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  • Attracting Adults

    By Dean Dad September 12, 2007 6:45 am

    Like many cc's, mine is banging its head against the wall trying to reverse a long-term decline in the number of adult students.

    Contrary to stereotype, most of our enrollment growth has been in students age 19 and under. Our enrollments in the 22-and-up demographic have been slipping for some time.

    Part of that, I think, can be traced to the cost of living in our service area. It's sufficiently expensive to live here at this point that if you aren't still living with Mom and Dad, you've moved away. The struggling 30-year-old single Mom doesn't live here anymore, even if she still works here. The adults who live here tend to have advanced degrees already.

    (There's a consistent correlation between age and gender among our students. In the 19-and-under group, it's majority male, if by a narrow margin. In the 22-and-over group, it's majority female by an overwhelming margin. The overall student body is majority female.)

    Still, even with some unfavorable demographics working against us, we could probably mitigate the impact of the exodus if we did a better job of attracting and keeping the (potential) older students who are here.

    We've taken some of the obvious steps: we've implemented open hours in the evenings at the bookstore, the registrar's office, student services, and the like. We have academic advisors on duty in the evenings. We schedule courses to allow degree or certificate completion entirely at night, entirely online, or through a combination of evening and weekend classes. We advertise our occupational programs, and have developed some fairly short occupational certificate programs in high-demand areas. We have special Open Houses for adult students, non-credit programs in areas of special interest (art, culinary, etc.), and even days devoted entirely to senior citizens, who pay no tuition.

    Yet the slide continues.

    So I'm going to use my bloggy soapbox to make a cry for help. Has your college found a successful and replicable way to reach adult students? For the adult students (or adult former students, or potential adult students) out there: are there barriers to your enrollment that it would be practical for a college to address? My colleagues and I are starting to run low on ideas, but it's a big world out there. Help!

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Comments on Attracting Adults

  • Posted by yagwara on September 12, 2007 at 10:20am EDT

  • Sometimes little accommodations can make a world of difference for adult students. For example, I have a student in a class that meets Mondays and Thursdays, but all her scheduled homework time is on the weekends. So, any homework or reading set on Monday can't get done by Thursday. A little advance warning goes a long way.

    Or there's the instructor who lets her afternoon classes go a little long. Mildly annoying for the traditional students, but for the student picking up his daughter after school, potentially disastrous.

    Maybe a short meeting with faculty to make them aware of these issues? These things often don't occur to us until someone brings them up.

  • Posted by Greg on September 13, 2007 at 2:25pm EDT

  • Dear Dean,
    maybe you are already doing all the right things, but that your adult public just see no value in your degrees or offerings. If your geographical and work environment is that stable then there is no where to grow after completion.

  • getting organized
  • Posted by TomH on September 14, 2007 at 10:55am EDT

  • Sounds like you're doing everything you can on the supply side. Your college is providing a rich array of classes and support services for adult students.

    So now it's time to look at the demand side. How many low-income adults are there in your catchment area who could attend your college? You may be right that few low-income adults live in your area because of high cost of living, but it sounds rather speculative. Do what any grocery store chain or hospital would do: look at census tract data to determine where your target population lives.

    So you've found them. Why aren't they enrolling? Ask them in focus groups.

    A key issue may be the macro environment for college accessibility. My organization just released a study that linked declining adult college enrollment in New York to declining affordability. Every state is different, but your state may not be providing adequate financial aid that meets the specific needs of adult learners. If that's the case, it's really a statewide issue, and you should be taking your case to elected representatives.

  • attracting adults
  • Posted by Christine Monnier , Professor at College of DuPage on September 16, 2007 at 7:05pm EDT

  • It would be too long to detail College of DuPage's strategy to attract adults, but if you want to email me, we can discuss this further.

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