Traditional Degrees for Nontraditional Students: How to Earn a Top Diploma from America's Great Colleges at Any Age by Carole S. Fungaroli

• Table of Contents
• Read an Excerpt

Table of Contents

Read an Excerpt

Why College ... And Why Now?

You may have any of a variety of reasons for thinking about college now. Perhaps you want a better job. A diploma from one of America's great colleges or universities will certainly help you find a rewarding one. Or maybe not having a degree has created a yearning for "something more." Perhaps you always knew that you could have been a good student, if only you could have focused. Now, years or even decades later, you may feel ready. 

Ads in newspapers and on the radio often talk about adults as if all we think about are jobs, promotions, and dry-as-dust responsibility. For many nontraditional students, however, college isn't just a path to a job. It also involves discovering a love of the arts, politics, history, public service, technology, the sciences, and the glories of a life of the mind. You don't have to have any reason for returning to college aside from an interest in seeing what fascinating information might be waiting for you in various classes. 

Whatever your reasons for going back to college now, you'll have lots of company. According to the Department of Education, nearly half of the enrolled college students in the United States are twenty-four or older. Over one-third are at least thirty-five! That means that over four million of the ten million students sitting in college classrooms today are adults just like you. Although you may initially feel like the World's Oldest Living Undergraduate--as I jokingly dubbed myself when I returned to college--you'll soon find that nontraditional is becoming the norm. 

No matter who you are or why you're going, finishing college is a great idea. Not only will it give you an important credential for employment, it will change how you feel about yourself and your abilities. Many of the adults we'll meet in this book started college thinking it would simply help them get a job. Eventually, however, most of them discovered the joy of learning for its own sake. They stopped thinking of themselves solely as parents, spouses, partners, employees, and "busy adults," and started thinking of themselves as scholars, too. 

For them, and for you, finishing college isn't just about adding a line to your résumé or snagging a promotion. It will help with both of these, but there's much more. You'll learn new things about yourself, you'll make friends, you'll have opportunities to travel, and you'll be able to point proudly to the kinds of accomplishments that society not only recognizes, but also rewards. College can change your life. All you need to begin is the humility to start where you are, the patience to cut through some initial red tape, and the courage to walk onto a campus and ask for some of the best things that colleges and universities can offer. 

What's the difference between a college and a university, anyway? The basic difference is the school's ability to grant various degrees. A college grants bachelor's degrees, and it may have limited opportunities for postgraduate study. It does not usually offer the master's or doctoral degrees. A university offers all of these. Colleges generally focus on the teaching abilities of their faculty. Universities engage in ongoing research and expect their faculty to do the same. Some faculty members at universities don't even have teaching responsibilities: they're just there to conduct research and to direct the occasional dissertation. When I use the word "college," I mean your bachelor's degree experience at either a college or a university.
Depending upon your needs and the reputation of the school you select, you may attend either one. In this chapter, you'll learn some surprising things about college degrees, beginning with just how uncommon they really are. As you read, try and place yourself in the mosaic of adults who have already returned to college. We all had a special reason for returning to college. But we all stayed for the same reason: college is easier in adulthood. What used to be a grind has now become a great deal of fun. 

BELIEVE IT OR NOT, FOUR-YEAR DEGREES ARE STILL QUITE RARE 

Given our society's emphasis on education, you'd think that college diplomas were as common as brown hair or right-handedness. They're not, however, since many traditional-age students drop out. When you finish college, you will join the top twenty percent of all working adults. 
Does this statistic surprise you? Did you think that most working people had bachelor's degrees? They don't. Let's look at the numbers. Here is the educational attainment of 159 million American adults surveyed in the 1990 Census, according to the Department of Education and the journal American Demographics: 

Eighth grade or less.............10.4%
Some high school, no diploma.....14.4% 
High school diploma..............30.0% 
Some college, no degree..........18.7%
Associate's degree................6.2% 
Bachelor's degree................13.1% 
Graduate or professional degree...7.2% 

You probably already know that most supervisory and management positions go to college graduates. Therefore, just by finishing college, you will make yourself more promotable than almost 80 percent of the people around you. 

