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Academic Exchange Quarterly, Summer 2001 v5 i2 p120
Program Completion Barriers Faced by Adult Learners in Higher
Education.
Brit Osgood-Treston.
Full Text: COPYRIGHT 2001 Academic Exchange Quarterly
Abstract
This article identifies characteristics of the adult learner and briefly reviews
literature on the attrition and retention of adult learners in higher education
programs. A summary of that research shows that adult learners focus on their
roles as learners, their ability to balance school with outside responsibilities,
and their flexibility in attaining personal goals within the context of educational
and institutional goals. Programs aimed at improving the retention of adult
learners and lessening attrition rates must take into account these factors.
Introduction
At 7 p.m. on the first day of the new school year, a freshman English class
gets underway. The professor asks how many of the students are new to campus,
and most of the hands in the room shoot up. She then conducts an icebreaker.
Each student receives a "bingo" card: a sheet of paper containing
a simple grid. The object is to write a different classmate's name in each square
on the grid, and the first person to "black out" the card with names
wins. Each square holds a brief description with which a classmate must be matched,
for example, "Rides A Razor Scooter" or "Is Pierced" or
"Has Seen Every Episode of Dawson's Creek.'" These are typical characteristics
for traditional college freshmen, those 18- and 19-year-olds coming to college
straight out of high school. However, some of the squares contain not-so-typical
characteristics, such as, "Is A Parent" or "Can Remember The
1970s" or "Has A Full Time Job." What are the chances of finding
names for those squares? Actually, the odds are almost dead even.
Each year a large number of adults return to school, with many choosing programs
in higher education. The latest available statistics show that more than 15
percent of full-time and more than 60 percent of part-time first-year undergraduates
are age 25 or older (National Center for Education Statistics, 1997). These
statistics do not take into account adult-oriented graduate, professional development,
continuing education, and college-sponsored basic education programs, so the
claim that more than half of the students found in today's college and university
classrooms are older than 24 is not an unreasonable one.
Changing demographics in higher education stem, in part, from displaced workers,
recent welfare reform, a continuing explosion in new technology, and the aging
of the baby boomers. Adults are flooding colleges and universities to learn
a new trade or profession, to remediate basic skills, to master computer operations,
or to simply gain new knowledge. They come for the same reasons as their younger
counterparts but bring with them more complex issues that may dramatically affect
their ability to stay in school. Many studies in the attrition and retention
of students in higher education continue to focus on the traditional freshmen
mentioned earlier, along with their sophomore, junior, and senior counterparts.
Those studies that do acknowledge older students have reached their conclusions
by modifying the theories applied to younger students to "fit" a different
demographic, with mixed results.
For example, social theories of attrition have linked student persistence to
acclimation: if students feel comfortable in and accepted by the campus community,
they tend to stay longer. It is logical that this would hold true whether the
students were just out of high school or heading toward retirement. However,
the way in which older students are made to feel at home on campus might differ,
and the retention measures and interventions taken by colleges and universities
might not always reflect this. The intention of this paper is to review the
current body of literature about the attrition and retention of adult learners
in higher education programs and to highlight any distinct areas that warrant
further study.
Definitions and Classifications
It is an extreme generalization to view anyone over the age of 25 as an adult
learner and any program serving adult learners as adult education, but when
it comes to defining adult education and adult learners, the existing literature
is almost this broad. Historically, adult education has been defined as "a
separate, peripheral activity, and its clientele is completely outside the compulsory-attendance
age groups" (Clark, 1980, p. 58). Stubblefield and Keane have pointed to
one widely accepted definition of adult education, appearing in the literature
as early as 1936, that limits it to those voluntary educational activities carried
out by people during their everyday lives to attain personal enrichment. Stubblefield
and Keane (1994) have identified the various forms of adult education as "social
innovations through which an individual, organization, or government seeks to
accomplish certain purposes" (p. 309).
