chapter 6 review

For this week, we will review our textbook Chapter 6 – Strategies and Actions of Community Colleges, and Their Behaviors, in Accommodating Nontraditional Students. The goal for this week’s assignment is to learn from the chapter and the views of your peers. It is being presented like a discussion because you have to upload your review for others to read while you can also read their presentations. This should enhance your knowledge on the subject covered. Please review the following rubric because your score will be based on it.

Critically review the chapter by answering the following questions

What were the 3 key concepts in the chapter?

How was this chapter relevant to you in relation to nontraditional students?

Chapter Summary Rubric
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Your summary needs to include three important concepts/quotations from the chapter (see rubric below).
Your chapter summary and quotations should all total a minimum of 2 pages (Times Roman, 12-point
font, single spaced)
Please use the following rubric in preparing for your assignment. I will use the rubric below to grade your
summary and your presentation.
Criteria
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Written Summary
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is missing
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-The main idea/thesis is not
present or difficult to
– The main idea/thesis is
– The main idea/thesis is
understand
unclear
approaching clarity
– One quote is included for
this chapter
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for this chapter
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included
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– Ideas are connected to make
the writing flow
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chapter is clearly presented
– At least three quotes are
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this
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major events/ideas of the chapter
the major events/ideas of
the chapter
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the chapter
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with page numbers identified
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Spelling/grammar -Very frequent grammar/
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and understand
information
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wordy. More than 3 pages. length – 1 page plus.
Meets specified minimum length
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Guidelines:
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Chapter summaries will be a regularly occurring exercise to encourage reading the text.
Maximum point value of a chapter summary is 25 points.
Summaries must be uploaded on time.
A late summary will earn a grade no higher than 20 out of 25 points.
The summary is intended to serve as a study resource for you.
There is no single format so please choose what works best for you.
Identical summaries will be considered plagiarized and both students will receive a zero for the assignment.
Nontraditional Students
and Community Colleges
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Nontraditional Students
and Community Colleges
The Conflict of Justice and Neoliberalism
John S. Levin
NONTRADITIONAL STUDENTS AND COMMUNITY COLLEGES: THE CONFLICT OF
JUSTICE AND NEOLIBERALISM
Copyright © John S. Levin, 2007.
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2007 978-1-4039-7010-7
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner
whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations
embodied in critical articles or reviews.
First published in 2007 by
PALGRAVE MACMILLAN™
175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010 and
Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire, England RG21 6XS.
Companies and representatives throughout the world.
PALGRAVE MACMILLAN is the global academic imprint of the Palgrave
Macmillan division of St. Martin’s Press, LLC and of Palgrave Macmillan Ltd.
Macmillan® is a registered trademark in the United States, United Kingdom, and
other countries. Palgrave is a registered trademark in the European Union and
other countries.
ISBN 978-1-349-53167-7
DOI 10.1057/9780230607286
ISBN 978-0-230-60728-6 (eBook)
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record of the book is available from the British Library.
Design by Scribe Inc.
First edition: August 2007
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Contents
Acknowledgments
vii
Introduction: The Themes of Justice and Neoliberalism
1
1
Nontraditional Students in Higher Education
21
2
Theoretical Frameworks
45
3
Multiple Identities, Multiple Motivations and Goals,
and the Student-Institution Disconnection
65
4
The Ways in Which Students Experience College
91
5
Student Characteristics and Institutional Contexts:
The Nexus of Student Experience and Attainment
111
Strategies and Actions of Community Colleges, and
Their Behaviors, in Accommodating Nontraditional Students
137
7
Continuing Education and Lifelong Learning
163
8
Justice and New Nontraditional Community College Students
185
6
Bibliography
203
Appendices
219
Index
265
This page intentionally left blank
Acknowledgments
I count myself fortunate that there are many community college administrators,
faculty, staff, and students who generously gave of themselves to my research.
Considerable assistance was provided to me during my field studies, and among
the many I name a few. Jack Oharah, Jerrilee Mosier, and Tasha King at Edmonds
Community College; Ken Meier and Karen Sallee at Bakersfield College; Christine
Johnson and Wanda Underwood at Community College of Denver; Don Reichard
and Talbert Myers at Johnston Community College; Martha Williams and Alisa
Nagler at Wake Technical Community College; John Means at El Camino Community
College; Antonio Perez and Richard Hasselbach at the Borough of Manhattan
Community College; David Hardy at Mountain View College; Jana Kooi at Pima
College; and Susan Kater at GateWay Community College. There are many others and they will know that I am thankful for their help.
I am grateful for the support from a number of sources for my work. The
Lumina Foundation for Education provided financial support for the research
that is the backbone of this book. The Joseph D. Moore endowed professorship
at North Carolina State University gave me considerable latitude as a scholar,
which included financial aid for researchers and graduate students. My publisher, Palgrave Macmillan, continues to acknowledge my worth, and my editor,
Amanda Johnson Moon, and her staff are convincingly positive about my
books. For a solitary researcher/author, this attitude is nourishing.
I was assisted in my research by several worthy graduate students at North
Carolina State University, including Jerrid Freeman, Erin Robinson, Laura
Gonzalez, Jennifer Hildreth, Morgan Murray, Candice Fisher, and David Frye.
Jerrid’s doctoral dissertation relied upon this project, and his work on the project moved me forward and helped in the development of Chapter 5. Laura read
through drafts of chapters and provided me with some fine questions that, once
answered, strengthened the book. Supporting me as always in my travels and
financial activities was Dawn Crotty. Amy Metcalfe, formerly a doctoral student
at the University of Arizona, and presently an assistant professor at the University
of British Columbia, initiated my journey into sophisticated technologically
assisted data analysis, and she provided me with a first run of computer-assisted
analysis. My colleagues at North Carolina State University—particularly Duane
Akroyd, Audrey Jaeger, Crystal Muhammad, Leila Gonzalez Sullivan, and
Marvin Titus—were always positive about my research and never gave any signals that my many travels to sites were a burden to them. Carol Kasworm,
department head of Adult and Higher Education, and Kay Moore, dean of the
College of Education, at North Carolina State University, always spoke in
grandiose terms about my research, proving that flattery goes a long way.
Introduction
The Themes of Justice
and Neoliberalism
lthough the United States is the acknowledged world leader in a multitude
of endeavors, fields, and performance measures—including the world’s
wealthiest nation—the country lags behind other countries in the more humanitarian domains. The United States has one of the weakest sets of social and economic welfare programs of postindustrial states; it has the highest proportion of
its population living in poverty among those states; and it has unparalleled
social and economic inequities based upon race.1 This inequity certainly applies
to education and higher education as well.2 With the emergence of global economic competition as a defining factor in U.S. society beginning in the 1980s,3
including efforts to increase productivity and efficiency through the use of
labor-saving technologies,4 the development of new economic classes was
underway.5 In globalization terms, these classes were bimodal: the “haves” and
the “have-nots.”
The same pattern is evident in higher education institutions. Economic competition has led not only to stratification among institutions but also within
institutions, a condition evident in all types of institutions.6 The “have” institutions and the “have” programs are those with wealth, prestige, and impact: Their
faculty garner funding for themselves and their institutions through business
and industry partnerships, inventions, patents, and research grants; their students obtain good jobs or places in selective graduate or professional programs;
and their donors, many former students of wealth, sustain the enterprise.
Athletics in the form of big-time male sports, while not in actuality a profit center, keeps the alumni as supporters of the institution and ultimately donors.7
Clearly, higher education has privileged some institutions and programs as well
as organizational participants, including administrators, faculty, and students.
Indeed, students as the recipients of educational services are privileged under
certain conditions: if they attend the elite or wealthy colleges, enroll in the prestigious or marketable programs, and perform in the expected manner. These
students are commonly students who have entered college directly from high
school, possessing high or moderately high socioeconomic standing and the
cultural and social capital, as well as the grades and test scores, that will ensure
them of acceptable college performance.8
A
J.S. Levin, Nontraditional Students and Community Colleges
© John S. Levin 2007
2
NONTRADITIONAL STUDENTS AND COMMUNITY COLLEGES
The “have-not” or low salient institutions and programs include those colleges without wealth, prestige, and social and economic impact and those programs that are undervalued. For low prestige institutions, such as community
colleges, undervalued programs are those with little overt connection to either
university transfer or occupations, such as English as a second language (ESL),
Basic Skills, Adult High School, and vocational certificate programs. Compared
to prominent four-year colleges and universities, community colleges can be
viewed as “have-not” institutions, and all of their students, subject to negative
judgments, are viewed as on the periphery of middle-class status. Clearly, earnings from the result of baccalaureate degree attainment indicate that nonbaccalaureate institutions and their students are of lesser value than four-year
colleges.9 This is not to suggest that all four-year colleges and their students are
privileged. Indeed, the majority of four-year colleges compared to the minority
of elite colleges are without wealth, prestige, and influence. Nonetheless, the
stratification of institutions places community colleges, tribal colleges, and technical institutions at the bottom of the hierarchy.
The hierarchy of institutions is well matched to the hierarchy of student profiles. At one end of the spectrum are elite private colleges and research universities serving one type of student and, at the other end, the community college,
including technical colleges, serving another type of student. This hierarchy
includes segmented student populations, with new or nontraditional students
found at the lower end of the spectrum. For all the talk of nontraditional students—such as those over twenty-four years of age and those who are first-generation attendees—in higher education, the bulk of these nontraditional students
are enrolled in community colleges. A conservative estimate based upon national
data suggests that 65 percent of nontraditional students enrolled in credit undergraduate programs at colleges and universities attend community colleges.10 Of
the 5.6 million credit-seeking community college students in 2000, close to 90
percent have one characteristic, such as delayed postsecondary enrollment or
part-time attendance, that would classify them as nontraditional.11 In addition,
there are an estimated 5 million community college students enrolled in noncredit courses and programs who could be classified as nontraditional.12
The problems of privilege—those who are excluded and neglected—directly
define the community college and its students. They are outsiders to privilege,
on the periphery of prosperity, and at the bottom strata of prestige for institutions and students. In addition, the political economy favors neoliberal values
and goals, with competition as the norm.13 In such an environment, those
without privilege are unjustly served and their rewards are few. In the field of
higher education, these institutions and their students are surely “have-nots.”
