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New research on adult students who are trying to earn college degrees found that it's more apt to talk about perseverance rather than persistence.
Adults tend to have more stops and starts as they progress toward a degree, according to the joint report from the Graduate! Network, a consortium of providers and institutions serving adult learners, and New America, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank.
One in five of these students, called "comebackers" in the report, will stop out of college one or more times before graduation, the report found. But these students don't see these stopouts as a sign of giving up. Instead, they see them as times when they can lay the groundwork for the future.
Some of the barriers adult students face could be resolved, though. For one in 10 who graduated, the barrier they faced in doing so was administrative. It could be paying off a balance due to the college or filing an application.
Sometimes, colleges would grant degrees to students when they re-enrolled because they recognized transfer credit or, at community colleges, recognized classes taken at a four-year college in a reverse-transfer model. Nearly two-thirds of adult students who had dropped out of college after two years of progress had earned nearly four years' worth of credit, according to the report.
The biggest motivation to persevere for nearly 90 percent of these students was supportive faculty and staff at their colleges.
The report recommends that colleges recognize these students' potential, target these students with campaigns that encourage them to finish their degrees, end policies that punish students for holding institutional debt, waive application fees and embed certificates into degree programs, among other things.
