Deciding to go back to school can be life-altering, whether it is one year after you graduated or a decade after graduation. It is especially difficult for adults returning to school. There are significant challenges faced by adults which can be quite demanding. While Central Piedmont Community College is recognizing these challenges and providing non-traditional delivery methods, there are still a few areas of challenges these adult learners have to overcome. This requires a larger effort and discipline from these adults.
Central Piedmont Community College has realized the importance of education which is accessible by everyone, and is offering many flexible options for its students. There are evening and weekend classes, as well as online
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education options. There are scholarships and grants to help pay for tuition and textbooks. While these initiatives by CPCC have made returning to school a worthwhile endeavor, adult learners still face a unique set of challenges. The biggest challenges adult learners face at Central Piedmont Community College is balancing school and jobs, accessibility, and costs.
As any student can attest, college is a huge time commitment. And for adult learners it can be even more challenging. Students have to spend time attending classes, preparing for classes, and there is time needed for assignments and other homework. But beyond school, adults have more demands on their time. Many of them pursue higher education while still working full time. Many of them also have wife and kids who also need their time and commitment. These can cause increased mental stress and frustrations for adult learners. Moreover in an effort to complete their education faster, they take a higher course load of fifteen or eighteen credits in a semester. While there are many online courses available which might help to balance their time, many of the traditional degrees like civil engineering or mechanical engineering don’t offer online courses. This is a huge problem for someone who wants to pursue an education in these traditional fields. One solution to this problem is providing a hybrid course option, like the one offered for the COM-231 Public speaking. The coursework can be offered online, while the lab work can be done weekly once with a classroom lecture. This will greatly reduce the time-commitments for the adult learners and also they can study in their own …show more content…
time. The second challenge faced by adult learners is accessibility.
Attending class is the biggest challenge. With most adult learners having to work full time and most classes being on weekdays, it is very difficult for them to get to class. Even stay at home mothers and fathers have huge time commitments and needs of growing family and children. Many of them find it difficult to find baby-sitters during the day time. Even evening classes and weekend classes, are available only for general education and business oriented courses. Continuing education programs which are available on the weekends are job specific and don’t provide enough flexibility in finding jobs. Many who choose to return to school are the ones who have been recently laid off from their jobs and may have even sold their cars to meet the financial situation. For them commuting by a public transport like bus or train may be long and tedious. Again, online classes and hybrid classes may be the only solution to this problem. With today’s technological advances they can be accessed anywhere and anytime using smartphones or tablets, like while commuting to work in a public transport or during lunch hour at
work. The third challenge faced by the community is the rising costs of education. The cost of higher education is challenging for everyone. Tuition fee, purchasing books and notebooks, and other education supplies –they all add up and can give nightmares to anyone. And for adult learners, they also have mortgage payments, car loans, bills and utilities, and daycare for their sons and daughters. Pursuing a higher education can seem like an unwanted expense when you throw these into the mix. Also many student loans and grants aren’t available for adult learners, which make paying for education very difficult. On top of this, for the ones who have recently lost their jobs paying for school can be a daunting experience. Many even take-up a second job to help pay for the rising cost of education. Central Piedmont Community College should come up with scholarship options for adult learners. Also online courses and distance education courses should be made cheaper and more affordable. The tuition fee for online education is, for most of the time, on par with the classroom counterpart. Plus there are many additional fees like the online access fee for these courses, which is really weird as students pursuing an online education use lesser college resources. Deciding to go back to school is usually a tough one to make. The reason behind it may be many, for example changing career fields or for betterment in the current field. While CPCC is coming up with new initiatives to accommodate adult learners and providing flexible and non-traditional options, much is needed to be on the delivery of this education. CPCC must provide better counselling services for these adults to help them manage their time. It must develop more hybrid options for the traditional courses like science and engineering. And it must also make an effort to bring down the costs of its online education courses. Steps like these can make, pursuing a higher education a worthwhile experience.
The questions of “Who has homework?” and “Is it done?” have changed quite dramatically in many households over the years. Many adult learners have enrolled in two-year community colleges in pursuit of undergraduate degrees. “Do ‘hard lives’ justify excessive absences, rewrite opportunities, late papers and/or plagiarized work?” After analyzing several different factors: the perceived differences of two-year and four-year students, the reasons some students choose a two-year college vs. a four-year college, and the expectations of the faculty members at these schools, the answer to this question is, “No.”
This report looks at college from the prospective of adults who have not attended college but are considering obtaining a degree. The research results give several statistics related to adults wishing to continue their education and the main concerns that they face in doing so. They mentioned many of the factors that influence adults’ decisions to pursue a post-secondary education and how they will pursue that education. Facts presented in this report show that many people wish that they could further their education. This report will allow me to broaden my viewpoint by not only viewing college’s worth to students recently graduated from high school but also to older adults seeking to return to college.
The California Community Colleges (CCC) system is composed of 108 colleges organized into 72 districts that serve more than 1.4 million students statewide. Under the direction of the CCC board of governors, the Chancellor’s Office provides statewide guidance and leadership to the community colleges. In addition, the voters in each district elect a board of trustees charged with developing local policies that govern the day-to-day operations at the district’s colleges, including overseeing the compensation of teaching faculty and other employees. For the fall 1999 semester, the districts reported to the Chancellor’s Office a total population of 41,754 teaching faculty, of which 28,180 (67 percent) were classified as part-time and 13,574 (33
After being on the road for three years, I decided to check into returning to college at the University of Delaware and the University of Pennsylvania. Both universities informed me that I would have to retake my first two years that I had completed at Chattanooga State. I would have to commit for another four to six years of college. I did not have the time to do this. I wanted to be finished with my bachelor?s degree within two years if possible. So, later, when they realize that their choices are limited, their futures sealed or semi-gelled, they decide that school is where they need to be (Smith, 2001).