Furthermore, the issues of individual identities, where some are positively
assessed and judged and others are negatively judged, are connected to institutional affiliation.14 Community colleges viewed as institutions for specific populations—disadvantaged students, minority students, low economic status
students—indicates that these populations’ identities are tied to the institution’s
identity and to its restraints.
INTRODUCTION
3
A salient example of those without privilege, both in our society and in
higher education institutions, are single mothers participating in government
welfare assistance programs. They are both without privilege and they are stigmatized because of their participation in social welfare.15 Their participation in
higher education is aimed at the learning-earning connection, but it is also a
way for them to change their lives. Furthermore, their children become part of
that rationale as they seek to provide for and model preferred outcomes for their
children.16 One of the painful ironies is that the government program that provides them with temporary financial assistance discourages education and
training, and when it does support education and training it does so for the benefit of local labor markets.17 Indeed, there is evidence that policies that put work
before education do not enhance this population’s upward mobility out of
poverty.18 Federal policy clearly supports an ideology where the euphemistic
notion of personal responsibility takes precedence and the states, generally, follow the same general trend, with several competing ideas about the role of education for this population.19 One specific issue is that a two-year time limit is
placed upon welfare assistance, and with a one-year limit upon education, there
is a disincentive for the completion of long-term programs, especially four-year
degree programs.20 This example points to the role of the state in limiting educational opportunities for a specific population, and the state’s actions thwart
opportunities for those whose circumstances are certainly not privileged: They
are disadvantaged in the extreme. In my argument, then, these students are
denied justice.
These conditions are tied to the goals and ambitions of neoliberals, who in the
decades of the 1990s and 2000s have succeeded in reshaping the discourse of
social welfare and entitlement, including the responsibilities of the state in providing for its citizens.21 Proponents of neoliberalism combine a commitment to
state reduction of social programs and state support for global economic markets, with economic competition as a way to increase efficiency and productivity
and bring wealth to the successful.22 Because neoliberalism is a political project
aimed at institutional change,23 postsecondary education is an arena under
severe pressure to alter its historical norms of governance, organization, and mission.24 Both its economic goals and its preferred processes of meeting those goals
make neoliberalism antithetical to justice for the disadvantaged student.
Neoliberal ideology favors individual achievement and economic prosperity
for individuals, relegating social benefits and progress to an assumed by-product
of individual economic behaviors. Its view of fairness is unregulated markets (i.e,
free trade) and equal opportunity (which governments may be required to structure and monitor) in the form of access to economic prosperity. Neoliberalism
does not have an historical perspective and ignores the prior conditions of competition between and among individuals and groups. Thus, there is no assumption that some populations or individuals need advantages in order to compete
fairly with others. As well, with an emphasis upon economic benefits and outcomes, neoliberalism subordinates cultural and social goals—such as community
or family cohesion—treating them more like means rather than as ends.25
4
NONTRADITIONAL STUDENTS AND COMMUNITY COLLEGES
In this book, I examine if, and the extent to which, community college students receive justice both within their institution and as an outcome of their
education. I determine that while individual students may receive some measure of justice, groups of students or classes of students do not. I also argue that
individual action and institutional context, such as organizational culture, not
policy, are responsible for the justice that is meted out to students. My findings
are the result of extended interviews with administrators, faculty, and students,
as well as state higher education policymakers.
By justice I mean a condition aligned with fairness and the equalizing of
advantage so that prior conditions for individuals are recognized and accounted
for in rights, privileges, and treatment that compensate for an individual’s disadvantage. I borrow from John Rawls’ concept of justice as fairness and his articulation of a well-ordered society that operates through social cooperation, under a
social contract.26 I examine the actual condition of students in community colleges—institutions that I view as components of a well-ordered society—to understand these students and to ascertain how the institution treats these students.
My work extends across the nation as I observed and interacted with students,
faculty, administrators, and state-level policymakers over the period of 2002 to
2006. My travels took me to Arizona and GateWay Community College and
Maricopa Community College District, and Pima Community College; to
California and Bakersfield College and El Camino College; to Colorado and
Community College of Denver; to New York and Borough of Manhattan
Community College; to North Carolina and Johnston Community College and
Wake Technical Community College; to Texas and Mountain View College and
Dallas Community College District; to Washington and Edmonds Community
College; and, with the help of my research assistants, to Illinois and Harry Truman
College, and to Virginia and Piedmont Community College and Virginia
Highlands Community College.
My meetings were in most cases extended conversations with a broad spectrum of people affiliated with community colleges. I met with students who possess various attributes, some with disabilities such as physical and mental
impairment, blindness, and deafness; some with learning problems; many with
Spanish as their native language; some with undocumented immigrant status in
the United States; several with the hardships of life woven into their personal
accounts of their educational experiences. I talked with administrators and faculty members who were, almost to a person, supporters of students and student
achievement in their college education. I met with several state-level officials
who were sensitive to student needs and disadvantages. Most of these officials
justified the community college’s purposes as connected to student advancement, and particularly to the improvement of students’ lives. With such expressions of concern and compassion for disadvantaged students by state-level
officials and institutional faculty and administrators, the reasonable expectation
is that students at community colleges are well served.
But, in some distinction to my experiences with those who represented disadvantaged students and their supporters, I viewed institutional units and
INTRODUCTION
5
talked with institutional officials who were either engaged in projects and activities that ignored the needs of students or pressured to turn their attention to
matters that may have impacted these students negatively. Simply, students were
used to meet the needs of the nation-state or the state or the community, largely
in the form of business and industry. Indeed, in the extreme, the community
college and its students were servants of multinational corporations and government departments, such as the Department of Defense, for training both a
workforce and supplying the company or the nation with skilled labor. The pressures here stemmed from the community college’s assumed need to acquire
resources either to subsidize a low revenue generating area of the college or to
provide training to community members: These resources were not available
from state government base allocations.
It might be simplistic to conclude that money—or the lack thereof— is the
root of evil for community colleges: Those with fiscal resources influence the
direction of these institutions, and community colleges, themselves, without sufficient fiscal resources, cannot serve all of the needs of students or communities.
Insufficient resources were the common theme among community college practitioners, from faculty to college presidents to system chief executives, in my conversations. Both the behaviors of the state in underfunding higher education
institutions and the seemingly rapacious appetites of these institutions to require
and use fiscal resources suggest a condition of resource dependency.27
For community colleges, this means dependency upon resource providers—
students, government agencies, local and state and federal governments, private
foundations, and business and industry. Students become both commodities
and consumers—sources of revenue and products to be sold.28 As these
providers increase their influence within the institution—often for self-interest—the mission and actions of the institution alter to reflect and respond to
these influencers.29 My observations during my visits to thirteen campuses and
college systems provided both confirming and disconfirming evidence of the
money theme and the condition of resource dependency.
The issues were more complicated, reflecting not only the institution, such as
its identity as a community college with its state relationship, but also historical
conditions and demographic developments.30 The infamous “9/11” attack and its
aftermath affected not just the general economic conditions of the United States,
but individual institutions as well, with the Borough of Manhattan Community
College as an exceptional example. Additionally, the major wave of immigration
in the past two decades, including undocumented immigrants, altered not just
community college programming, for example, a rise in remedial and English as
a second language (ESL) programs,31 but as well college culture in general and
student services in particular as colleges adjusted to new populations.
Nontraditional Students
“Nontraditional” and “non-traditional student” are problematic terms for both
scholars and practitioners. This book will work at shaping understanding of
6
NONTRADITIONAL STUDENTS AND COMMUNITY COLLEGES
student populations in higher education so that the distinctions between “traditional” and “nontraditional” students might be understood in new ways; for
example, as distinctions of privilege, contrasts between those who have advantages and those who are disadvantaged, and those whose experiences of college
are categorically different from other student populations. I might accept that
there are two historical groups, traditional and nontraditional, but over the past
twenty years a new group of nontraditional students have begun populating colleges and it is better referred to as “new nontraditional students.” Indeed, I will
conclude this book in the final chapter with this group. For now, however, I will
use the two terms—traditional and nontraditional—so as not to further compound the problem of definition.
Traditional students are customarily viewed from a four-year college and
university perspective as the norm: students who have characteristics that place
them in the mainstream of college students. Among the several defining traits
of this population, their student identity—students first and other attributes second—is paramount. They are viewed as students who have continued their education from high school to college or university, thus their age at college entry
is seventeen, eighteen, or nineteen. They are also viewed as full-time students,
even if they are not undertaking a de facto full course load but de jure full course
load. (For example, if five courses per semester is a full load, three or four
courses may categorize a student as full-time.) Other characteristics are not as
firmly connected to the traditional student, but they are generally viewed as
their attributes. These include high school completion, second or next generation of postsecondary education attendance within a family, and English as a
first language. Of course, there is a continuum of traditionality from those students who live on campus, are from middle-class backgrounds, and have clear
degree aspirations to those who are commuter students, from lower-middleclass and working-class backgrounds, and who have unclear educational goals.
