Learning efforts of adults undertaken for matriculating into a community college

Abstract

The purpose of the study was to describe and analyze the learning episodes undertaken by adults to matriculate into a community college. Eight learning episodes were examined. They were: self, educational goals, special arrangements, costs, program and/or courses, opportunity, institutional procedures, and institution. Data were collected from interviews with a random sample of 33 adult community college students who were enrolled during the spring and/or summer of 1983 at McLennan Community College, Waco, Texas. A revised version of the interview procedure and technique developed by Tough at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education was employed. The interviewees spent an average of 92.6 hours involved in self-directed learning episodes toward matriculation. An average of 85 percent of the time devoted to learning activities was without professional assistance, and an average of 47 percent of the interviewees obtained no professional assistance or information while engaged in one or more of the learning episodes examined in the study. The interviewees named their families as the best sources of information for three of the eight learning episodes studied. College catalogs, published class schedules, and brochures were identified as the best sources of information for two learning episodes; and other students were considered the best sources of information for two other learning episodes. College employees were not named as the best source of information or assistance for any of the learning episodes examined in the study. The interviewees spent an average of 36 percent of the total time devoted to the learning project of matriculation learning about their educational goals. An average of 28 percent of the time was spent on learning activities directed at self--aptitudes, interest, abilities, and retention of unused skills. Important to the matriculation of the interviewees were previously enrolled adult students and support from significant others. Support and encouragement from a spouse was considered especially important. The study suggested that colleges provide potential adult students opportunities for career guidance, counseling, and advising in a nonthreatening, supportive environment. The study also recommended that colleges provide matriculation guides written specifically for adults. Such guides, the study indicated, would be beneficial to adults if they contained directions to specific source of matriculation information and assistance, campus maps, and pictures and descriptions of adults who have attained their educational goals.