And that's if you just squeak by. What if you do well, really well? And what if you are able to transfer into a more prestigious college or university because of that? Top college grads make up less than 5 percent of the working population. That small group often includes the most influential decision makers in the nation. It may seem like a distant prospect now, but you can join this group more easily than you might think, and this book will tell you exactly how. 

COLLEGE GRADUATES EARN AS MUCH AS 70 PERCENT MORE THAN THOSE WITHOUT A DEGREE 

If you graduate from college at age thirty, keep working full-time, and retire at age sixty-five then you'll likely earn a career minimum of $350,000--over a third of a million dollars--more than your non-college-educated counterparts. And that's only at the lower levels. The top college graduates earn more than that, bringing your career bonanza closer to the half-million or million-dollar range. That's a big return on the $20,000 or so that you are likely to spend in finishing college. 

So why don't more adults take some risks and return to college? The first argument people usually offer is "I can't afford it." Yet college pays you much more than it costs. If a rich couple rode up in a limousine and offered you a trust fund of $500,000 or more for four years of work, would you do it? Most people would, but most people also claim that they can't afford college, or that they're too busy slogging away at a low-paying job to graduate. 

In Chapter 5 we'll talk about the price tag on a college degree. Then we'll see how it can cost less to earn a degree--even at one of America's top universities--than to buy a new midsize domestic automobile. If you can afford car payments, you can afford college. I'll also give you plenty of suggestions for earning your way through college without having to spend very much of your own money at all. And if you earn exceptional grades, universities could eventually pay you to go to school. 

COLLEGE IS A RELIABLE ROAD TO THE GREAT PROFESSIONS AND CAREERS 

Besides giving you the key to higher-paying jobs, college gives you access to different types of jobs. If your present work doesn't seem rewarding to you, then you probably have a job instead of a career. By far the most satisfied workers are those who labor in a field they love, and do so at a level that brings not just money, but recognition and personal satisfaction as well. Theo used college as a way of catching up on an important work requirement: 

The U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service hired me as an inspector ... and one of the prerequisites was that I speak fluent Spanish. I enrolled at Skyline College in San Bruno, California, and the teachers made the classes come alive. I was attending school because I wanted to, not because I had to, and learning became a pleasurable experience for me. I entered the door into a Spanish-speaking world, and shut it behind me. I graduated with highest honors from the community college one year later, and to this day I write and call to thank the teachers there who changed my life. 

Theo is now in the University of Miami's Master of Arts in Liberal Studies (MALS) program, designed for adult learners. Without college, you will be limited to the clerical realms in business, or manual labor elsewhere, unless you develop top skills in a trade. College is the only acknowledged route to professions such as law, medicine, business, academia, and many others.

COLLEGE GRADUATES GET TO BE THE BOSS

Have you ever trained anyone to be your supervisor? Working adults often tell stories about having to teach a new, clueless middle manager how the department works. Sometimes these "bosses" are fresh out of college, with no more business sense a stray dog. It can be terribly frustrating to watch younger men and women of average intelligence who don't know the company as well as you do earn the promotions every time. 

So how did these managers get where they are in the first place? For many, simply possessing a prestigious bachelor's degree from one of America's great state or private universities made them automatically hireable at the management level. There's a poster on the walls of the business school at my university. It reads, LEARN WHAT A COMPANY IS LIKE BEFORE YOU SPEND THE FIRST SIX MONTHS MAKING COPIES. Translation? "As a college grade from a top university like this one, you shouldn't have to suffer the indignity of entry-level work." 