Thus, using this conception of traditional students, nontraditional students
can be viewed as the antithesis of the traditional. However, in some institutions,
such as the community college, the nontraditional student is more the norm
than the traditional. In Chapter 1, the continuum of nontraditional students
who are present in these settings will be discussed. To help illustrate the lack of
clarity that muddies this conversation, however, we will begin with the example
of adult students. This is but one of the categories that comprises the larger category of nontraditional, and the level of disagreement over a basic definition of
“adult” serves as a caution.
Nontraditional Students as Adults
The understanding of the experiences of nontraditional students in higher education institutions is confounded by the conflation of the broad categories of
nontraditional and adult. Considerable confusion has resulted from using the
general term “adult students” in varied ways. Customarily, the literature on adult
students does not delineate such matters as student demographics, institutional
type, and the theoretical assumptions and purposes of the scholars and those
INTRODUCTION
7
reporting data. The understanding of adult students is further complicated by
the varying definitions that researchers, educators, and other service providers
give to them. The U.S. Department of Education categorizes adult education as
(1) basic needs (ESL or Adult Basic Education students), (2) vocational (apprenticeship or certificate programs), or (3) educational (either job/career-related,
such as credentialing programs, or nonwork-related, such as personal interest
and development classes).32 These categories include credit and noncredit offerings, community-based programs, and university or community college–based
programs. The considerable breadth in these descriptions of adult education settings can include recent immigrants with minimum-wage positions who are
trying to acquire basic English skills to middle-aged careerists who are trying to
enhance their chances for promotion.
In addition to confusion in the literature on adult students, the problem of
understanding student experiences and the institution-student intersect is exacerbated with a major body of literature’s focus not upon adult students but upon
adult education. Adult education is defined in mainstream scholarship and
reported as any activity where the participants are adults—usually twenty-four
years of age or older.33 Yet educational data on the twenty-four-year and older
category are not conceptualized coherently by the National Center for
Education Statistics, which reports that those age 24 and older are automatically
considered financially independent.34 Those in the 24–29 age category are in the
lowest income quartile, with 41.2 percent of the students aged 24–29 in that
grouping. The highest income quartile consists of those over age 40, with 41.5
percent in that group. Both of these groups are viewed as adult students, but
their conditions are unlikely to be similar.
Kopka, Schantz, and Korb, who report 1991 data, indicate that 17 percent of
course-taking by adults occurred in four-year colleges, and another 20.8 percent
in two-year colleges or technical/vocational schools.35 The largest percentage
(27.1 percent) was provided by business and industry. Eleven percent of courses
undertaken were in a federal, state, or local government setting (including the
military), and another 7.5 percent were offered by community groups. The
remaining providers include private instruction, professional associations, or
secondary schools. Their respondents, those people who completed the
National Household Education Survey, were more likely to participate in adult
education if they were already employed and had completed a bachelor’s degree
previously. Thus, a degree of privilege may already be present for these particular adult students. When the authors disaggregated the sample by employment
status, the data indicated that unemployed persons were more likely to take
classes in community colleges or vocational schools than elsewhere (49.7 percent) while employed persons were more likely to utilize their business settings
(29.5 percent). This sample may typify one population of adult learners but not
all populations. I was particularly fortunate to have the support of graduate student Virginia Hernandez at the University of California, Riverside, who not only
did the bulk of the index for this book but also moved my thinking beyond this
book by her reexamination of the original collected data.
8
NONTRADITIONAL STUDENTS AND COMMUNITY COLLEGES
Many of these distinctions in definition depend on the purpose and nature of
those who define the adult learner. The government may use one set of criteria,
research literature another, and community agencies yet another. In higher education literature, adult students are frequently described as motivated, perhaps
a little “rusty,” but capable and resourceful. They are assumed to seek career
advancement and engage in credit-bearing programs at community colleges or
universities. Carol Aslanian,36 who examines adult students in all postsecondary
educational settings, states that those in this group “lead very busy lives, juggling career and family roles. Their family incomes are higher than for most
other American households. They have high levels of education as they return
to college and are eager to raise those levels even further” (56).
Aslanian’s population, however, is not typical of those who enroll in large
numbers in community colleges in such areas as Adult High School, Basic Skills,
English as a second language, and certificate programs. Furthermore, data on
these populations are difficult to obtain, and data-driven assertions about adult
students and their program choices are problematical. Adults pursuing a General
Educational Development (GED) credential, for example, may be taking classes
from a high school, from a community agency, from the noncredit segment of
the community college, or as a credit-seeking community college student.37
National figures are unavailable. Mingle, Chaloux, and Birkes note that “data are
hard to obtain on enrollment in Adult Basic Education, adult secondary education, and English literacy programs for those who do not speak English. Funding
comes from many different sources, and many of these programs are sponsored
by private agencies that do not report their enrollments to states.”38
As researchers endeavor to describe adult students, they may utilize different
sets of defining characteristics or criteria. One characteristic is occupational
level. The population traditionally conceived of as mature, with substantial work
and life experiences, as well educated and economically satisfied, is a distinctly
different population from that served by welfare offices, immigration specialists,
and social workers. Grubb describes low-skilled workers and their various reasons for enrollment in a community college.39 While some are experienced
workers who have not been promoted and require additional courses to complete a licensure or improve their occupational standing, others are unemployed
or dislocated workers who are compelled to change their life’s directions. As
well, there are those who face employment barriers, and this population
includes welfare recipients, new immigrants, inmates released from prison, students with disabilities, or those who have been unemployed for long stretches of
time. As low-skilled workers, these adults struggle with survival issues: They
lack requisite social and cultural capital to thrive in a competitive labor force.40
“Risk factors” is another concept tied to adult students, but the details are not
disaggregated by institutional type. A National Center for Education Statistics
(NCES) table, “Percentage of 1999–2000 undergraduates with various risk characteristics,” addresses “risk factors” for students, including part-time attendance
at college, delayed enrollment, having dependents, and working while
enrolled.41 These risk factors are a component of a student attainment focus,
INTRODUCTION
9
and there is a reputed correlation between risk factors and lack of student educational attainment.42 Students aged 24 and older are more likely to have
dependents: 11 percent of those aged 19–23 have children, while 35 percent of
those aged 24–29 and 61 percent of those aged 30–39 have children. Older students are also more likely to be working full-time while taking classes. Overall,
students aged 19–23 have an average of 1.2 risk factors; those in the 24–29 age
group have 3.2 risk factors, and the 30–39 age group has 3.8 risk factors. Yet
these data fail to acknowledge the type of institution—for example, state college,
community college, research university, liberal arts college— where students
enroll: We do not know which of these students are at community colleges and
which are attending other institutions.
Another perspective from NCES data43 addresses employment for adults,
those age 24 and over, who consider work to be their first priority and college
to be the second. This group is compared to those who are primarily students
but also work as a secondary role. While all of these individuals are considered
to be adults by age, their lives are likely to be quite different. Those participants,
drawn from the National Postsecondary Student Aid Study, described themselves as employees who also study (56 percent), students who have jobs (26
percent), and students who are not working at the time of the investigation (18
percent). Yet there is no disaggregation in this data set that would show differences between upper socioeconomic status (SES) students at four-year universities and lower SES students at community colleges; thus, several questions
remain. Are students who work full-time middle-class adults with mortgages
and family commitments, or are they low-wage workers who need their paychecks to pay for groceries and utilities? Are students who are not working at all
privileged with financial support from family members, or are they unemployed
individuals with few opportunities? While this comparison illustrates differing
demographic trends among adult students, it does not describe a complete landscape or an accurate accounting of the adult learner population.
In contrast and focusing upon the significant matter of income status of students, Prince and Jenkins describe adults who work in low-wage jobs and look to
community colleges to help them gain any advantage in their economic survival.44 Using data from the U.S. Department of Education, Prince and Jenkins
calculated that “among first-time community college students in 1995–96, 71
percent of those between the ages of 25 and 64 were in the two lower income
quartiles, compared with about half of students between 18 and 24” (2). They
demonstrate that these low-wage adults make little progress toward a credential,
and thus are unlikely to improve their situations economically. Of students aged
25–64 who started in a community college in 1995–96, only 2 percent had earned
a bachelor’s degree six years later. Four percent had transferred to a university but
had no degree, and 11 percent had completed their associate’s degree. Seventeen
percent finished a certificate, and 6 percent were still enrolled at the community
college with no credential attained. The remaining 60 percent were no longer
enrolled and were without a credential. Although the economic benefits of
attaining various credentials are difficult to verify, the literature (e.g., W. Norton
10
NONTRADITIONAL STUDENTS AND COMMUNITY COLLEGES
Grubb)45 does point to an upward trend in wages for completion of more
advanced degrees, as opposed to the student’s completion of a small number of
credits and subsequent departure from the educational system. Income status of
students, particularly for low-wage adult workers, has a bearing upon educational attainment and thus economic benefits for students.
Other terms such as “nontraditional undergraduates” capture a portion of
this population, but do not describe it entirely. For example, Choy defines and
characterizes “nontraditional undergraduates” as those at any level of postsecondary education: students who delay their entry to college, who carry a parttime academic load, who work while enrolled in college, who are financially
independent and may have children or other dependents, who may be single
parents, and who do not have high school diplomas. A portion of these students
have only one or two of these nontraditional characteristics, while others fit in
multiple categories.46 Choy’s data are not disaggregated by age, and thus adult
students cannot be separated from the total population. Although there is a substantial body of literature as well as national data sets on the academic progress,
enrollment patterns, persistence, and degree attainment of nontraditional students, the connections of this scholarship and the data sets to adult students
cannot be verified.
To summarize, data have not been gathered and partitioned in a way to illuminate the condition of disadvantaged adult students. The differences between
one scholar’s motivated middle-class adults and others’ low-wage adult earners
can be inferred, but only in part. The use of the same term—adult students—for
different populations persists and means that the definition of nontraditional
students will be gleaned from contradictory or opaque sources.
