Bringing Back Adult Students Takes More Than a Catchy Campaign

More than 80 million adults nationally have either graduated from high school but never attended college or started college but never earned a degree. Structural and cultural barriers often discourage adults from enrolling or from going back to finish.

But increasingly, college and state leaders are realizing that if ever there was a time for more attention on recruiting adult students and seeing them through, this is it. Serving that population is critical to our economy, and in many cases, institutions’ own financial health. This month The Chronicle released a special report, “The Adult Student: The Population Colleges — and the Nation — Can’t Afford to Ignore,” examining the obstacles to enrolling and retaining adult students and the most promising strategies to overcome them. As part of our research, we described an evolving effort at the University of Memphis, where people learned that it takes more than slogans to bring adults back.

Educational attainment in Tennessee falls short of the national average, and well below the state’s “Drive to 55" goal for at least 55 percent of the adult population to have a postsecondary degree or certificate by 2025. The current rate is about 41 percent. Without more adults in the mix — about a quarter-million of them — the state can’t even come close. It has been pulling out all the stops to attract more adults: New programs offer free tuition at community and technical colleges, and a statewide campaign called Tennessee Reconnect encourages people with some college experience to re-enroll.

At the University of Memphis, the third time was the charm. Spurred in part by a change in the state funding formula that rewards institutions with extra money for the adults (and low-income students) they enroll, the university began recruiting former students in 2011 with a campaign it called Back on Track. Even though it recruited students who were just 30 credits shy of a degree, it was mostly a bust. One big reason: The educational experience Memphis was offering wasn’t different from the one the students had abandoned.

Two years later, the university tried again with a program called Experience Counts, only to discover that many of the students it was hoping to reach had already exhausted their eligibility for federal student aid. A semester later, under a new program called Finish Line, Memphis began to get the formula right.

Until then, the university’s message to students was essentially, “Nothing has really changed at the institution since you left,” says Tracy Robinson, who oversees the latest program. “We really didn’t give them anything enticing.”

Scholarships are part of the new approach. But it mostly distinguishes itself from the others with dedicated advisers — Memphis calls them “completion concierges” — whose job is to find students “the clearest, shortest, most efficient path” to a degree. The Academic Fresh Start option allows returning students to exclude prior F’s or D’s from their new GPA, so, as Robinson puts it, “they don’t have to pay for their past mistakes.”

And there’s a concerted effort to help students gain credit for prior learning at the lowest possible price. The university asked faculty members to evaluate free online courses offered through Saylor Academy, and now encourages Finish Line students to take nine of them for academic credit. Students may also pursue additional credit for prior learning by submitting portfolios reflecting their experience for evaluation under previously established state standards.

Students using such flexible options have earned an average of 11 credit hours at an average total cost of $1,800. Taking only University of Memphis courses, the students would have paid about $4,500 in tuition. “That cost savings resonates, even with students who aren’t getting our scholarship,” says Robinson. Memphis faculty members have also evaluated the corporate-training programs offered by local companies like FedEx and First Tennessee Bank, and students can now earn up to 30 credits for such options.

Finish Line enrolls about 350 students; their average age is 36, compared with 27 in the general campus population. Two factors have helped the program succeed. One is buy-in from university leadership, Robinson notes (Memphis even sent recruitment emails from the provost). And state lawmakers, two successive governors from different political parties, and grass-roots efforts have also supported a focus on adult students statewide.

Along with the state-funding-formula incentive to colleges to enroll adult students, a network of Tennessee Reconnect Ambassadors helps advise adults on their college options and, in some cases, assists them in resolving defaults on their earlier student debt. So far the ambassadors have counseled some 13,000 adults. The program is modeled after the national Graduate! Network; Tennessee is the first to try that approach statewide.

Beginning in the fall of 2018, the state plans to extend its popular free-community-college program for traditional-age students, the Tennessee Promise, to adults. In anticipation of Adult Promise, each college is expected to establish a Reconnect Team, to train faculty and staff members for the influx of adults; and to provide each student with a personalized Reconnect Success Plan (parents, for example, will get information on child care nearby).

The goal, says Jessica Gibson, assistant executive director for adult-learner initiatives at the Tennessee Higher Education Commission, is simple: “To help adults feel secure that people are looking out for them.”

Goldie Blumenstyk writes about the intersection of business and higher education. Check out www.goldieblumenstyk.com for information on her new book about the higher-education crisis; follow her on Twitter @GoldieStandard; or email her at goldie@chronicle.com.