Back to college

FLORIDA WEEKLY PHOTO Once again, it seems, American colleges and universities, flexible enough to serve regional communities, and do it while the economy bucks wildly or the culture advances technologically, are riding to the rescue.

Case in point: Edison State College, with campuses in Collier, Lee, Charlotte and Hendry-Glades counties, and Hodges University, with campuses in both Lee and Collier counties, have seen enrollment figures rise dramatically in the last year.

At Edison, for example, enrollment figures have been on the rise for five years, with a significant jump from spring 2008 to spring 2009 of almost 15 percent, officials say. Between fall 2007 and fall 2008, enrollment at Edison jumped 14.1 percent, from almost 11,400 to about 13,000 students.

Percentage increases at Hodges have been similar. In the fall of 2008, the enrollment of 2,163 students — that includes the campuses and an effective online program for distance learning — showed a jump of 13.2 percent over 2007, says Joe Turner, a Hodges spokesman.

COURTESY PHOTO Leslie and Logan Urban And two years ago, the number of babyboomers returning to study at Edison was down, a trend that sharply reversed itself last year, when the number of boomers suddenly jumped, according to Kevin Coughlin, dean of student services at Edison.

"Something anomalous is driving this change, and it would probably have to be the economy," he says.

People are reacting to the recession and trying to survive by retooling and re-educating, but they're coming back to school for other reasons as well, say administrators and students alike.

"I chose to go back to school because of the recession — and the lack of employment opportunities," says Leslie Urban, a 49-year-old student who attends some classes at Edison State with her son, Logan, while she works toward a bachelor's of applied science degree in management and supervision.

She's having to use her own savings to do it, but she sees a number of students around her who take advantage of employer benefits that include tuition remission, she adds.

Edison State campus COURTESY PHOTO "I worked for a non-profit, but that job disappeared, and I've even considered dumbing-down my resume — something I read about in The Wall Street Journal — to get work until this recession ends," Mrs. Urban explains.

Unlike many others, she isn't working while she's studying, so the full-time school work will not only retrain her for another career, but also provide respectable resume-filler while she remains unemployed, she says.

Whether the new numbers at Hodges are strictly a result of the recession or a matter of the university growing and offering more to students is less certain than another new development, says Mr. Turner, at Hodges: the advent of younger students.

"The economy has forced younger traditional students to look at Hodges, rather than going away to school. We're seeing an increase in those first-time college students. Our focus has been adult learners traditionally, and the median age of our students is 32. But having said that, we're seeing an increase in younger students."

Along with many other kinds of nontraditional students.

About 47 percent of the students were minority students, and 30 percent of the total are Hispanic, many studying English as a second language to better prepare themselves for life in the United States, says Mr. Turner.

Just as in the periods following World War II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War or the first Gulf War, however, schools such as Hodges are also striving to meet the needs of veterans.

"We're attracting a lot of veteran students coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan," explains Mr. Turner. "We've actually established a veterans club where they can feel comfortable — it helps them assimilate into the civilian life again.

"We have a special fund set up — the American Military Veterans Fund — and with the GI bill it helps pay for their educations.

The veterans of war are matched by the veterans of life, too.

"People don't tell me, 'I'm here because of the recession,' but when you look at the types of students coming in, with the market changing the types of skills they require, that appears to be likely," says Mr. Coughlin, at Edison.

"Our director of financial aid, for example, told me she had never seen someone in their 60s coming back to school and getting their taxes verified to apply for a Pell Grant before — so older people coming back have not used the entirety of their Pell Grant. Their work may require a post-secondary education. And someone on the verge of retirement, and ill-prepared for retirement — I have to assume that's the economy driving them back."

Both schools accommodate students in ways that wouldn't have happened a generation ago. There are a wide variety of four-year and graduate degrees from which to choose, as well as a much larger course offering at night, and on line.

"Say you were working, and you were downsized, and now you had to take a lesser paying job to make ends meet," explains Mr. Turner, at Hodges.

"You can't let go of that, but in the meantime you want to get a better education. With an online program, or classes where you can come in once a week for three or four hours, instead of, say, Monday, Wednesday and Friday for an hour, they can juggle all of those things."

One student even earned his master's degree online from Bosnia, adds Mr. Turner.