Nontraditional Students as a Disadvantaged Population
A useful way to view nontraditional students in higher education institutions in
the present day is not as a population characterized by socially constructed traits
of age or skin color or physical characteristics (e.g., disability) or by behavioral
characteristics or roles connoted by such terms as “dropout,” “employee,” “parent,” “first generation,” or “immigrant.” Rather, nontraditional students, or what
I will call “new” nontraditional students—“new” because we have more sophisticated understanding of this population—are better understood as a disadvantaged population. They are comparatively distinct from a large student
population that attends both universities and community colleges. In many
respects, the disadvantage can be tied to economic status, but it also includes
social, linguistic, and cultural backgrounds and conditions, as well as mental
and physical functioning. In some cases, the term disadvantaged student could
be applied to a majority of students at a single community college. For example,
students at East Los Angeles Community College, who are in dire economic
conditions, may be a large proportion of students at this college—from 27 percent to 42 percent—and are thus labeled “disadvantaged.”47 The use of the term
disadvantaged is intended to differentiate this population from the common
INTRODUCTION
11
conceptions of nontraditional students, who may be simply an older population
that is over twenty-four years of age.
In this book, I develop this concept of disadvantage and the definition of
nontraditional students. I use this concept to ascertain if and the extent to which
community colleges as institutions grant justice to this population. That is, I
both situate and examine this population within the community college both to
understand this population and to judge our educational institutions in their
treatment of nontraditional students.
The access mission of community colleges and their
accommodation of nontraditional students
The community college is de facto an institution for nontraditional students
because it serves the most disadvantaged populations in higher education.48
This institutional characteristic—the condition of its students—has helped to
feed the rhetoric of practitioners about the purposes of the community college.
George Vaughan compared the community college to America’s beacon, the
Statue of Liberty, with its appeal to the huddled masses.49 Indeed, practitioner
discourse about the achievements of community colleges approximates religious
revival, with an underlying metaphor of saving lost souls. Historian John Frye
sees this pattern as practitioners’ tendency to view the community college as a
path to upward social mobility.50 Thus, the more disadvantaged the students, the
greater the justification for the existence of the community college and its “open
access” mission. As well, the small gains of students compared to their characteristics of low-income, poor high school performance, and the like can be
exalted as institutional successes. Frye sees another pattern, however, and this is
the human resources model, where the labor needs of society are translated into
a workforce development role for the community college. Open access is, to
some extent, challenged by this model, as external expectations from business
and industry are more outcomes-based and standardized, with little attention to
individual student progress. During the past two decades, however, the community college has reshaped itself to combine both patterns of individualism connected to personal mobility and social benefits in the form of human resource
development through its decidedly economic development mission.51 This is
clearly stated in the proclamation by the national association of community colleges, the American Association of Community Colleges, in 2005: “Community
colleges will increasingly be recognized as the gateway to the American
dream—the learning resource needed to sustain America’s economic viability
and productivity.”52 The promise is to sustain open access and at the same time
to serve as a nation’s principal vehicle for economic development.
A number of forces are pushing more and more low socioeconomic status
students to community college. These include demographic shifts, more stringent admissions at four-year schools; program rationalization at four-year colleges; rising college tuition; and workforce training needs and requirements.53
Thus, while the open access institution is becoming increasingly an instrument
12
NONTRADITIONAL STUDENTS AND COMMUNITY COLLEGES
of the state and of business and industry, it is also a placement compound for
low socioeconomic students, including minority students and immigrants.
Again, the question with this condition is whether the institution as it is pressed
to serve economic interests can provide justice to disadvantaged populations.
Historically, open access has served as a convenient way to signal the accommodation of the disadvantaged.54
Open access has variant meanings, including limitations on barriers to participation in the institution and equity of opportunity; but “open” is not an
absolute because most programs have selective admissions, from high school
completion to test score results and specific course prerequisites, such as Grade
12 mathematics (for technology) or college-level biology (for nursing). On the
one hand, the community college’s principal mission is arguably access; on the
other hand, there are accusations that the community college does not produce
outcomes that are consistent with the access principle for beyond college opportunity.55 This suggests that open access is more about “getting in,” absent the
promise of postsecondary education—the effects of college on students that
vary but nonetheless contribute to both individual and societal development.56
I discuss how colleges may provide access to the institution but do not necessarily “accommodate” nontraditional students. I view large numbers of nontraditional students as disadvantaged students by their conditions more than by
their specific traits—for example, as members of minority populations. They
are disadvantaged because their conditions are not equal to other groups in
society—they have not been accorded the same privileges as others whose conditions of birth, wealth, or socially valued assets (such as standardized intelligence) place them in favorable conditions. My view is that institutions must
accommodate these disadvantaged students to the extent that their conditions
are advantaged or approach equality, even if they cannot be equal in all measures. For higher education institutions, accommodation means those actions
and efforts to meet the needs of students—needs that are comprehensive in
scope. “Accommodation” is certainly an aspect of access, suggesting that the
institution makes room for a wide variety of students. Yet, the term has a customary connotation in student affairs and student persistence literature, suggesting that students will alter or be molded to fit the structures, processes, and
norms of higher education institutions.57 This is evident in the literature on
social and academic integration where students assimilate into the norms and
patterns of their institution. But accommodation also implies the provision of
services, curriculum, and even an environment that satisfies student needs,
from tutoring to remedial programs to a campus center for Latino or African
American or Native American students. Accommodation can be as straightforward as providing students with health care, as the dean at Mountain View
College in Texas explains:
Health services . . . [is] available to all students. . . . [O]urs is . . . a very
small department. We have . . . one limited full-time registered nurse, and
then a half-time support staff. . . . [T]heir primary purpose . . . is health
INTRODUCTION
13
information. . . . [S]ome of our students . . . don’t have access to health
information. And in some cases they’re able to intervene in a way that
helps the student maybe get through that day and hang in there. . . . [O]ur
special services area is really our program for our students with disabilities. And it’s through this area where students identify accommodations,
provide the proper documentation. Then we work with the student and
the instructor in their classes . . . to try to get the accommodation so they
have access to the program.
Accommodation also encompasses educational services that ensure that programs and support are appropriate for the students, as noted by a counselor at
Johnston Community College in North Carolina, in a federally funded program
for first-generation college students, with at least 33 percent of the population
having a learning or physical disability.
Our retention in the program is great. It’s much greater than the retention
at the college. I actually serve on our quality improvement team for retention, and so we’re currently measuring how we retain students as a whole
in our college. And in our program, we retained 100% of our students
from fall to fall the first year. And this year we anticipate, when you take
out our graduates, losing three. And all of those are for financial issues. I
think we have [only] three [students] that will not come back in the fall,
[so our retention rate] is excellent. I mean, that’s just phenomenal.
The entry that we do into our program, the students come in and we say,
“How did they find out about [the] program?” That’s what we start with.
And then we determine if this is really a fit for them. Sometimes they think
that we are a funding program. . . . We do not give students money; we give
them resources to help them complete. And so once we determine that it’s
a fit for them, then I talk to them about “what are your goals?” And nine
out of ten times it’s “I don’t know. I don’t know. This is what I did for so
long and now I want to do something different.” And so we immediately
do for all of our students, whether they know what they want to do or not,
we do a Campbell Interest and Skills Survey. And so using the results of the
CISS, that prompts the conversation about what careers are best for them;
what courses they should explore. So it’s a lot of career exploration and we
do goal setting through that. And then, of course, the ones with learning
disabilities, I do short-term goal setting, like, “You know you need to set
yourself a goal that you’re going to get through Math 050 in one semester
or that you’re going to pass your test next week.” For some of them, we
meet weekly for goal setting. And then some of them we meet at the beginning of each semester. So, it just depends on their particular needs.
(Counselor, Johnston Community College)
Accommodation also suggests, ideally, that students benefit from their college
experiences: For example, their education enhances their opportunity for further
14
NONTRADITIONAL STUDENTS AND COMMUNITY COLLEGES
education or for appropriate employment. If they are going to be dead-ended in
minimum-wage jobs because of institutional behaviors that did not advantage
them, then their college experience was of little employment benefit. We can
conclude that the institution may have failed to accommodate these students.
I equate authentic accommodation with justice—if and the extent to which
community colleges provide programs, services, and an institutional climate to
advantage students who are disadvantaged. Granted, the institution has multiple influencers, and organizational power is not necessarily in the hands of institutional members. Indeed, over the past two decades, power has arguably
shifted from the institution’s members—presidents, boards, faculty, and faculty
unions—and its community to other influencers, particularly state government
and business and industry.58
The Study
This book relies upon data from an investigation that began in late 2002 and
involves thirteen community colleges in nine states. These sites were selected
both purposively and theoretically.59 They permitted a wide level of access for
research and they conformed as a group to criteria that were applied to study
nontraditional students in diverse community college settings, including geographical location, institutional size, governance and organizational structures, and demographic characteristics of both the college and its
communities. I began by selecting sites containing substantial numbers of
minority students or low socioeconomic status students. I reviewed the characteristics of each college’s students based upon data from institutional documents. I use data collected at thirteen sites—Pima Community College and
GateWay Community College in Arizona, Bakersfield College and El Camino
College in California, Community College of Denver in Colorado, Harry
Truman College in Illinois, Borough of Manhattan Community College in
New York, Johnston Community College and Wake Technical Community
College in North Carolina, Mountain View College in Texas, Piedmont
Virginia Community College and Virginia Highlands Community College, in
Virginia, and Edmonds Community College in Washington. In at least one of
these colleges the following characteristics are evident: high percentage of
Latino students (Bakersfield, Community College of Denver, Harry Truman
College); high percentage of African American students (Wake Technical,
Mountain View); large urban college (Borough of Manhattan Community
College, El Camino, Pima), rural college (Johnston, Virginia Highlands), and
suburban college (Edmonds); multicampus institution (Pima); single campus
institution (Edmonds, Johnston, El Camino); and part of a multicollege district (Bakersfield, GateWay, Mountain View, Harry Truman). I also chose a
collection of institutions that placed emphasis upon one or more specific curricular orientations: Among these are university transfer (Bakersfield), vocational/technical (GateWay, Wake), developmental (Community College of
Denver), remedial (Harry Truman), community and continuing education
INTRODUCTION
15
(Pima), and comprehensive (Edmonds). I relied upon specific individual
administrators at each college who agreed to serve as guides for me and ensure
that my access to organizational members, students, and institutional data
would be unimpeded.
