Factors that influence adult success at community college

Community College Enterprise, The, Spring 2005 by Dayton, Elizabeth

Challenges to staying in school

Students were surprisingly open in discussing their struggles, including strained finances, limited community college resources, limited English proficiency, uncertain transportation, a general fear of returning to school, and-most prominently-the struggle of balancing work, parenting, and school.

Strained finances

Nearly all students battle with insufficient funds. Financial struggle is the force behind the employee/ parent/student juggling act, and it is a strain all its own:

* Just the money. You know, how do I afford [it]?...I've got savings I'm working off right now, and it's just going out and nothing coming in right now.

* Money. Trying to pay rent. I guess when I decided to leave [high] school I wanted to be more independent, so I wanted to move out on my own which meant getting a high paying job of some sort...[But] school's very expensive. So just money.

Language barriers

Learning English as a second language appears a major impediment to some students' success. Over a quarter of students interviewed spoke English as a second language. Instructors reported an increase in limited English speakers in their classrooms over the past decade. One student, an emigrant from Mexico, expressed her struggle with language:

My main challenge is that I have a very hard time thinking in Spanish and trying to put my ideas and whatever 1 need to say in English. I was so afraid about my English because I'd never been at school like I am doing now. All these years I had been learning from my jobs and reading the newspaper, and so I put letters together and message and all that. I did my placement test, and I passed the math, and I'm taking reading 18-6 [a low-level class]. As you can see I'm not that good, but to be all these years without school, I think it's good.

Weary to return

Another challenge is psychological, and students recognize that potential barrier to success. One student described:

I guess not knowing if you'll succeed at it or not [is challenging]...! didn't know how well I was going to do, if I really wanted to do it. That was a huge challenge actually, just getting self-motivated. Getting motivated to do it again.

College counselors also spoke of the psychological barriers. A great deal of their work is simply motivating students, encouraging them to take a risk:

Most people carry around baggage about school, so if they've had a negative experience they often feel like they're...not going to be able to do as well as other students. I think that they also feel that they're going to come to school and be the only older person here and they just don't realize how much it's changed.

A second counselor commented:

When you [as a student] don't think much of yourself, you don't think you can do anything. When you have problems in your personal life, very little things can discourage you. I think that the students who are successful feel connected to college, and I think that's a big part of being a student. When you feel that you matter, people care about you, and you ask for help.