Response to Adult Learners in Focus 2008

“The good news is that adults are making up an ever larger share of the total enrollment in postsecondary institutions. By 2004, adults made up approximately 43 percent of total enrollment at community colleges (includes full-time and part-time).” (7) 

My response:

It is good news that adults are recognizing that more post-secondary education will better their chances in life. However, this quote ignores the fact that only 31% of these students are likely to have graduated within 3 years at their community college. (Source: Click here for link to the National Center for Education Statistics page). So I’m interested in why that rate is so low and what can be done to improve graduation rates.

 “States vary significantly in their success in moving students through this traditional educational pipeline. . . . But reliance on and attention to the traditional educational pipeline alone will not be enough.” (22) 

My response:

Although I understand that the focus of this report is to provoke a rapid increase in the United States’ current statistics, I believe this quote is incredibly short-sighted. Reforming the traditional educational pipeline would be a preventative inoculation so that many of the problems facing adult/nontraditional learners today are less likely to repeat in the future.  This, of course, is not to say that we should ignore the current problem facing nontraditional students; however, only focusing on this population is short-sighted in a global consideration of the poor condition of our education system.

“Nontraditional students—for example,  those who have  delayed enrollment in postsecondary education, work full-time while enrolled, or have dependents other than a spouse—were more likely than traditional students both to participate in distance education and to be in programs available entirely through distance education” (8)

My response

To me, the idea that many nontraditional students would choose to participate in distance education is not too surprising. The student population I have worked with—many of them fit the criteria of adult learners— supports this claim. At the Veterans Upward Bound program, many veterans are seeking ways to re-acclimatize to a learning environment after years of active duty. The main struggle they have is attendance. Because many of them are adults, they have many priorities outside of education: work, child-rearing, mental and physical health, and so on. Therefore, I understand the temptation a nontraditional learning may have when signing up for a distance course. However, the quoted passage above states that nontraditional students “were more likely than traditional students both to participate in distance education” (8). Participation does not in and of itself imply nor guarantee successful completion of those courses. There can be many obstacles to distance education as well; the primary one is the technology barrier that my older adults may encounter.

Although Adult Learners in Focus 2008 highlighted many solutions to accessibility, the report failed to acknowledge the technology barrier. Two solutions to this barrier can be increased support from faculty and staff and free technology workshops. In my prior position with 1199 Benefits Union, I worked with practicing Registered Nurses who were pursuing Bachelor’s Degrees. Their courses were a mixture of traditional on-site courses, online courses, and hybrid courses which attempted to combine the two. After a semester of the student’s various complaints, I was hired as a supplemental instructor, and one of my goals was to support the students in their learning of the various computer programs they would need to know in order to successfully complete their courses. I held general workshops for basic writing, but most of my time was devoted to explaining how to navigate Blackboard, how to join a Google Hangout, or how to set up running headers in Microsoft Word. Another important aspect of this position was that it maintained the essence of distance learning: I had to travel to the students, oftentimes at their place of work during their lunch break. I think a program that includes aspects of the 1199 program—where support is embedded in the program—might help alleviate the problem of the technology barrier.