How do these definitions apply to higher education? Who are the adult learners,
and what place does adult education occupy at colleges and universities? In
order to single out any attrition and retention issues unique to adult learners
in higher education programs, it is necessary to trace the boundaries that set
adult learners apart and to identify their position in the general college and
university student population.
The Adult Learner
It is difficult to isolate one definition of the adult learner. As Wlodkowski
(1999) has pointed out, even defining the word "adult" results in
cultural and historical differences; however, there is one defining characteristic,
and that is responsibility. Adults are held more responsible for their actions
in all facets of their lives, including education. For example, Dill and Henley
(1998) define adult learners, whom they call by the widely used label, "nontraditional
students," as those filling multiple roles such as parent, worker, and
student, and also for whom there is at least one year separating high school
and college. Meanwhile, traditional students usually do not fill multiple roles
and enter college immediately after high school. Similarly, Tinto (1993) has
compared adult learners, whom he labels "adult students," to minority
students in that they may feel marginalized because of different values and
dispositions and more external demands than traditional students. Because they
are more likely to have dependents, to live off campus, and to hold outside
employment, adult learners view college not as an alternative but as an addition.
Neeley, Niemi, and Ehrhard (1998) have defined the adult learner as "a
person who returns to study.., after a period of time spent in other life activities
or pursuits" (par. 5). Aster and Skenes (1993) have defined adult learners,
whom they also label "nontraditional students," as those students
who do not live on campus, who usually work full-time, who are often married
with children, and who are motivated less by academic integration (satisfying
an individual's need of intellectual development and growth) and more by career
enhancement. Dinmore (1997) has shown that adult learners can also be defined
by their level of experience instead of simply by their chronological age or
additional responsibilities:
Experience can be derived in an informal fashion, through living life rather
than by reading about it.... One practical ramification of this difference may
be found in the ability of older learners to make
connections more readily between theoretical factors and their applications
in daily life. While time for reflection is beneficial in any course of study,
older students are able to learn at a more accelerated pace when
their experience and their coursework are linked. (par. 12)
Donaldson and Graham (1999) have echoed this, observing that because of their
more complicated lifestyles, adults engage in the classroom and with their fellow
students in novel ways to make up for their lack of time on campus and their
inability to participate in traditional out-of-class activities. Wlodkowski
(1999) has also acknowledged that despite the lack of a single, comprehensive
theory of adult learning, there does exist the unifying assumption that adult
learners are highly pragmatic.
Adult learners in higher education programs, then, are defined by their chronological
age of 25 or older; their level of responsibility, since education is just one
of many commitments; their level of expertise, since they have more experience
to contribute to their own learning process and their expectations, since they
have finite goals based on well-defined needs.
Categories of Adult Learners
Adult learners play several roles within the college and university student
population. Cross (1981) has placed adult learners into two categories: those
who participate in organized learning activities and those who engage in adult
learning for academic credit. Organized learning activities generally consist
of community education and extension programs, everything from belly dancing
and cooking classes to fiction workshops and digital photography excursions.
Many of these activities are organized into a short series of classes that leads
ultimately to a certificate of completion. Adult learning for academic credit
generally consists of degree completion programs.
These categories are in keeping with adult education literature, which broadly
classifies adult learners as those enrolled in adult basic education programs
and those enrolled in higher education programs. Adult basic education (ABE
or ABLE) programs include literacy courses, workplace or worksite basic skills
classes, second language acquisition courses, citizenship classes, the traditional
"night school" courses, and high school proficiency (GED) classes.
Higher education programs in this context include expedited degree completion,
professional retraining or development, vocational training or certification,
continuing education (many professions, such as medicine, teaching, and law,
require that their members regularly expose themselves to the latest information
in their fields), and lifelong learning (exercise classes, reading discussion
groups, and hobby-oriented classes are examples from this category) (Kerka,
1995). This paper's focus is on adult programs in higher education, so it intentionally
narrows its perspective on adult basic education to include only those types
of programs offered by colleges and universities.