Attendance at a technical college or local 2-year school was deplorably referenced to as “loser’s territory” and if you dared to enroll in one anyway and followed through to graduation, well you were congratulated but to a lackluster fanfare. Some community college graduates still receive this reception upon exit of a community college but attitudes are definitely changing. Today more than ever, degree-seeking individuals are paving the path to their careers through the entrance and exit doors of community colleges. These well-informed leaders of the new school have realized a smarter way to education; that a bachelor’s degree or taking a traditional route to obtain one is not necessarily the best or right way to be a successful and employable member of society.
Adult students' participation and persistence in educational activities ranging from adult literacy to doctoral programs is a complex phenomenon involving an array of factors. Adults are often affected by situational factors beyond their control—job, health problems, financial problems, legal problems, personal or family problems (Belzer 1998). Likewise, dispositional factors such as expectations, self-esteem, level of family support, and past educational experience, can be barriers to participation (Hubble 2000). Institutional factors such as red tape, program fees, scheduling, and procedures can either help or hinder participation (Quigley 1998). In fact, adult students who drop out are often actually "stopping out"—that is, interrupting their studies but planning to return (Frank and Gaye 1997)—or attending other institutions (Hoffman and Elias 1999).
For the past few decades, receiving a college education has been a stressed importance in today’s society. However it is often misunderstood that attending a 4-year school is the best and only way to go. Following this belief, many students attend these schools with out being academically, financially, or mentally prepared. Unfortunately students like this have failed to over look the more realistic options available to them, such as community college. Junior college is a resource available to anyone regardless of his or her previous academic performance. The variety of courses and the inexpensive tuition gives students flexibility to explore the many options presented to them. Though Universities hold more prestige, community colleges provide endless opportunities for students who aren’t fully prepared for a 4-year education
Over the years, these nontraditionals have chosen either slower or faster options to proceed through their chosen curricula. They could work incrementally, taking a few courses per year while taking advantage of workplace tuition reimbursement programs or similar specialized programs to fund their college education. Recently, online education has allowed accelerated progress toward earning degrees. Traditional institutions developed these formats to serve working adults, and the emergence of nontraditional institutions such as the University of Phoenix delivered accelerated education in a variety of flexible formats such as asynchronous learning.
One of the major advantages of an online degree program is the flexibility it provides to someone working a demanding job, living geographically removed from a college campus, or that simply finds it most convenient for a host of other reasons. These challenges of the modern workforce have in fact been the big driver behind the exponential rise in online degree programs over the past decade. Furthermore, the flexibility provided by an online degree program enables tailoring a program matched to personal learning style and pace.
Online school and classes have major flexibility in many aspects. For example, a student can accomplish their classes from their own home. It also does not necessarily matter the time of day that the student feels to do their work, so the student can make their own schedule. Along with that schedule, the student can choose the pace of the class so they can learn the material to the best of their ability. Also, online schools such as Florida Virtual School (FLVS) may offer more
There is good reason for the growth in online learning in college environments. Student populations have diversified since the introduction of the personal computer and internet (O’Malley and McCraw). Students with geographic, job, or other constraints are now able to benefit from a college education because advances in technology have enabled learning for those for whom higher education was previously not within the realm of possibility.
A main concern that many students have while attending college is time. Trying to find the time to work, spend time with their family, and go to school can be very stressful for some students. Someone who does not work, or doesn’t have kids might not have an issue with fitting time into their schedule for traditional classes. For the students who do have a busy life might find it harder to attend a traditional classroom, so they have the option of taking online classes and making the classes fit around their time schedule.
There are many benefits to web-based courses. There is more flexibility in the time allotted for logging in to classes and submitting work. Travel and parking issues are eliminated. Students are able to work at their own pace, devoting more time to areas where they need more practice. (Brown, 2012). Students who do not live near accredited universities now have the opportunity to seek a degree without interrupting their whole life. E-learning helps to balance work life, family life, and education. Furthermore, e-learning is a more cost-effective solution than standard formal education.
Most students canπt wait to graduate high school and move on to college. They canπt wait to get away from home to experience new things. What happens if a student canπt afford college or they just arenπt ready to leave home? How do you complete a Masters or Doctorate program at the age of 51 with three children? This is where web-based learning comes into play.
In recent years, there has been a trend in the way that many major institutions of higher learning have been teaching their students. This change of pace in the education world is what is known as distance learning. Distance learning is the form of schooling that can be done over the Internet, and never actually being forced to be present in a classroom or even on the campus. According to Joel Snell, correspondence courses were the predecessors to what we now know as distance learning (258). Many people say that distance education is the future of our nations’ education, however there are many arguments against the wide spread establishment of distance learning programs. Although distance learning may seem like a bright future for education, nevertheless, it will never be as successful as campus learning, because every student must be self-driven and also highly motivated, the lack of access to libraries and other sources of information, and also face-to-face interaction is necessary for a good education. Many people think that distance learning is a perfect fit for men and women working on their master’s while still maintaining a job.