College Schedules and the Working Adult

You've seen the commercials, received the emails in your inbox, and even advertisements to your home. More and more schools are catering to the working adult; making your dreams of a college education a possibility and very tempting. With flexible class schedules and distant learning options, you are now able to plan your coursework and classes around your already hectic schedule. But is it a double-edged sword?

The schools that usually offer these tempting provisions are usual private institutes and technical colleges. What does this mean for you? First, their tuition is sometimes three or four times the tuition of community colleges and public universities. They don't receive state funding so you will have to pay the extra costs. A two-year degree can drain all of your federal loan allotment very quickly.

Secondly, they aren't as respected as other well-known schools. I received a two-year degree form one of those technical schools and found myself with over $30,000 worth of debt and the inability to find a job even though I graduated at the top of my class. There were no recruitment events or job offers before finishing my degree like some of my friends were getting at bigger universities. There were times where I interviewed for a position with a recruiter who haven't even heard of the college that I attended. While some like ITT Institute and Devry has been around long enough to be recognizable on any resume, this is not the case for some of those other schools of the same type.

Third, they aren't accredited by the same accreditation board as most colleges and universities in the U.S. What does this mean? This means that you are pretty much stuck with them. After paying so much money for my Associate's degree, I decided to save myself some money and transfer to the local state university. The fact of the matter was that I couldn't; the credits didn't transfer. I had two choices; either start over or stay with the other school and get further in debt or run out of money before even getting the degree. This is the fact of the matter, a lot of times the credits won't transfer or only a small portion of them will.

This is where my problem, and the subject of the article, comes in. Not all public universities and colleges offer conveniences to the working adult. Sometimes classes aren't available at flexible hours and not all classes are offered online. This makes scheduling difficult; you almost have to quit your job to go back to school. Why can't the schools, with the money to do so, offer more options for the working adult trying to get their degree.

It is almost as if the smaller and larger colleges are working together. By making it difficult to work and handle your financial obligations, and at the same time better yourself with higher education, working adults almost doesn't have a choice but to attend the more expensive technical and private schools. But, by the time they get their degree they have so much debt that it was almost financial beneficial not to get the degree in the first place.

Based on a survey sponsored by Capella University, more than 70 million adults want to go back to school. There is definitely a market for that specific target group. What I don't understand is why more affordable public universities aren't doing more to market to the working adult? Why are the higher priced institutions the only ones that are? That is something that I can't answer, but perhaps an issue that will cause action from these institutions.