Proposal Title
The Adult Student Experience at Lesley
Abstract
The LCAL life is one of giving and taking. Adult Learners must take time and energy from one part of their lives and devote it to higher education. The optimal goal is a better job - without a degree, working in hospitality is as good as it gets. There is no question about the value of a degree. The question is whether to get a degree in the desired field or to get a degree just for the sake of having one? This is where Lesley University comes in: it provides a path for Adult Learners to imagine the possibilities of higher education.
Adults do not enter college as a traditional student would. Being surrounded by much younger people can sometimes leave them feeling out of place. We have more responsibilities - such as raising a family or having to care for an aging parent - and more bills to pay. Some adults may have to give up the opportunity to go to college in order to allow their children to do so, or have to stop for lack of funding.
Once an adult is accepted to Lesley University, they take on a new identity of being a Lesley Continuing Adult Learner. Traditional students and LCAL students share the goal of completing coursework to get a degree, but LCAL students are in a different stage of life from typical students. The difference in age can both help us to gain perspective in our learning and leave us feeling alienated. This is where adulthood and higher education intersect.
Start Date
27-3-2019 1:00 PM
End Date
27-3-2019 1:50 PM
Room Number
U-Hall 3-100
Presentation Type
Panel
Disciplines
Adult and Continuing Education
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 4.0 License.
The Adult Student Experience at Lesley
The LCAL life is one of giving and taking. Adult Learners must take time and energy from one part of their lives and devote it to higher education. The optimal goal is a better job - without a degree, working in hospitality is as good as it gets. There is no question about the value of a degree. The question is whether to get a degree in the desired field or to get a degree just for the sake of having one? This is where Lesley University comes in: it provides a path for Adult Learners to imagine the possibilities of higher education.
Adults do not enter college as a traditional student would. Being surrounded by much younger people can sometimes leave them feeling out of place. We have more responsibilities - such as raising a family or having to care for an aging parent - and more bills to pay. Some adults may have to give up the opportunity to go to college in order to allow their children to do so, or have to stop for lack of funding.
Once an adult is accepted to Lesley University, they take on a new identity of being a Lesley Continuing Adult Learner. Traditional students and LCAL students share the goal of completing coursework to get a degree, but LCAL students are in a different stage of life from typical students. The difference in age can both help us to gain perspective in our learning and leave us feeling alienated. This is where adulthood and higher education intersect.