Interviews were conducted with a sample of administrators, faculty—both
full-time and part-time or adjunct—staff, students, and college and state system
policy executives. The sample of administrators, faculty, and staff was drawn
from criteria that included college members’ work responsibilities and their
contact with nontraditional students. Those who met the criteria were invited to
participate in an interview. The sample of students was selected by student
demographics and program areas. Institutional members assisted me with identifying students who represented program areas from remedial to occupational
to university transfer, as well as students in continuing and community education courses and programs. As well, students were identified who possessed
characteristics of nontraditional students, from minimally nontraditional to
“ultra nontraditional.” At most of these sites, the college president was either
interviewed or engaged in a conversation on the topic of nontraditional students
and “students beyond the margins.”
Data collection included interviews of selected administrators, faculty, staff,
students, and college and state system executives and on-site observations.
Approximately 180 interview transcripts were used as sources. Additional
sources were institutional documents, such as plans and reports, catalogues,
and class schedules, as well as informal conversations and observations. This
was a qualitative study that observed the standards of qualitative research datacollection methods, analysis, and design as set out by Baker, Burgess, Le Compte
and Preissle, Marshall and Rossman, Mason, Miles and Huberman, and Scott.60
Data were analyzed according to the guidelines of Miles and Huberman, with
pattern coding as a first organizing technique, and several tactics—noting patterns and themes, making metaphors, finding intervening variables, and making conceptual meaning—as techniques for drawing conclusions. In addition,
particular attention was given to the narrative line within interviews.
Furthermore, data were coded as well through Atlas.ti, a software program,61
although for this publication the findings were not used extensively.
Data were analyzed using the analytical frameworks of justice62 to understand institutional practices accorded to nontraditional students, especially
“beyond the margins” students, and to identify behaviors of “street-level
bureaucrats,”63 or those college personnel who operate as agents of justice and
in some contrast to those structures, such as government policies and economic
status of students, that represent forces bearing down on these students.
Furthermore, data were analyzed using Mintzberg’s power configurations64 to
identify and explain sources and influences of power in community colleges. I
use these analytical frameworks to understand and explain conditions and
behaviors at community colleges for nontraditional students against a backdrop
of a prevailing political economic ideology of neoliberalism. These terms and
concepts are addressed in Chapter 2.
16
NONTRADITIONAL STUDENTS AND COMMUNITY COLLEGES
In communicating my story of these new nontraditional students and the
conflict of justice and neoliberalism, I use considerable dialogue from the
conversational interviews that I held with organizational members, students,
and state policymakers. These conversations contain narratives, self-expressed
and self-reflective accounts of individuals’ understandings of themselves and
their context. These narratives not only exemplify theories and concepts, but
also provide counterpoints and offer a tapestry of the broad spectrum of experiences of nontraditional students.
Chapter 1 begins the discussion of nontraditional students in higher education. The chapter provides a context for understanding the examination of institutions, students, and state systems.
Notes
1. Barbara Ehrenreich, Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America (New York:
Henry Holt, 2001); Seymour Lipset, American Exceptionalism: A Double-Edged Sword
(New York: W. W. Norton, 1996); Seymour Martin Lipset, Continental Divide: The
Values and Institutions of the United States and Canada (New York: Routledge, 1989).
2. Michael Apple, “Comparing Neoliberal Projects and Inequality in Education,”
Comparative Education 37, no. 4 (2001): 409–23; William Bowen and Derek Bok,
The Shape of the River: Long-Term Consequences of Considering Race in College and
University Admissions (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998); Alicia C.
Dowd, “From Access to Outcome Equity: Revitalizing the Democratic Mission of
the Community College,” in “Community Colleges: New Environments, New
Directions,” ed. Kathleen Shaw and Jerry Jacobs, special issue, The ANNALS of the
American Academy of Political and Social Science 586 (March 2003): 92–119;
Penelope. E. Herideen, Policy, Pedagogy, and Social Inequality: Community College
Student Realities in Postindustrial America (Westport, CT: Bergin and Garvey,
1998); Sheila Slaughter and Gary Rhoades, Academic Capitalism and the New
Economy: Markets, State, and Higher Education (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins
University Press, 2004); Claude Steele, “Expert Report of Claude M. Steele: Gratz et
al. v. Bollinger et al., No. 97-75321 (E.D. Mich.); Grutter et al. v. Bollinger et al., No.
97-75928 (E.D. Mich.),” available at http://www.umich.edu/urel/admissions/legal/
expert/steele.html (2003).
3. Robert Reich, The Work of Nations: Preparing Ourselves for Twenty-First Century
Capitalism (New York: Vintage Books, 1992).
4. Stanley Aronowitz and William Di Fazio, The Jobless Future: Sci-tech and the Dogma
of Work (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1994); Manuel Castells, The
Rise of the Network Society (Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 1996); Jeremy Rifkin, The End
of Work: The Decline of the Global Labor Force and the Dawn of the Postmarket Era
(New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1995); Don Tapscott, The Digital Economy: Promise
and Peril in the Age of Networked Intelligence (New York: McGraw Hill, 1996).
5. Martin Carnoy, Sustaining the New Economy: Work, Family, and Community in the
Information Age (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000); Richard
Florida, The Rise of the Creative Class: And How It’s Transforming Work, Leisure,
Community, and Everyday Life (New York: Basic Books, 2002); Reich, The Work of
Nations; Rifkin, The End of Work.
INTRODUCTION
17
6. John Levin, Globalizing the Community College: Strategies for Change in the TwentyFirst Century (New York: Palgrave, 2001); Sheila Slaughter and Larry Leslie, Academic
Capitalism, Politics, Policies, and the Entrepreneurial University (Baltimore: Johns
Hopkins University Press, 1997); Sheila Slaughter and Gary Rhoades, “The
Neoliberal University,” New Labor Forum (Spring/Summer 2000): 73–79.
7. Derek Bok, Universities in the Marketplace: The Commercialization of Higher
Education (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2003); Murray Sperber, Beer
and Circus: How Big-Time Sports Is Crippling Undergraduate Education (New York:
Henry Holt, 2000).
8. Apple, “Comparing Neoliberal Projects”; Bowen and Bok, The Shape of the River;
David F. Labaree, How to Succeed in School without Really Learning (New Haven,
CT: Yale University Press, 1997); Slaughter and Rhoades, Academic Capitalism;
James Valadez, “Cultural Capital and Its Impact on the Aspirations of
Nontraditional Community College Students,” Community College Review 21, no. 3
(1996): 30–44.
9. W. Norton Grubb, “Learning and Earning in the Middle: The Economic Benefits of
Sub-Baccalaureate Education” (occasional paper, Community College Research
Center, Teachers College, New York, September 1998).
10. Susan P. Choy, “Nontraditional Undergraduates,” in The Condition of Education,
25–38. U.S. Department of Education, NCES. (2002), Washington, DC: U.S.
Government Printing Office. Available at http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2002/2002012.pdf.
11. Choy, “Nontraditional Undergraduates.”
12. Kent Phillippe and Madeline Patton, National Profile of Community Colleges: Trends
and Statistics, 3rd ed. (Washington, DC: Community College Press, American
Association of Community Colleges, 2000).
13. Apple, “Comparing Neoliberal Projects”; Noam Chomsky, Profit over People:
Neoliberalism and Global Order (New York: Seven Stories Press, 1999); Nelly P.
Stromquist, Education in a Globalized World: The Connectivity of Economic Power,
Technology, and Knowledge (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2002).
14. James Paul Gee, “Identity as an Analytical Lens for Research in Education,” Review
of Research in Education 25 (2001): 99–125.
15. Diana Haleman, “Great Expectations: Single Mothers in Higher Education,”
International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education 17, no. 6 (2004): 769–84.
16. Ibid.
17. Kathleen Shaw and Sara Rab, “Market Rhetoric versus Reality in Policy and
Practice: The Workforce Investment Act and Access to Community College
Education and Training,” The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and
Social Sciences (2003): 172–93.
18. Roueche, John E., and Suanne D. Roueche, High Stakes, High Performance: Making
Remedial Education Work (Washington, DC: Community College Press, 1999).
19. Christopher Mazzeo, Sara Rab, and Susan Eachus, “Work-First or Work-Study:
Welfare Reform, State Policy, and Access to Postsecondary Education,” in
“Community Colleges: New Environments, New Directions,” ed. Kathleen Shaw
and Jerry Jacobs, special issue, The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political
and Social Sciences 586 (March 2003): 144–71.
20. Haleman, “Great Expectations.”
21. Gary Teeple, Globalization and the Rise of Social Reform (Atlantic Highlands, NJ:
Humanities Press, 1995).
