Why Working And Attending College At The Same Time Is Something More Students Should Do

Plus, Why Adults Actually Return To College

Perhaps I’m becoming a bit of a broken record about the importance of listening well to others, but so far it’s my theme of 2021. It’s serving me well, so I’m sticking to it.

Last week, I hosted a YouTube Live conversation with Allie Mason, one of my colleagues at Guild Education. Allie shared her personal story: how she intended to have the “stereotypical” residential college experience, but how finances forced her to take a very different path. That path led her to work full-time so she could pay for college—which she began attending part-time so that she could make her earnings, tuition, and living expenses balance (at least until the end when she took six courses in one semester while working to graduate!).

The experience left her believing that far more students would benefit from working while enrolled in college. Why?

Working full-time expanded her horizons and helped her understand what skills were valued in the workplace—which in turn allowed her to choose her courses more wisely over time and created a connection between what she learned in class and applying those lessons on the job. That formed a virtuous circle that deepened her motivation—her why—for enrolling and helped her graduate.

From her experience and from serving as a coach at Guild Education to countless working adult students, she’s drawn the conclusion that many more individuals would benefit from working and learning simultaneously.

And that in turn has given her perspective on what changes we need to see in high schools and colleges. She elaborated far more in this conversation, which you can listen to here.

Adults aren’t enrolling in college for the reasons that people in higher ed often think they are

In a prior newsletter, I linked to an article I wrote in which I dissected a telling survey about adults’ interest in higher education by LinkedIn and SimpsonScarborough. Spurred by that piece, I dug deeper in my latest piece for Forbes titled, “Why Do Adults Return To College? It’s More Complex Than Higher Ed Leaders’ Data Suggest.”

In it, I detail why the popular schemes for tracking why students are enrolling—to switch jobs or careers, to earn more money, to upskill or reskill—don’t go nearly far enough in capturing student motivation, as they miss the social and emotional reasons they enroll. My book “Choosing College” of course details some of this out, but in this piece for Forbes here, I provide a bit of a cheat sheet.

Two More For The Road

1)    The mainstream media is at last catching on that learning pods aren’t only for upper-income families. In our latest Class Disrupted podcast, Diane and I discuss how they’re also for low-income families here.

2)    Think bipartisanship is dead? Think again. In this episode of Future U, Jeff Selingo and I welcomed Alison Griffin and Judi Peller, two former Hill staffers representing both sides of the aisle. Listening to the episode, it’s hard to figure out who is in what party—and it was also gratifying to hear both make a plea that new higher education policies and regulations in the wake of COVID-19 focus on the health and outcomes of students above that of institutions.

As always, thanks for reading, listening, and writing.