The value of a college education remains the same whether you are just out of high school or mid-way through your career. But the cost of attending college, and the sacrifices someone has to make, often become greater at different stages of life.
According to a new report by California Competes, more than six million Californians between 25 to 54 have a high school diploma but no college degree. For adults with more years removed from high school, enrolling in college often comes with significantly higher costs, and not just money.
“Unlike students who enter college immediately after high school and with limited commitments outside of academics, adult learners often navigate competing responsibilities of work, school, and family. Adult learners are more likely to be parents, and many are single mothers. Some are navigating health issues with limited access to care or must work multiple jobs to ensure their and their families’ basic needs are met,” the California Competes report says.
Understanding the unique challenges adult learners face when enrolling in college is essential to supporting them. The new California Competes report, Degrees of Value:
A Multidimensional View of College ROI Through the Voices of Comebackers, is an in-depth look at the challenges adult learners face, and the advantages that come when they get the education they want. Advantages not just for them, but for everyone.
As the report notes: “Engaging these adults in higher education is essential to expanding economic opportunities, addressing workforce shortages, and strengthening regional and state economic growth.”
It’s Money, But Not Just Money
While the financial cost of college is often the first thing people think about, for adult learners it’s just one of many obstacles to overcome, and often not the most important. As California Compete notes, there are also opportunity costs and personal costs.
“The opportunity cost is the time that could have been spent working or with family rather than going to college. Given adult learners’ competing life obligations, many must make significant personal trade-offs to attend college,” the report notes.
That includes the challenge of caring for children or ailing family members while holding down a job. It includes the time it takes for commutes to jobs and school. It includes not getting to spend time with friends, or on hobbies, or taking on other part-time work.
Then there are “personal costs,” which include the stress and strain that comes with pursuing education in the midst of a busy life. “The strain of juggling competing demands and the lack of time for other activities, such as sleep, socializing, and exercise, can have larger implications for students’ mental health and well-being,” the report says.
These are issues, beyond just financial aid, that need to be examined and addressed to support adult learners improving their education.
At the same time, while the financial benefits of having a college degree are well known including increased wages and job advancement opportunities, for adult learners an increased salary is only one among several significant benefits. College graduates can find jobs with better schedules, jobs they are more passionate about, jobs that have better health care options, or are closer to home. Higher education can teach valuable new skills, can improve self-confidence, and more.
Making college accessible to working adults, California Competes finds, is as much about enhancing these benefits as it is reducing the obstacles
How To Make College Work For Working Adults
The Degrees of Value report offers many important recommendations on how to make the higher education system accessible for adult learners.
They include:
- Offer flexibility on missed assignments and deadlines to “comebackers” when unforeseen life circumstances arise to minimize the opportunity and personal costs of attending classes rather than working or caring for family members.
- Expand opportunities for high-quality online learning to provide flexibility for comebackers to maintain their jobs and increase time with families.
- Expand options for competency-based education to allow students to earn credentials at a pace that fits their lives.
- Offer credit for prior learning to recognize students’ skills and knowledge gained outside the classroom and reduce the time to degree.
- Reduce students’ non-tuition costs to attend college by ensuring that their basic needs — including rent, childcare, food, and healthcare — are met.
- Offer adequate financial aid by strengthening California’s financial aid systems to better serve adult learners and student parents.
The report also suggests ways to enhance the benefits of college that adult learners can find after they have completed their education, including:
- Provide career advice early to help students choose a degree and major, and develop a course schedule aligned with their career goals.
- Improve local labor market data by integrating hours worked, occupation, or job location into California’s Cradle-to-Career data systems to provide students accurate advice about promising career pathways in their region.
- Embed the development of durable skills into the course curriculum. Measure and track student progress to market skill gains to employers and future students.
- Create ROI measures that capture financial, personal, and social benefits to help colleges design programs and policies that support students’ overall well-being and growth.
- Integrate teaching strategies that center on adult learners’ experiences to increase classroom engagement by validating their lived experiences and building their confidence.
From Theory To Fact
Calbright College is one example of how a college made for adult learners would be designed.
Calbright is an online community college that uses a Competency-Based Education model. It is flexibly paced, allowing students to set their own timetable for learning. They can move as quickly as they are able through the course, or take extra time with no penalties. Calbright has no costs for Californians over the age of 18 with a GED. There’s no tuition, no text book fees, no hidden charges. It will even loan laptops and wifi hotspots to students who don’t have access to the technology they need to attend an online college, free of charge.
Instead of offering traditional degrees, Calbright’s programs are short-term and career focused, offering certificates in industry-valued skills that can lead to upward mobility, like IT Support, Data Analysis, Project Management, and Cybersecurity.
Calbright has a robust career services program offering students help with their job search that includes networking events, resume and LinkedIn support, practice interviews, and more. It teaches durable skills that employers look for woven into every part of its curriculum. And it is developing ROI measures so that it can determine how well its curriculum is working for graduates, and quantify how much they benefit.
A college education is already a great benefit for adults – but as California Competes shows, and Calbright proves, those benefits can be enhanced. It can be made more accessible, more supportive, and more effective for adults and comebackers.
