Going back to college involves all kinds of decisions about finance, commitment, family issues and, most importantly, career direction. Here are some key facts to consider if you’re thinking about re-starting your pursuit of a college degree, along with some useful tools that can help you make the process easier.
Top Line Facts
For starters, you certainly should not feel ashamed if you started college but couldn’t manage to get through it. People who actually finish college on their first attempt are becoming the exception rather than the rule. According to The National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education, less than half of all full-time students in the U.S. are now able to complete a bachelor’s degree in six years at the first college they attend (the numbers are equally daunting on associate’s degrees – under 50% of students get one of those done within three years of starting).
And while none of those statistics change the fact that going back to college will mean a significant investment of time and money for you, they have changed the educational landscape in ways that may boost your confidence.
A Range of Questions
Students have a wide range of reasons for not completing college – money, family obligations, a lack of direction or even not being truly committed to studying at the tender age of 18 or 20. But whatever the causes, the simple fact is that today, there’s a huge number of adults out there in the U.S. who have taken some college courses but never finished a degree — and both the government and college administrators are very, very aware of them.
The government knows that, even in a slow economy, American employers are having trouble finding qualified workers – a situation that is predicted to grow worse over time. The colleges know that there’s a huge new market of students for them if they could find ways to bring more adults back in to complete degree programs.
Options That Never Existed Before
What it means to you is that colleges have far more offerings tailored to a “re-entry” student than they did just a decade ago. Adult students have responded by returning to college in ever-greater numbers. Many schools that reach out to adult students have more than half of their student bodies over age 25. And many online colleges that focus on adult learners report that more than fifty per cent of their students are married with children (and there a significant population of single parent students in addition to that). At the same time, people now tend to return to college much later in life than in previous decades. A quick look around the websites of schools that offer completion degree programs makes it clear that they’re highlighting students who are going back to college in their 50′s, 60′s or even later.
It helps to learn the basics of getting ready to go back to school. Step number one is obviously choosing a degree than will give your career a tangible boost. But you then want to find out a bit more on how to get the most transfer credits you can (assuming you went to school previously) and how to find a school that can provide you with a completion or accelerated degree program (or perhaps a certificate program), depending your needs.
Here’s an overview of:
Colleges and universities that accept lots of credit transfers
Completion degree schools online