All Posts Tagged With: "mature students"

Later-in-life schooling ‘is not just growing, it’s growing exponentially.’

When David Prosser, 64, graduated from Ryerson University in June of last year, it was his third time there in a cap-and-gown ceremony. In 2005, after ending a lifelong career at Kodak Canada, he enrolled to train as a fundraising manager at Ryerson’s G. Raymond Chang School of Continuing Education, and now works as a development director for a Toronto-based mental health charity. “It was a big change to get from the corporate world to the non-profit,” he says—but his alma mater was there to help.

Prosser is one of an increasing number of students who are trotting back to campus decades after their first graduation, and changing the face of universities across Canada. Mid-career and mature professionals going back to the books are fuelling a boom in adult education that goes well beyond colleges. At the Chang school, enrolment rose by 49 per cent since 2001; at the University of Toronto’s School of Continuing Studies (SCS), it’s up 75 per cent since 2007; at the University of Ottawa, it nearly doubled between 2000 and 2009, growing 28 per cent this academic year alone; and at McGill University, it grew by around 6.5 per cent since 2009-2010. When Simon Fraser University (SFU) advertised a free workshop called “Later in Life Career Transitions” around Christmas last year, the 70-spot event was fully booked before New Year’s, and when the school decided to make another 100 seats available, they sold out in a week. “I think it says a lot about the hunger for learning and career options later in life,” says SFU’s dean of lifelong learning Helen Wussow, who added that enrolment at the school was up this year.

Continuing education used to be predominantly the realm of public and private colleges, but universities are now diving into the sector. Many have been offering some continuing education classes for decades, but the recent eye-popping rates of growth reflect a conscious effort to step up those programs. “In the last four years we’ve created a new visual identity for the school and a new brand-awareness effort,” says Almira Mun, strategic marketing director at U of T’s SCS, adding that this included a facelift for course catalogues and publications, and more ads in local newspapers. In 2008, the U of O turned its adult education classes into a new Centre for Continuing Education, which offers both personal enrichment and professional development classes and is housed in a brand-new building with a view of the Parliament Buildings. SFU and McGill are both conducting market research to lay the foundations to expand their offerings for adult learners.

The increased demand for later-in-life schooling is coming from foreigners seeking a quick gateway to the Canadian workplace, mid-career professionals who want to update their skills and, especially, sprightly baby boomers looking for a new career after retirement or some stimulation to keep an aging mind in shape. But regardless of place and year of birth, when skilled workers look for a professional upgrade or intellectual pastime, they increasingly want to do so at the university level, says Serge Blais, director of U of O’s adult ed centre. The sector, he says, “is not just growing, it’s growing exponentially.”

And, along with enrolment, revenue is on the rise. At U of O, for example, it grew by 89 per cent between 2000 and 2009. Other schools declined to disclose financial information to Maclean’s. Yet, with young people’s full-time post-secondary enrolment expected to dip by nine per cent between 2012 and 2025 due to Canada’s aging population, catering to seasoned students looks like a good insurance policy.

Conference at Ryerson draws large numbers, raises important issues

Some time ago I wrote a series of posts concerning mature students, starting with this one. It became an interesting discussion on the various resources that are available (or not available) for mature students. And it was at least part of the motivation for a mature students’ conference that just occurred at Ryerson University, a year later, and where I recently had the pleasure of speaking along with other very interesting panelists.

Big kudos to the Mature Students’ Association at Ryerson (MSAR) for organizing the first-time event. Hopefully it won’t be the last. Certainly the response would justify a regular conference. Of the 130+ attendees most were from the GTA, but a small contingent came down from Guelph and a single intrepid soul ventured down from Lakehead. Additionally, a group of students skyped in from Mount Allison. Isn’t technology wonderful? In any event, the response was enthusiastic, to say the least.

I won’t attempt to summarize the entire content of the conference but a few impressions seem particularly significant. First, just about everyone who doesn’t come from York was deeply envious of the very significant support that mature and part-time students enjoy at York, through the Atkinson Centre. Clearly York has set the standard to follow — and indeed the ability to reference such a benchmark will likely do a lot of good for mature students at other institutions. Good ideas may be emulated elsewhere. And as mature students are a growing demographic, no institution wants to be left behind on this one.

Of course we talked about future employment and the job market. I believe as much as anyone in learning for the love of it, but mature students have even less margin to ignore the financial realities than other students do. Jeremy O’Krafka from RECSOLU spoke on that topic, which is an area where the needs and concerns of mature students diverge especially from those of “traditional” students. His anecdote about younger students showing up with parents to speak with prospective employers struck a particular chord, but that’s probably a topic for another article.

As for myself, I contributed the observation that however much an institution may support mature students, the vast majority of campus resources and opportunities will still remain general to all students. So finding a way to access those opportunities and networks, while perhaps more difficult for mature students, is nevertheless critical. But as so often occurs, I was partially preaching to the already converted. The students who organized and showed up for this conference clearly know how to access the resources available to them. Some even accessed funding from their unions to attend.

Participants referred, on several occasions, to recent stories about how mature students are “competing” with younger school applicants. I agree that coverage of this sort is symptomatic of an unhelpful attitude that suggests mature students are somehow less legitimate as students. But a better observation on this topic is simply that it’s the new market reality. We keep hearing about how we’ll all have several careers, right? Well, for some, that necessarily suggests retraining. There’s no sense resenting older students for being where a lot of us will be in the future — there’s only a question of how the post-secondary system needs to adapt in response.

As a final observation, I sincerely hope that this growing interest among mature students in their shared identity and experiences forms the basis of a lasting association. The more mature students take an interest in their institutions and their education the happier I’ll be. Not only is it in their obvious self-interest to do so, but I also find that mature students exert a positive and productive influence on every student organization they become involved with. They are deeply motivated to be constructive — even while pursuing their criticisms — and a little more of that attitude would do a world of good for the student cause.

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Questions are welcome at jeff.rybak@utoronto.ca. Even the ones I don’t post will still receive answers, and where I do use them here I’ll remove identifying information.