’s impossible and I certainly don’t think it’s a waste of time/money/energy. There are some real benefits!
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“Time and finances are cited as the most common barriers faced by adult students.”
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“Prospective adult students are dissuaded by tuition costs and time constraints. And while online degree programs partially address these problems, they do not always offer enough of a perceived value to attract this potential adult student market.”
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Exactly! Time and finances are very hard to figure out if you’re going to pursue a college degree. Even the online thing, which is what I’ve chosen is time consuming and expensive. Why then are adults persuaded to continue their educations? I think there is a large incentive to go back to school if you think you could make more money by changing professions. Perhaps there is an element of looking for greater job satisfaction as well. These are both factors for me (I know, I know… I’m going INTO education to try to make more money? What am I nuts?) I think though that there are other benefits from continuing your educational pursuits. I’ll discuss this more in a later post about life satisfaction and older adult education. For now, suffice it to say that education need not all be done at a university or college.
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“Public research universities that seek to increase adult student access must evaluate the effectiveness of their services for older students. Adults lead busy lives and are not always able to seek help during normal business hours; nor are they always comfortable with seeking support services online. Tailoring services to accommodate the unique needs of adult students through both online and in-person experiences will enable universities to better support and retain students through to graduation.”
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I thought it was an interesting puzzle they described in terms of facilitating education for adults who have more life experience and whose brains work in different ways. There are more distractions to adult students, but also a higher level of self-motivation. If schools can tailor education toward adults and the situations they face in trying to jam some book learning into their already hectic lives it can be beneficial for both the school and the student. One aspect of having older adult students in class with younger more traditionally aged students in the college or university settings is that these older people bring a very different and often times enriching perspective to class. I remember fondly as an undergrad having some older adults in my classes from time to time. They were wonderful students and I loved hearing what we learned filtered through their experiences. It put context around the concepts and connected ideas in ways that I simply didn’t have the capacity or life experience to do for myself.
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“Once these benchmarks have been established, the effectiveness of adult degree completion initiatives can be assessed more accurately. This assessment also will give the institution an opportunity to identify gaps in services and develop enhanced programming to recruit and retain adult learners.”
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This was written in the context of not having enough information or research about adult programs in the higher-educational setting. I included it because I found it interesting that it’s hard to know what we don’t know. We have all sorts of ideas and concepts and philosophies and data to study. We can create best practices and search text upon text upon study upon study and still there are wide gaps in our knowledge. Even the knowledge we firmly have engraved in our minds can have gaping chasms in them. One of the questions I’ve been pondering this semester in terms of adult education is how does it differ from the education a child receives. I’m interested in concrete methodological and detail-oriented procedural answers here. What would I do as a teacher different if I were teaching a class of 5th graders as opposed to a class of 40 something MBA students. What specifically would I do for each group? Would there be overlap? I’m not talking content obviously, but in my approach. Would I do group projects, writing assignments, surprise quizzes or whatever with one group but not the other? I think maybe the answer is no! I think maybe the tone and scale of the class might change but maybe the procedure of the classes might be very similar. I’m still wrestling with this idea, but I’m glad that I’m not the only one with gaps in my conceptualization and methodological approach to adult education.
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