Program Completion Barriers Faced by Adult Learners in Higher Education

Academic Exchange Quarterly, Summer, 2001 by Brit Osgood-Treston

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.