COLLEGE POPULATIONS AGE AS BABY BOOMERS GO BACK.Byline: Laura Meckler Associated Press Associated Press: see news agency. Associated Press (AP) Cooperative news agency, the oldest and largest in the U.S. and long the largest in the world. As baby boomers See generation X. age and the work force changes, more and more Americans over 40 are going to college. Just 477,000 people older than 40 were in college in 1970. By 1993, that number had more than tripled, to over 1.6 million, according to according to prep. 1. As stated or indicated by; on the authority of: according to historians. 2. In keeping with: according to instructions. 3. a study released Wednesday Wednesday: see week. . That's partly due to aging baby boomers. People over 40 made up 36 percent of the U.S. population in 1970 but 40 percent in 1995, according to the study, which relied on census figures. ``By sheer numbers, the baby boomers are revolutionizing our educational worlds, as they've been doing all along,'' said Ted Freeman Freeman can mean:
But demographic shifts cannot explain the entire boom in older students, said Jamie Merisotis, president of the Institute for Higher Education higher education Study beyond the level of secondary education. Institutions of higher education include not only colleges and universities but also professional schools in such fields as law, theology, medicine, business, music, and art. Policy, the other co-sponsor. ``People over the age of 40 are going back to college to be retrained,'' he said. ``Lifelong learning Lifelong learning is the concept that "It's never too soon or too late for learning", a philosophy that has taken root in a whole host of different organisations. Lifelong learning is attitudinal; that one can and should be open to new ideas, decisions, skills or behaviors. is becoming a reality for Americans.'' Two-thirds of the older students are women, and some have returned to school after a divorce or after their children get older, giving them time to develop a career, he said. Others are just looking for Looking for In the context of general equities, this describing a buy interest in which a dealer is asked to offer stock, often involving a capital commitment. Antithesis of in touch with. a career change or are trying to keep up with an increasingly competitive marketplace. In fact, more and more students are studying at corporate universities. There were about 400 of these employer-sponsored schools in the 1970s; now there are more than 1,000. ``Our global competitiveness is requiring us to be much more competitive,'' Merisotis said. ``Those factors are really driving people's need to get postsecondary education and training.'' Other findings: Students age 40 and over make up 10 percent of undergraduates, 22 percent of graduate students and 6 percent of students in medical, law or other professional programs. Most 40-plus students - 79 percent - are part-time. More than half of the part-time students attend two-year public schools. Most older undergraduates are white (82 percent) and married (59 percent). Fifty-seven percent of 40-plus undergraduates work at least 30 hours per week, compared to 25 percent of students ages 18 to 24. Older students work an average of 38 hours per week. Older students do better, with 44 percent reporting ``mostly A's'' in their course work (compared with 9 percent of 18- to 24-year-olds), but it takes them longer to finish. Census data show that 64 percent of 18-to 24-year-olds with degrees finish by four years and 99 percent finish by six years. By comparison, 39 percent of students ages 45 to 54 finish in four years. |
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