And it's not just the business world that insists on a college education for its higher levels. Before Jan returned to college, she worked for years as the director of a children's education program at a Catholic parish. It was a rewarding job, but she struggled with low pay and insufficient recognition: 

I became painfully aware that the ideal educational level for the position I was already holding was a master's degree in either religious education or theology. Even though I had trained two inexperienced pastoral ministers to perform the duties of director, I would never be offered that position myself, or the salary that came along with it, largely because I had no degree. 
Also I found that I was frequently taken advantage of, and that the work I did was not given the respect it deserved. I suspected that this was because I was viewed as a "glorified volunteer," somebody's mom who was helping out - and this was after twelve years of experience, a successful track record, and more hours spent in informal education than I could count. 

Jan soon realized that she had both the intelligence and the experience to earn the degrees she needed. But without them, she would never be recognized for what she could contribute: 

I had always given far more hours to my work than was healthy for myself and my family, and way beyond the hours for which I was paid. My motive in returning to school was partly to earn proper credentials, partly to earn some respect, partly to pull my salary range out of the teens (this was beginning to feel insulting), but mostly to fill a thirst and a desire to come closer to God through prayerful study. In the end, this has been the most important result. 

Instead of sitting outside the parish door waiting for recognition, Jan earned her theology degree - with honors - from Aquinas College in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Today she is the Director of Religious Formation and Education in another Catholic parish. Earning her degree later in life was a challenge, but afterward promotions came easily: "I improved my salary by $4,000 a year without even trying very hard. I am nearing the end of my first year. It has held some challenges, but I have faced them with greater confidence and self-esteem." 

Forget "foot in the door" jobs. With rare exceptions, you can't start out in the mailroom and advance to the boardroom. If want to get ahead, or even land somewhere in the comfortable middle, you will need a bachelor's degree. 

MAYBE YOU'RE THE FIRST IN YOUR FAMILY TO THINK ABOUT COLLEGE 

Many people didn't go to college simply because no one ever expected them to. People in many regions of the United States plan more value on physical labor and life-experience skills than on academia as it is traditionally defined. You may not have attended college because no one else in your family did. Some families would never even consider spending hard-earned money on such an endeavor. 

Douglas's high school counselor discouraged him from his goal of attending the top university in his state, even though he was a strong student. Instead, she suggested that Douglas work in the local factory for a year, since most men in his region went directly to work for the same company after high school. Douglas did. Then he married and had children. He didn't go to college until his late thirties, even though college would have helped him and his family much earlier.

In rural regions there are generally colleges and universities that specialize in reaching out to a variety of students from nonacademic backgrounds. Jacquelyn, an administrator, writes glowingly of her typical adult returning student:

Morehead State University serves the twenty-two poorest counties in the hills of eastern Kentucky, and several are the poorest in the state. Our students come at great sacrifice. They are truly the most wonderful students. I count them as family.

She describes one woman who walked into her office with her hands covered in grease: "She had just changed a tire. She said, 'If I can change a tire without a tire tool, surely I can finish my degree!'" 

You don't have to have a blue-collar background to have skipped higher education. Perhaps you grew up in a complicated household, and your college plans suffered because of it. A 1996 Cornell University study showed that only 14 percent of the children from divorced families were accepted into college, as compared with 24 percent of the children from two-parent households. Children from the divorced households also performed more poorly on standardized tests, partly because of stress and depression and partly because they didn't have parental support for their studies at home. 

If this sounds like you back in your younger days, don't worry. You have plenty of company. Up to 40 percent of white children in the United States live with one parent, or even no parent, by high school age. In African-American families that statistic is nearly twice as high. According to studies published in Black Issues in Higher Education and in Jet magazine, this is one important reason why fewer minority students finish college. 

If we look at the percentage of college-educated adults by race, it is evident that the bachelor's degree is rare enough in any ethnic group. But if you are black or Hispanic and you earn a bachelor's degree at an excellent university, you move yourself into an even more selective category than that of the average American. Take a look at the percentage of adults with a bachelor's degree or higher, by race, according to The Chronicle of Higher Education: 

Asian.....36.6%
White.....21.6%
Black.....11.3%
Hispanic...9.2%