By Tim McNellie

It’s hardly news anymore, but polls routinely show that Americans feel like they have increasingly less free time. Whether this feeling is true or simply the result of changing social pressures has been debated, but the important thing is the perception.

When it comes to attracting older, non-traditional students, who often retain full employment while attending classes, colleges are responding to the time-strapped sentiment by establishing learning centers away from campus and closer to the suburban homes of many students.

If the students can’t make it to the classrooms, then we’ll bring the classrooms to them, the philosophy goes.

“It’s really a dream for anybody who wants to go back and get a degree,” says Ellie Nesser, assistant director of California University of Pennsylvania’s Southpointe center. Established in 1997, the center offers graduate and undergraduate degrees with classes held at times convenient to people holding full-time jobs.

“Most of our students are employed and looking for advancement in their careers,” Nesser says. “Many are people in jobs where they can get promoted for earning a degree.”

Like most off-campus centers, California Southpointe offers career-oriented degrees in popular fields like business, education and nursing.

Waynesburg College established its own Southpointe center in 2002. The center complements similar locations in Wexford and Monroeville.

“It’s about convenience,” says Dave Mariner, director of admissions and media relations for graduate and professional studies at Waynesburg “Most people in the Pittsburgh region can get to one of our centers within a half-hour.”

“There seem to be as many adult students wanting to go back to school as 18-year olds wanting to go to school,” says Mariner.

Waynesburg has about 1,000 students enrolled at the three centers. The average student is around 37 years old, but there’s a wide range around that, from 20 year-olds not long out of high school to the 61-year-old who just recently graduated.

Driving enrollment is the reality that increasingly, a bachelor’s degree makes an employee simply average. A graduate degree is increasingly a necessity for promotion (or to even get hired in some fields).

“There seem to be as many adult students wanting to go back to school as 18-year olds wanting to go to school,” Mariner said.

Carlow University has realized a great diversity of students in its master of science in professional leadership course, which has been offered for more than a decade at the main campus and launches this fall at St. Clair Hospital.

While many people wouldn’t associate a hospital with night school, Carlow found it a convenient location to bring the master’s program to the South Hills, according to Judy Trosell, admissions counselor for the program.

The two-year course involves one three-hour night class per week, broken up into eight-week semesters. The classes are also open to people interested in pursuing a master of science in nursing leadership.

While branch campuses and local learning centers can be convenient for some, others find online courses more suitable. Most colleges these days offer at least a few online courses, which are full-credit college classes that are completed mostly, or entirely, by computer.

Chatham College began offering online courses this summer, and has three entirely-online master’s degree programs ready to launch this fall, including degrees in professional writing and education.

“It’s a branch campus that’s available to anyone who can get online,” said Stephen Anspacher, vice-president for continuing education at Chatham. Though the idea of online learning may be off-putting to some who question whether learning can truly be facilitated away from a classroom, Anspacher believes it works.

“Online learning has been in practice for 10 to 15 years and it’s proven to be a format that’s effective,” he said. “There’s not a significant difference in the learning that takes place.”
It does require focus and discipline on the part of the student, however.

“Most people report that they’re happy with the experience, but almost everybody reports that compared to going to a classroom and sitting with people, it’s a relatively lonely way to do it. It takes self-discipline. It’s focused on the end result and not reliant on the social interaction that it part of higher education in the way we traditionally think of it.”

While most of the students at the locations previously mentioned tend to be thirty something, working adults, Community College of Allegheny County attracts a variety of students young and old to its Washington County Center, which offers a wide range of undergraduate classes.

When we started in the fall of 2001, we had 50 students. Now we probably have about 400 per semester.

“It’s roughly a 50-50 split between traditional 18-to-21 year old students and older students who have been out of high school for between five to 25 years,” said Richard Allison, academic dean for the center. This split is often influenced by the state of the economy, he notes, with bad times bringing more non-traditional students and vice-versa.

The Washington County Center opened in 2001 at Washington Crown Center. Since then, enrollment has grown quickly.

“It’s been phenomenal,” he said. “When we started in the fall of 2001, we had 50 students. Now we probably have about 400 per semester.”