From the News You Can Use Archives 03/13/07

Many Adult Learners Use Cash and Employer Assistance to Fund their Education
By Ian Crawford, Web Communications Editor

Adult students in American higher education institutions are more likely to use personal savings and tuition assistance from their employers to help pay for their education than more traditional resources.

This is the finding from a recent report, Assessing Consumer Preferences for Adult, Continuing, and Professional Education: Financing and Tuition Assistance in Adult Learning by Eduventures, Inc., based on an e-mail survey of 25,000 current and prospective students at 56 institutions.

The respondents said they used, or planned to use, the following as financial resources to help fund their college courses:

		Cash	50 percent
		Tuition assistance	48 percent
		Federal student loans	28 percent
		Scholarships	22 percent

According to the report's authors, the findings indicate that higher education institutions need to look beyond the traditional resources of grants, loans, and scholarships used to help younger students, if they wish to recruit more continuing-education and professional students.

"Adult learners are financially independent and the vast majority of them are working full time and pursuing college part time. Thus, these very characteristics disqualify them from accessing many types of traditional financial aid options," said Sean Gallagher, program director and senior research analyst for Eduventures' Learning Collaborative in Continuing and Professional Education. "Without question, employer assistance plays the most critical and unique role of all financial sources as a motivator and an enabler of access for adult learners."

Other findings include:

• As an adult students' income increases so does their reliance on cash savings and tuition assistance
• Cash savings are used by 60 percent of those students taking courses for personal enrichment and 57 percent of those who take courses to change their careers.
• When interested in just completing a degree the biggest share (41 percent) used federal loans
• The industries that are more likely to offer employer-provided tuition assistance:
• Utilities
• Manufacturing
• Mining
• The industries that are less likely to offer employer-provided tuition assistance:
• Retail
• Arts, entertainment and recreation
• Accommodations
• Food services

Copies of the report are only available to members of Eduventures' Continuing and Professional Education Program.

Press Release: Eduventures Report Explores Financing and Tuition Assistance for Adult Learning- Eduventures, Inc.

Story posted March 13, 2007.

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