Mapping the Misunderstood Population of Adult Students

A report examines their status and urges colleges to think differently about them

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By ELYSE ASHBURN

A recovering alcohol and drug addict in her 30s. A former truck driver who lived in his car for six months. And a single mother with epilepsy. Each of them is part of an all-too-often invisible class of Americans: adult college students.

Adult students are not well documented, are frequently left out of discussions of higher-education policy, and are not fully understood by the colleges they attend, says a report released this week by the Lumina Foundation for Education. As a result, those students often have no clear, viable paths to earning bachelor's degrees and establishing careers.

A key flaw, the report says, is the gap between noncredit study — like remedial education and job-related training — and degree programs. Many adult students start in noncredit, skills-related programs and, after months and even years of effort, make no progress toward earning associate or bachelor's degrees.

"Institutions should do more to incorporate credit courses into work-force-training programs so that courses taken for job skills also count toward a degree," says Brian Pusser, an assistant professor of education at the University of Virginia who worked on the report. "We've got to find ways to get more people prepared to participate in the knowledge economy."

At stake, declares the report, is nothing less than the financial future of the United States — not to mention the livelihoods of the 54 million working adults who have no college degrees.

The 'Hidden College'

The new report, "Returning to Learning: Adults' Success in College is Key to America's Future," is based on a series of surveys and research projects conducted over the past few years as part of Lumina's Emerging Pathways Project (http://www.luminafoundation.org).

Many adult students get lost in a "hidden college" of noncredit courses, where their goals and educational achievements are a mystery to policy makers and colleges alike, the report says. No national data exist on the number of students enrolled in noncredit programs or what courses they take, and most colleges do not track those students.

Many colleges do not even agree on a definition of noncredit work, according to a survey conducted as part of the project. Fewer than half of the officials at 1,262 public and private institutions surveyed agreed that noncredit courses were not applicable to a degree.

But even if they cannot agree on a definition of noncredit courses, colleges are offering a lot of them. Almost 10 percent of all the course offerings at the surveyed institutions were noncredit.

College administrators and policy makers must do more, the report says, to understand just who is taking these courses, and how those students fare academically.

Little Aid in Sight

What is already clear, says the report, is that the aid policies of colleges, states, and the federal government typically do not do well in serving adult students in noncredit and continuing-education programs. Most financial-aid programs are designed with full-time students who are recent high-school graduates in mind.

Federally subsidized loans, for example, are available only to students who attend college at least half time, while adult students often take just a course or two at a time. And subsidized loans and most federal grants cannot be used for noncredit courses.

As a result, many adult students must rely on personal savings or employer support to pay for college.

The 2004 National Study of Continuing Education, conducted as part of the Emerging Pathways Project, found that a majority of continuing-education students — who were 33 years old, on average — did not receive financial aid. Only a third of the students surveyed received student loans, and less than a third received private scholarships or state and federal grants.

Thirty percent of the students said their colleges did not even tell them about financial-aid opportunities.

The study is based on two surveys: one of 729 colleges, and one of 1,518 students at 24 institutions. The findings on adult students' limited use of financial aid echo those of a recent report on the same topic by Eduventures Inc., a research-and-consulting firm.

New View of the Student Body

In addition to revamping financial-aid policies, the Lumina report says, higher-education leaders must throw out old notions of traditional and nontraditional undergraduates.

"If we say nontraditional students are students who are over 24, then you have a population that is defined by age alone, and that's not very helpful," says John S. Levin, director of the California Community College Collaborative at the University of California at Riverside, who worked on the report.

For example, a 22-year-old single parent who works and attends college full time is just as much an "adult," and at risk of dropping out, as is a 40-year-old professional attending college part time.

It is more useful, Mr. Levin says, to put adult students on a continuum from "minimal risk" to "ultrahigh risk," with age as one factor, along with race, income, educational background, employment status, and other socioeconomic characteristics.

The students at the highest risk of dropping out should command the most attention from federal, state, and college leaders, he says. His research has shown those students benefit greatly from mentors, financial aid, peer communities, and specific academic plans.

"We put a lot of resources into people who already have them," Mr. Levin says. "What we should be doing is working to advantage the disadvantaged."