18
NONTRADITIONAL STUDENTS AND COMMUNITY COLLEGES
22. Apple, “Comparing Neoliberal Projects”; Chomsky, Profit over People; Mark Olssen,
The Neoliberal Appropriation of Tertiary Education Policy: Accountability, Research,
and Academic Freedom (2000 [cited May 2004]); available at http://www.surrey.ac
.uk/Education/profiles/olssen/neo-2000.htm.
23. John Campbell and Ove Pedersen, “Introduction: The Rise of Neoliberalism and
Institutional Analysis,” in The Rise of Neoliberalism and Institutional Analysis, ed.
John Campbell and Ove Pedersen, 2–23 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press,
2001).
24. Simon Marginson and Mark Considine, The Enterprise University: Power,
Governance, and Reinvention in Australia (New York: Cambridge University Press,
2000).
25. Apple, “Comparing Neoliberal Projects”; Chomsky, Profit over People; Stromquist,
Education in a Globalized World.
26. John Rawls, Political Liberalism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993); John
Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University
Press, 1999).
27. Slaughter and Leslie, Academic Capitalism, Politics, Policies.
28. John Levin, “The Business Culture of the Community College: Students as
Consumers; Students as Commodities,” in “Arenas of Entrepreneurship: Where
Nonprofit and For-profit Institutions Compete,” ed. Brian Pusser, special issue, New
Directions for Higher Education 129 (2005): 11–26.
29. Levin, Globalizing the Community College.
30. Arthur Cohen and Florence Brawer, The American Community College (San
Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2003); John Levin, “The Community College as a
Baccalaureate Degree Granting Institution,” The Review of Higher Education 28, no.
1 (2004): 1–22.
31. Gay Bowland, “A Fresh Start,” Community College Week (August 16, 2004): 6–8;
Levin, Globalizing the Community College.
32. Sean Creighton and Lisa Hudson, “Participation Trends and Patterns in Adult
Education: 1991 to 1999” (Washington, DC: National Center for Education
Statistics, 2002).
33. Ali Berker, Laura Horn, and C. Dennis Carroll, “Work First, Study Second: Adult
Undergraduates Who Combine Employment and Postsecondary Enrollment”
(Washington, DC: National Center for Education Statistics, 2003).
34. National Center for Education Statistics, “Percentage Distribution of Undergraduates,
by Age and Their Average and Median Age (as of 12/31/99): 1999–2000,” (Washington,
DC: U.S. Department of Education, 2000).
35. Teresita L. Chan Kopka, Nancy Borkow Schantz, and Roslyn Abrevaya Korb, “Adult
Education in the 1990s: A Report on the 1991 National Household Education
Survey” (Washington, DC: National Center for Education Statistics, 1998).
36. Carol Aslanian, “You’re Never Too Old: Excerpts from Adult Students Today,”
Community College Journal 71, no. 5 (2001): 56–58. Aslaian’s study was done in conjunction with the College Board, and it could be that community college attendees
are underrepresented in the data. (N=1,500 undergraduate adults at either level.)
37. Vanessa Smith Morest, The Role of Community Colleges in State Adult Education
Systems: A National Analysis (New York: Council for Advancement of Adult
Literacy, 2004).
38. James Mingle, Bruce Chaloux, and Angela Birkes, “Investing Wisely in Adult Learning
Is Key to State Prosperity” (Atlanta: Southern Regional Education Board, 2005).
INTRODUCTION
19
39. W. Norton Grubb, “Second Chances in Changing Times: The Role of Community
Colleges in Advancing Low-Skilled Workers,” in Low-Wage Workers in the New
Economy, ed. Richard Kazis and Marc S. Miller, 283–306 (Washington, DC: Urban
Institute Press, 2001).
40. Penelope E. Herideen, Policy, Pedagogy, and Social Inequality: Community College
Student Realities in Postindustrial America (Westport, CT: Bergin and Garvey,
1998); Kathleen Shaw et al., “Putting Poor People to Work: How the Work-First
Ideology Eroded College Access for the Poor” (unpublished document, 2005);
Valadez, “Cultural Capital.”
41. National Center for Education Statistics, “Percentage of 1999–2000 Undergraduates
with Various Risk Characteristics, and the Average Number of Risk Factors”
(Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Education, 2000).
42. Choy, “Nontraditional Undergraduates,” 25–39.
43. Berker, Horn, and Carroll, “Work First, Study Second.”
44. David Prince and Davis Jenkins, “Building Pathways to Success for Low-Skill Adult
Students: Lessons for Community College Policy and Practice from a Statewide
Longitudinal Tracking Study” (New York: Community College Research Center,
Teachers College, Columbia University, 2005).
45. Grubb, “Learning and Earning in the Middle.”
46. Choy, “Nontraditional Undergraduates.”
47. Research Office, East Los Angeles Community College, “VTEA Student
Information Survey, 2001–2002 Accreditation Self-Study,” (Los Angeles: East Los
Angeles Community College, 2006). This observation was conveyed to me by Estela
Bensimon in a personal communication, September 2006.
48. W. Norton Grubb et al., Workforce, Economic, and Community Development: The
Changing Landscape of the Entrepreneurial Community College (Berkeley: National
Center for Research in Vocational Education, University of California, 1997);
Herideen, Policy, Pedagogy, and Social Inequality; Phillippe and Patton, National
Profile of Community Colleges; Shaw and Rab, “Market Rhetoric versus Reality”; Jane
V. Wellman, State Policy and Community College-Baccalaureate Transfer (National
Center for Public Policy and Higher Education and the Institute for Higher
Education Policy, 2002).
49. George Vaughan, The Community College Story (Washington, DC: American
Association of Community Colleges, 2000).
50. John Frye, “Educational Paradigms in the Professional Literature of the Community
College,” in Higher Education: Handbook of Theory and Research, ed. John Smart,
181–224 (New York: Agathon Press, 1994).
51. John Levin, Susan Kater, and Richard Wagoner, Community College Faculty: At
Work in the New Economy (New York: Palgrave, 2006).
52. American Association of Community Colleges, “Our Mission Statement”
(American Association of Community Colleges, January 2005), available at http://
www.aacc.nche.edu/Content/NavigationMenu/AboutAACC/Mission/OurMission
Statement.htm.
53. Richard Alfred and Patricia Carter, “New Colleges for a New Century:
Organizational Change and Development in Community Colleges,” in Higher
Education: Handbook of Theory and Research, ed. John C. Smart and William G.
Tierney, 240–83 (New York: Agathon Press, 1999); Thomas R. Bailey and Irina E.
Averianova, “Multiple Missions of Community Colleges: Conflicting or
Complementary” (occasional paper, Community College Research Center, Teachers
20
NONTRADITIONAL STUDENTS AND COMMUNITY COLLEGES
College, New York: 1998); Steven Brint, “Few Remaining Dreams: Community
Colleges since 1985,” in “Community Colleges: New Environments, New
Directions,” ed. Kathleen Shaw and Jerry Jacobs, special issue, The ANNALS of the
American Academy of Political and Social Sciences 586 (March 2003): 16–37; Cohen
and Brawer, The American Community College; Levin, Kater, and Wagoner,
Community College Faculty; Slaughter and Rhoades, Academic Capitalism.
54. Richard Richardson and Louis Bender, Fostering Minority Access and Achievement
in Higher Education (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1987); Richard Richardson,
Elizabeth Fisk, and Morris Okun, Literacy in the Open-Access College (San
Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1983); John E. Roueche and Suanne D. Roueche, Between a
Rock and a Hard Place: The At-Risk Student in the Open-Door College (Washington,
DC: American Association of Community Colleges, 1993).
55. Quentin Bogart, “The Community College Mission,” in A Handbook on the
Community College in America, ed. George Baker, 60–73 (Westport, CT: Greenwood,
1994); Brint, “Few Remaining Dreams”; Steven Brint and Jerome Karabel, The
Diverted Dream: Community Colleges and the Promise of Educational Opportunity in
America, 1900–1985 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989); John Dennison and
Paul Gallagher, Canada’s Community Colleges (Vancouver: University of British
Columbia Press, 1986); W. Norton Grubb, Honored but Invisible: An Inside Look at
Teaching in Community Colleges (New York: Routledge, 1999).
56. Ernest T. Pascarella and Patrick Terenzini, How College Affects Students, (San
Francisco: Jossey Bass, 1991); Ernest T. Pascarella and Patrick Terenzini, How College
Affects Students: A Third Decade of Research (San Francisco: Jossey Bass, 2005).
57. Dudley Woodard, “Comments on Research” (personal communication, Raleigh,
NC, 2005).
58. Levin, Globalizing the Community College; John Levin, “Public Policy, Community
Colleges, and the Path to Globalization,” Higher Education 42, no. 2 (2001): 237–62;
Barbara Townsend and Susan Twombly, eds., Community Colleges: Policy in the
Future Context (Westport, CT: Ablex, 2001).
59. Margaret Le Compte and Judith Preissle, Ethnography and Qualitative Design in
Educational Research (San Diego, CA: Academic Press, 1993); Catherine Marshall
and Gretchen Rossman, Designing Qualitative Research, 3rd ed. (Thousand Oaks,
CA: Sage, 1999); Jennifer Mason, Qualitative Researching (Thousand Oaks, CA:
Sage, 1996).
60. Carolyn Baker, “Ethnomethodological Analyses of Interview,” in Handbook of
Interview Research: Context and Method, ed. Jaber Gubrium and James Holstein,
777–95 (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2002); Robert Burgess, In the Field: An
Introduction to Field Research (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1984); Robert
Burgess, Strategies of Educational Research: Qualitative Methods (London: Falmer
Press, 1985); Matthew Miles and A. Michael Huberman, Qualitative Data Analysis
(Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1994); J. Scott, A Matter of Record (Cambridge: Polity
Press, 1990).
