Twentysomethings and up are fastest-growing college population
from Berkshire Eagle

NORTH ADAMS -- Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts senior Andrea Peters wants the state to know that the face of today's college student is changing -- it's older, possibly wiser, and usually takes the slower road to a degree.

State colleges and universities also are showing a decline in graduation rates, and the state Board of Higher Education formed a task force last week to investigate possible causes.

Peters has a pretty good idea why: "Sometimes life gets in the way.

"One of the things they need to understand is that the student population is changing. The traditional student is becoming the minority," she said.

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Peters, 33, president of the college's Nontraditional Student Organization and member of the college advisory steering committee, has been taking classes at MCLA since 1995.

The single mother of three expects to earn her bachelor's degree, with a double major of psychology and sociology, by the age of 34.

The North Adams resident belongs to one of the fastest growing groups in higher education: nontraditional students.

In contrast with the young, single, just-out-of-high school students, nontraditionals tend to be working class, often low income, and may be single parents, twentysomethings and up who no longer live at home and who are juggling classes with jobs and families.

Students 25 years of age and older now make up close to 50 percent of all college enrollment in the United States, according to statistics from James Madison University in Harrisonburg, Va. This shows a 50 percent growth rate of adult students in the past 20 years, the fastest growth rate of any category of college students, the university states.

Nontraditional students do not have the time to take a full course load of five classes per semester, Peters said.

"If you're taking 12 credits a semester, you're looking at six years in school, not four," she said.

MCLA has about 330 confirmed nontraditional students out of 2,576 undergraduate and graduate students. Also, 45.7 percent of undergrads and graduates earned diplomas in 2002, which was an increase at the school level but trailed behind the national average of 54 percent.

Lori Gazzillo, spokesman for MCLA, said the conditions under which people go to college are many, and that must be taken into consideration in tailoring programs and assessing a school's graduation rate.

"There's always room to increase the graduation rate," said Gazzillo. "But people also have to look at the other circumstances that students have and consider that."

College President Mary Grant has been appointed to the task force examining the graduation-rate decline. Gazzillo said Grant would be representing all of MCLA's students at the table, traditional and nontraditional alike. Grant could not be reached for comment.

In Peters' case, she's been in college on and off since the fall of 1995, and fits the archetype of a nontraditional student.

Overcoming hurdles

"I was married. My marriage fell apart my first year at MCLA, and that was one of my first major hurdles back at school," Peters said.

And as her marriage was ending, she had to become the breadwinner, after her husband needed kidney transplant surgery and could no longer work.

"I actually ended up walking out. I didn't withdraw or any of that. I was so caught up in his health and well-being that I didn't go through the whole process of withdrawing from college," Peters said.

However, after working for a few years as a line cook at the former Howard Johnson's and as a certified nurse's assistant at Willowood, Peters decided to further her education and re-enrolled in the fall of 2000.

"I made the decision that I wanted to be able to give my kids a life," she said. "I wanted to make an income to pay every bill every single month."

But with three children, now ages 13, 10 and 6, going to class had been and still is a challenge.

In spring 2001, Peters was formally separated from her husband, and continued the difficult task of caring for herself and her children on her own. She has worked here and there since then, but has mostly been living off financial-aid money as she approaches her graduation date this May, she said.

Finding child care, especially when friends and family aren't available, is also a trying task, Peters said.

"Sometimes I wing it. They have friends, so sometimes I can send them to a friend's house for a while. My kids sit through classes, and they get the college experience at an early age," said Peters, half-jokingly, "which is great because my youngest two want to go to college when they're done with school."

These are the kinds of issues that a nontraditional student must face. And as president of the Nontraditional Student Organization, Peters has been working diligently to build a support system for students like herself.

As president, she applied for a $485 grant from the Massachusetts and Rhode Island Campus Compact that helped pay for a survey on the lives and needs of 511 nontraditional and commuting students at MCLA.

Results from the survey will be presented at an open forum at the college next month.

She also has been pushing to have MCLA become a chapter of Alpha Sigma Lambda, an honor society that partners with colleges and universities to celebrate the scholarship and leadership of adult students who face competing interests of home and work.

And despite her deep scholastic and extracurricular involvement, the hardship for Peters isn't over yet, even with graduation around the corner. Her mother is ill with lung cancer and on the verge of needing hospice care, she said. That's kept her mind off the future, focusing instead on living day to day.

What happens after graduation is off her radar at the moment.

"At this point, I'm really not sure what I'll do," Peters said.

However, what she's looking forward to in general comes easily to her mind: "A 40-hour-a-week job, somewhere in my field."

posted by prof_booty | 09:29 AM