Program Completion Barriers Faced by Adult Learners in Higher Education.

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.

References

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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.