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theses

ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION Title By Melissa Edwards Dissertation Director: Dr. Alisa Belzer Problem Statement In spite of the many support structures that attract nontraditional-aged adult students to community colleges, research suggests that participation in community college programs still presents barriers to the success of nontraditional-aged adult students that may ultimately affect retention. A study that seeks descriptions of those barriers and supports from nontraditional-aged adults’ perspectives as they work to complete a semester adds valuable information about how to effectively help the growing number of nontraditional-aged adult students in community colleges. Research Questions How do nontraditional-aged adult students in community college describe the barriers and supports to the completion of an associate’s degree and persistence in community college? Subquestions 1. How do nontraditional-aged adult students describe their experiences with faculty in the classroom, their experiences with the registration process, and their interaction with the college administration for purposes of information, guidance, and other college-level issues? 2. How do nontraditional-aged adult students describe the experiences they have outside of college that affect their college experiences? Method To answer these questions, a multi-case study approach was conducted. Eleven nontraditional-aged adult students on campus served as focal students for the case study, which took place in the bounds of 1 semester. More than 800 nontraditional-aged adult students answered surveys about their experiences, 11 students participated in two face-to-face interviews during the semester, and participated in 4 telephone interviews. Eighteen nontraditional-aged adult student volunteers participated in focus-group sessions. Seventeen nontraditional-aged adult students posted their experiences on a private message board. Additional interviews and focus groups were conducted with faculty and staff to augment data. Significance Nontraditional-aged adult students are a unique and growing set of students in the community college sector. The characteristics of adults as learners are distinct enough to suggest the importance of a study such as the one conducted here. This study was a qualitative, multiple-case study that sought to provide an in-depth, detailed picture of the barriers and supports for nontraditional-aged adult students from their multiple perspectives and realities. This adds to the knowledge about barriers to success for a subgroup of community college students as well as identifies how nontraditional-aged adult students describe supports that can lead to success in community colleges. The study found that nontraditional-aged adult students at the college in the study faced a plethora of obstacles that were institutional, situational, and dispositional. The institutional issues could be further subdivided between classroom issues and service access issues. I found that the college had multiple exemplary programs in place to support all of the students and in some cases, those exemplary programs successfully helped nontraditional-aged adults students to persist and be satisfied. However, the nontraditional-aged adult students at the college were diverse and therefore the programs in place did not serve and satisfy all of the nontraditional-aged adult students. Nontraditional-aged adult students, those who were satisfied and those who were dissatisfied with the college, shared many of the same obstacles. However, the adults were still different enough from each other to call for the institution to use various methods to help the adult students to overcome the obstacles they had in common.

ETD_4786

Ed.D.

Includes bibliographical references

by Melissa Edwards

http://hdl.rutgers.edu/1782.1/rucore10001500001.ETD.000068517

doi:10.7282/T3VX0F4B

ETD doctoral

The author owns the copyright to this work.