61. Atlas.ti Ver. Win 5.0 (Build 63), qualitative analysis software from ATLAS.ti GmbH
(formerly Scientific Software Development), Berlin.
62. Rawls, A Theory of Justice.
63. Martin Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1980).
64. Henry Mintzberg, Mintzberg on Management: Inside Our Strange World of
Organizations (New York: Free Press, 1989).
Chapter 1
Nontraditional Students
in Higher Education
his chapter presents frameworks for the understanding of nontraditional
students in higher education, reviews the scholarly literature, discusses
national data on nontraditional students, and identifies themes drawn from
both the data and the scholarly literature. It sets the stage for the argument that
follows in Chapter 2 and offers evidence for the significance of nontraditional
students in higher education as well as their condition as students.
Theoretical orientations and assumptions that underlie inquiry not only
frame what researchers, scholars, and interpreters see, but also explain the phenomena from a particular ontological perspective. The concepts and language
we use to examine behaviors serve as metaphors or tropes that both enlarge and
limit our understandings.1 How we frame, identify, and understand nontraditional students reflects our ontological preferences and shapes how we see the
behaviors or experiences of these students. I identify and name three broad
frameworks that are employed in the scholarly literature and by practitioners to
view and discuss nontraditional students. They include the trait framework, the
behavioral framework, and the action framework. Each carries with it not only
particular points of view about these students, but also a set or system of evidence that both supports claims and perpetuates the framework itself. Most
important, each framework defines the problem of or for nontraditional students—for example, “at-risk” for noncompletion of college programs,2 isolation
from other student groups,3 and unjust institutional treatment.4
T
Frameworks for Understanding the Issues
At least three dominant frameworks guide our understanding of nontraditional
students and their conditions in higher education. First is the trait framework,
which suggests a deficit model for understanding and indeed responding to students. This deficit model is centered upon the institution and how the institution can fulfill its purposes and goals and operate with the students it enrolls.
This construction views students as possessing traits that hinder or help them
in their college endeavors and that pressure or shape the institution. From this
J.S. Levin, Nontraditional Students and Community Colleges
© John S. Levin 2007
22
NONTRADITIONAL STUDENTS AND COMMUNITY COLLEGES
construction, ascribed identity concepts such as “at risk,” “first generation,”
“mature,” “minority,” and “underprepared” are attached to students, as well as
institutional strategies to respond to these characteristics. These strategies are
found in various practices such as “learning communities,” “assessment of student learning outcomes,” “first-generation programs,” and curricular and
instructional initiatives and interventions, such as outcomes-based curriculum,
mentoring programs, and service learning.5 Because the trait framework encompasses the largest body of literature and is the dominant one in higher education,
this chapter devotes considerably more discussion to it than the others.
Second is the behavioral framework, which incorporates how students experience and view college. This framework draws upon students as actors, a phenomenological perspective that highlights the issues from the student point of
view, including student motivations and goals as well as their learning and
developmental outcomes. This framework is exemplified in the work of
Kathleen Shaw, Robert Rhoads, and James Valadez, among others.6
Third is the action framework, which addresses how the institution, the state,
and indeed the public and private sectors treat and behave toward the student.
I include within this framework the policies and actions of institutions and the
state, such as welfare reform, that affect students.7 This framework incorporates
the justice model that I derive from John Rawls.8 The action framework indicates if and the extent to which the community college and its mission and
actions provide justice for students.
In my discussion of each framework, I use both the scholarly literature and
my collected data from interviews to describe and explain the frameworks. The
three frameworks and their associated assumptions are displayed in Table 1.1.
The Trait Framework
Research and policy studies that address nontraditional students in higher education in general use the trait framework and rely largely upon conceptions of
individual traits to identify and define nontraditional students: age, gender,
social and economic status, educational attainment, attendance patterns,
employment status, familial relationships, ethnic or racial identity, citizen and
immigrant status, geographical location (rural, urban, suburban), and the like.
Using the trait conception, Susan Choy estimates that approximately 75 percent
of postsecondary education students are nontraditional.9
Frameworks for Understanding Nontraditional Students
Given this figure, traditional does not equate with a minor population of students, but rather, we can speculate, with an historical or customary population
that attended or attends college. Traditional students continue to be viewed as
the norm. Furthermore, the public emphasis upon this traditional student population and the maintenance of a trait- based conception of students have
NONTRADITIONAL STUDENTS IN HIGHER EDUCATION
23
Table 1.1 Frameworks for Understanding Non-Traditional Students
Trait framework
Behavioral framework
Action Framework
Focus
Characteristics of
students
Behaviors of students
Institutional and
government policies
and behaviors
Assumption
Students missing or
deficient in specific
qualities
Students exhibit
resiliency or
nonresiliency,
motivational levels,
and goals
Actions and policies
of institutions and
governments shape
student behaviors and
influence student
outcomes
Purposes
Student persistence
in college
Student experience
of college
Treatment of students
assisted practitioners, researchers, and scholars to focus upon all students from
what I refer to as an institutional perspective—a view that frames these students
within the political economy of higher education. From the institutional perspective, nontraditional students with identifiable traits are differentiated from
traditional students, and in this comparison nontraditional students are seen as
deficient—in academic background, in economic status, in possessing social
and cultural capital—and thus less likely to meet the standards, expectations,
and markers of attainment than traditional students who are not deficient. Thus,
the term “at risk” students is attached to nontraditional students because they
possess characteristics or traits that impede their progression in college at the
same rate or at the same level as the norm—that is, traditional students. The literature is replete with unequal outcomes for nontraditional students who are
defined using a trait perspective.10 These unequal outcomes expand beyond the
usually cited outcomes of degree attainment and program completion and range
from the digital divide—lack of computer skills, lack of proficiency in using the
Internet, and lack of access to computer11—to earning potential based upon
institutional attendance or program of study.12
Characteristics of Nontraditional Students within the Trait Framework
As distinct from 1970, when 25 percent of postsecondary students were nontraditional, by 1999, 73 percent of postsecondary students were classified as nontraditional. By the 2000s, the figure rises to 75 percent: Nontraditional students
are now the rule, not the exception.13 These students actually comprise the
majority of community college students in credit programs. In some sectors,
nontraditional students are defined as those over the age of twenty-four who are
engaged in some form of postsecondary learning activities—a definition synonymous with “adult learners.”14 In all higher education institutions, 37 percent
24
NONTRADITIONAL STUDENTS AND COMMUNITY COLLEGES
of undergraduate students are twenty-five or older; in four-year institutions this
percentage is 22.8 percent of the total undergraduate population, and in twoyear colleges the percentage is 36.8 percent of all students.15 However, there are
other characteristics used to categorize these students, such as their marital status and whether they have children. This population of adult learners is often
the “invisible” portion at many four-year institutions and makes up a large part
of the students at community colleges.16
From the perspective of characteristics, students with at least one characteristic of nontraditionality, as defined by the U.S. Department of Educational
Research, comprise 90 percent of all community college students.17 That is,
nontraditional students are numerically synonymous with the total population
of community college students. Thus, it is not uncommon for community college practitioners to either express disdain for the label “nontraditional,” resist
its use, or consider all their students to be identical—whether labeled traditional or nontraditional.
A traditional student is an adult; the traditional student is not an eighteen-year-old kid who shows up at a university and lives in a dorm. That
is not America. So when you are talking about nontraditional students, I
think that higher education and particularly researchers and others . . .
start out with a premise that is not accurate; it is wrong; it is not wellrounded. So I don’t know how far down the path that takes you if you
begin with the idea that the traditional student is the eighteen-year-old
kid who lives in a dormitory. That was 1940s, to be quite honest with you.
So for us, the traditional student is an adult [who has] got a family. . . . In
my perception [it] is the eighteen-year-old [who] is the nontraditional.
(Chancellor, Pima College)
[F]rankly every student at BMCC is a nontraditional student. There’s
no longer the traditional typical student who’s going to come to school
during the day. . . . We offer courses from seven in the morning to ten at
night, from Sunday to Saturday, on-site, off-site, online, because we’re
addressing the needs of all the students and all their issues. and it involves
many areas, not just academically but . . . support services and kinds of
support services that we offer the students for free. (Dean of Academic
Programs, Borough of Manhattan Community College)
[We] don’t discriminate . . . here as traditional or nontraditional. I have
at other colleges talked about traditional, nontraditional. . . . If you pressed
me I’d say a traditional student would be the typical student that either
comes right out of high school or a few years out of high school and gets
into a transfer or vocational program, finishes, goes to work or transfers. . . .
[T]he nontraditional student has become our traditional student. . . . [A]ll
of our students have some measure of nontraditional background or behavior or preparation or something of that nature. So I think we’ve just become
a place for students to start their educational career in whatever way they
want to do it. (President, Edmonds Community College)
NONTRADITIONAL STUDENTS IN HIGHER EDUCATION
25
Nonetheless, even those practitioners who do not accept the traditional/nontraditional distinctions do categorize students, whether by age—“the only distinction I really make is day and evening student, where our day students tend
to be younger and our evening students tend to be older” (President, Borough
of Manhattan Community College)—or by academic and social background—
“we can put that in a broad category of saying the students are underprepared
socially too, because it’s not only the academic part of it where we’re saying they
have to take remedial” (Associate Dean, Borough of Manhattan Community
College). Others who accept the concept of “nontraditional” have contextual
understandings and applications of the term. The president of Johnston
Community College in North Carolina views nontraditional students as those
who are distinct populations within the majority of community college students.
