Strengthening Outcomes of Adult Students in Community Colleges

Abstract

Students who are over 24 yearsolder than the age deemed "traditional" for higher educationaccount for about one in every three students enrolled in community colleges. Unfortunately, their educational outcomes lag behind their younger peers. A greater understanding of what it means to be an adult student in higher education is a crucial step toward determining how postsecondary institutions, particularly community colleges, can improve adults' experiences and chances of achieving their goals. With the overriding objective of providing guidance to stakeholders about how to strengthen adult students' success and increase college completion, we draw from extant literature to develop a Multidimensional Conceptualization of Adult Students (MCAS). We propose a corresponding set of measures to identify adult students in a community college's student population and to differentiate the gradations of experience, responsibility, and subject sense of adulthood that constitute adult status. We review evidence on adult students' participation in higher education, how their approaches to college tend to differ from younger students, and community college programs and initiatives that aim to improve adult students' outcomes. Finally, we discuss the alignment of the programs and initiatives with adult students' learning needs and with the dimensions of the MCAS.

Investigating the Viability of Transfer Pathways to STEM Degrees: Do Community Colleges Prepare Students for Success in University STEM Courses?

“…Our sample was limited to students who were between the ages of 17 and 25 years when they first enrolled in an LSAMP partner university. We cannot speak to the experiences of students outside of that age range, though we acknowledge the importance of expanding the scope of research on students over the age of 25 years (Bahr et al, 2021). Similarly, we excluded students whose records were missing high school GPA.…”