For a discussion of Theoretical Framework see issue's website http://www.rapidintellect.com/AEQweb/sump.htm
Recent Studies
Some researchers have attempted to dissect the topic of adult learner attrition
and retention in higher education with the goal of isolating specific variables.
These studies have had widely divergent methods and results, but as they do
corroborate some of the conclusions drawn in the previous section, summaries
of several are included here.
In one study, after examining a twelve-year pattern of retention and attrition
at a Midwestern commuter college, White and Mosely (1995) have concluded that
both stopouts and dropouts by adult learners occur because of commuting issues,
problems at home, and financial difficulties.
After another study calculating and analyzing the dropout rates and social and
academic integration scores for twenty five adult learner classes at an academic
center in a major metropolitan university's management and business college,
Ashar and Skenes (1993) have concluded that while learning needs, whether academic
or career, might be compelling enough to initially draw students to educational
programs, they might not be sufficient to maintain students in these programs.
However, their study failed to prove whether adult learner cohort groups promote
the kind of interaction that helps students gain social membership in a class,
which in turn promotes retention, as Tinto suggests, although it does seem to
show that what keeps adult learners who are management majors in education is
primarily the social environment of the learning setting.
Donohue and Wong (1997) have examined the correlation between achievement motivation
and satisfaction and student attrition and performance. Their findings from
a questionnaire administered to 69 traditional students and 57 nontraditional
students (adult learners) from the junior and senior classes of a medium-sized
university in Southern California reveal that while achievement motivation and
satisfaction with college is positively correlated between both groups, there
are significantly higher correlations between achievement motivation and satisfaction
among nontraditional students. After a separate study examining which stressors
are most salient for traditional college students (ages 18-23 and coming directly
from high school) and nontraditional students (ages 24 or older and with at
least one year in a "nonacademic role" between high school and college),
Dill and Henley (1998) have determined from a survey of 47 nontraditional and
47 traditional students, matched for demographics, that traditional students
worry more about school performance and peer events, while nontraditional students
are more concerned about enjoyment at school and responsibilities at home.
Liu and Liu (1999) have shown a correlation between age and retention at yet
another Midwestern commuter college. Data from the longitudinal study of more
than 14,000 students has indicated that traditional students graduate at a higher
rate than nontraditional students, possibly because "adult learners tend
to be older, have more family responsibilities, and hence have more difficulty
achieving emotional attainment" (par. 15).
Attrition and retention studies in adult basic education programs at colleges
and universities acknowledge that while outside obligations and program satisfaction
influence student departure, a significant factor is prior preparation. From
their review of the continuation and noncontinuation patterns of 2,323 adult
basic education students in a Midwestern community college system, Dirkx and
Jha (1994) have concluded that persisters and dropouts "should not be viewed
as homogeneous groups with respect to participation and attrition" but
that "when used in a prediction model, entry-level math and reading scores
and participant age successfully predict sample completers" (pp. 280-283).
Conclusions
This paper has attempted to review the current body of literature concerning
the attrition and retention of adult learners in college and university programs
in order to highlight issues that warrant further study. It has defined adult
learners based on four factors: a chronological age of 25 or older, a level
of responsibility that includes multiple commitments, a level of experience
that shows mastery or expertise in an area outside of the current
field of study, and a set of expectations that includes clearly articulated
goals. Additionally, this paper has identified three key points that could affect
adult learners' attrition or retention in higher education: mentality, or how
well these adults can play the student role; adaptability, or how well these
adults can cope with additional challenges; and flexibility, or how well these
adults are able to see past present obstacles to the future.
From the literature it is clear to see that there are distinct attrition and
retention issues facing adult learners in higher education programs. There is
also a definite need for further study, as there is still uncertainty as to
which variables significantly affect the attrition and retention of adult learners
in higher education. Until those variables are known, college and university
intervention strategies with this particular group could be ineffective.
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Brit Osgood-Treston is a full-time faculty member at Riverside Community College
in Riverside, and a doctoral student at University of Southern California's
Rossier School of Education.
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