[Nontraditional students] would be community college students with special needs: not your traditional definition of nontraditional, but rather
your specialized populations within that adult population. [They are]
first . . . generation college students, economically and academically disadvantaged and disabled, the reentry mother or father for now; especially
now [there are] more fathers coming back because they’ve been downsized. [Nontraditional is] just the specialized; just the few specialized populations. (President, Johnston Community College)
Several specific characteristics of these nontraditional students—their gender, race or ethnicity, and socioeconomic status—are key to their identification
as a discrete group in postsecondary education. According to data for the
1999–2000 academic year from the National Center for Education Statistics
(NCES),18 nontraditional students in all of higher education are more likely to
be women, black, and in the lowest income group. The combination of characteristics or traits leads to statistical assertions about attendance and attainment.
Women from lower socioeconomic status were more likely to enroll in a community college than their middle- and upper-class counterparts. These women
were also found to be older than their male peers: The average age of male nontraditional students is twenty-six, and the average for females is twenty-seven.
The average age for white students is twenty-six; blacks, twenty-seven; Latino,
twenty-six; Asian, twenty-five; American Indian/Alaskan Native, twenty-eight;
Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander, twenty-six; biracial/multiracial, twenty-six;
and other, twenty-five.19 Black students are among the oldest in age, with
American Indians reported as the oldest students on average. Whites and
Latinos are the same age, on average, at twenty-six.
NCES data from the 1999–2000 year give percentages of all postsecondary
students classified as nontraditional (where the definition is based upon age,
that is, twenty-four years of age or older) by race or ethnicity.20 Forty percent of
white students are nontraditional. Among other racial or ethnic groups, 48 percent of black students are nontraditional; 42 percent of Latinos; 41 percent of
Asians; 53 percent of American Indian/Alaska Natives; 42 percent of Native
26
NONTRADITIONAL STUDENTS AND COMMUNITY COLLEGES
Hawaiians/Pacific Islanders; and 37 percent includes other and more than one
race. Clearly, higher proportions of minority students than white students are
nontraditional. With an increase in minority student enrollment and the growth
in the number for nontraditional students, there is an expansion of nontraditional students of various races and ethnicities in higher education.
There are a disproportionate number of underrepresented or minority students, compared to white students, with low socioeconomic backgrounds
attending institutions of higher education. Socioeconomic status (SES) of students in postsecondary education indicates that minority students—particularly
blacks, Latinos, American Indians, and Hawaiian/Pacific Islanders—occupy the
lowest rung. Nineteen percent of white students are low SES, as compared with
37 percent black; 35 percent Latino; 32 percent Asian; 25 percent American
Indian; 31 percent Hawaiian/Pacific Islander; and about 30 percent of other or
more than one race.21 Minority status combined with socioeconomic status may
indeed qualify a student as nontraditional. Such a conception informs research
on student persistence that compares these populations to the norm—the traditional student.22
Access and Educational Outcomes for Nontraditional
Students within the Trait Framework
How do these differences regarding student characteristics play out? Recent
research on community colleges by Thomas Bailey et al. indicates that institutional effects—that is, what institutions contribute to students—have little influence upon student outcomes for degree completion or retention at college
compared to student effects—that is, individual student characteristics.23 Thus
access alone may not lead to outcomes that are customarily valued—degree
attainment—or used as a measure of attainment. Nontraditional minority students enter higher education later in life than their white peers due in part to the
disparity in secondary education and the access to social capital that these students receive.24 Watson Scott Swail et al. refer to this condition as the “educational pipeline” that minority students pass through to reach postsecondary
education.25 They found that Latino students do not have the same access to
social capital as their white peers. For example, 35 percent of white students had
parents with at least a bachelor’s degree, whereas only 14 percent of Latino students possessed a similar educational legacy. For Latino students, higher education is less likely to be an achievement aspiration. While 78.3 percent of white
students aspired to receive at least a bachelor’s degree, only 55.2 percent of Latino
students shared that goal. This explains in part why minority students wait until
later in their lives to pursue higher education: As secondary education students
poised to continue on to postsecondary education, they are not influenced by
their families and peers to pursue higher education. Their white peers, however,
do receive the types of social capital messages at home that encourage them to
participate in higher education. Latino students and students of other minority
groups often wait until higher education is necessary to acquire the credentials
NONTRADITIONAL STUDENTS IN HIGHER EDUCATION
27
and skills needed for a better job—a vocational aspiration—or to show their own
children the importance of education—a familial relationship value.
Nontraditional students as a whole are less likely than traditional students to
persist to degree completion or to remain enrolled in a community or four-year
college. A research project from 2002 that focused upon student attainment
classified 9 percent of surveyed students as high-risk candidates for program
completion and 66 percent as moderate risk; that is, a total of 75 percent of all
33,500 students in their pool were classified as being “at risk” of failing or dropping out of college.26 More specifically, students who are poor or who have backgrounds that classify them as low socioeconomic status are at greater risk of
either not completing postsecondary education programs or graduating.
Among this group, young people and minority students have the lowest educational outcomes.27 There is no doubt that students’ characteristics—age, race,
socioeconomic status, gender, geographical location, dependency status, and
the like—are linked as multivariables of student academic attainment.
The trait framework is useful in identifying those populations whose educational attainment is either more precarious or challenging, or both, than either
a majority or traditional population or even a comparative population, such as
females compared to males. Although women have made up the majority of
community college students since the late 1970s,28 their majority status has not
always translated into superiority in attainment or in educational conditions. In
2001, women comprised 57.3 percent of the total national enrollment.29 These
gains in enrollment also translated into gains in degree attainment. Katharin
Peter and Laura Horn state that “by 2001, women of all racial/ethnic groups
[excluding nonresident aliens] earned a majority of the degrees awarded. In particular, black women earned two-thirds of both associate’s degrees and bachelor’s degrees awarded to black students. Hispanic and American Indian women
were awarded 60 percent or more of associate’s and bachelor’s degrees conferred
to Hispanic and American Indian undergraduates, while Asian women earned
57 percent of associate’s degrees and 55 percent of bachelor’s degrees conferred
to Asian students.”30
While women earn the majority of associate’s and bachelor’s degrees, other
markers of attainment are not as commendable. Peter and Horn find that
“women make up 60 percent of students in the lowest 25 percent income level,
62 percent of students age 40 or older, 62 percent of students with children or
dependents (among married or separated students), and 69 percent of single parents. All of these characteristics are associated with lower rates of persistence and
completion in postsecondary education.”31 Women are less likely than men to
complete the transfer from a community college to a bachelor’s granting college,
even though more women attend community college than men. Additionally,
those women who do transfer are less likely to earn a bachelor’s degree than are
men.32 The impact of both transfer behavior and baccalaureate attainment on
females is evident in their wage earning and career advancement: Women receive
less monetary benefit from their educational endeavors than men. Female associate’s degree earners can expect to earn an average salary of $28,324, while males
28
NONTRADITIONAL STUDENTS AND COMMUNITY COLLEGES
with the same credential can expect an average of $44,655. Even women with
bachelor’s degrees earn less ($38,045.55) than men with associate’s degrees.33
Women of color often face more barriers and have a lower level of economic
benefits from education than white women. In 1999, the median annual earnings
for women working full-time was $30,900 for white women, $27,600 for African
American women, $25,500 for Native American women, and $23,200 for Latinas.
Asian American women actually had the highest average, at $33,100.34
While the reasons that women give for attending college do not differ significantly from those of men, reasons given by women for discontinuing attendance include health concerns, family situations, and emotional or financial
difficulties.35 In contrast, men tend to report dropping out because coursework
is not challenging. The majority of women attend the community college parttime (63.9 percent of all female community college students in fall 2001) and
have other responsibilities, including family and work,36 which no doubt affect
academic progress and degree completion.
Of undergraduate students in 1999–2000, 43 percent were twenty-four years
old or more. Fifty-six percent of that age group defined themselves primarily as
employees who also study. Twenty-six percent of that age group said they were
primarily students who also had to work, and only 18 percent were not employed
at all. The average age of those who considered themselves to be employees was
thirty-six, while the average for the students who work was thirty. Women constituted 56 percent of both groups; that is, for people twenty-four or older who
are combining work and study in some proportion, they are more likely to be
female. This percentage rises when looking at students age 30–39 (61 percent
female) and students age 40 or older (63 percent female).37
Another population identifiable through the trait framework that occupies a
more precarious position for postsecondary education attainment is that group
classified as disabled. There are several different types of disabilities that can
impact a person’s educational path, according to data from the National
Longitudinal Transition Study-2 (NLTS2). Examples of disabilities include
speech impairments, orthopedic impairments, autism, mental retardation, emotional disturbances, traumatic brain injuries, learning disabilities, visual or auditory impairments, other health impairments, or multiple disabilities.38 In
general, the persistence rate of students with disabilities through high school is
fairly good. High schools are regulated by IDEA (Individuals with Disabilities
Education Act), which requires schools to take all necessary steps to allow the
student to complete the curriculum, including individualized education plans.39
For students in the NLTS study with visual or hearing impairments, the rates of
graduating from high school are high (90 percent to 95 percent). Students with
orthopedic impairments or autism also have good success rates (86 percent to
88 percent). The students with the lowest reported rate of high school completion are those with emotional disturbances (56 percent), multiple disabilities (65
percent), mental retardation (72 percent), or learning disabilities (75 percent).
Postsecondary entry and persistence, however, are more uneven among
youth with disabilities. Even those who received sound academic preparation
NONTRADITIONAL STUDENTS IN HIGHER EDUCATION
29
from their high schools may struggle with the transition to college. Higher
education is governed by the ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) rather
than IDEA, and therefore has a different legal definition of accommodation.40
Only 31 percent of youth with disabilities take postsecondary classes after
leaving high school. Community colleges are the preferred destination for
most of these students. Twenty percent of youth with disabilities take classes
fr…