Celebrating the launch of the School for Professional and Continuing Studies in February are, from left, Claira BaileyGuerra ’19, Nichol Cruz ’18, current student Tony Ayala and Jose Carcamo ’18.
THE NEW COLLEGE TRY
Growing numbers of people from the workforce are returning to attend post-traditional programs, earning bachelor’s degrees at 29 and 69. BY COLLEEN CASON / / PHOTO BY BRIAN STETHEM ’84
P
eople who take life detours on the way to finishing college have long come to Cal Lutheran, even before they had a degree program of their own or a label like “posttraditional.” The first graduating class included the late Al Stone ’64, who started at California Lutheran College after a career as a Southern Pacific railway conductor. At one point a campus security guard, he was married before arriving on campus and a father of four by graduation at age 29.* Post-traditional undergraduates today are much more numerous, often considerably older than Stone was, and more likely than other 21st-century undergraduates to be women, single parents, veterans, nonwhite, and among the first members of their families to attend college.
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They also make up the fastest-growing segment of college students. By 2026, 8.8 million Americans age 25 and older will enter college, according to projections by the NCES Digest of Education Statistics. That would be down very slightly from a peak in 2010, but up almost 160% from 3.4 million at the start of the century, and climbing. More than 36 million Americans have some college but no degree — a kind of limbo that takes a toll on these individuals and on our society, as detailed in a 2016 “manifesto” on posttraditional learners from the American Council on Education. At Cal Lutheran, these students have received concerted attention since the Adult Degree Evening Program, better known as ADEP, began offering classes in 1985. They are now served
