No time for campus? No problem for adult students.

Adult students juggling jobs, commuting and/or family responsibilities have little spare time for on-campus activities and campus peer relationships.

Studies suggest that social integration--involvement in campus activities and relationships with other students--enhances learning. But what about those busy adult students, a growing population of mostly women? Is their learning hindered because there's no time for on-campus social integration?

"There's not much information out there about adult students' lives and relationships relating to the college experience," according to Dr. Carol Lundberg, associate professor in the department of higher education and organizational leadership at Azusa Pacific University CA.

She studied the connection between student age, time limitations, social integration and learning, and published in the November/December 2003 issue of The Journal of Higher Education. Although her analysis of the data by gender showed no significant differences, she believes researching the impact of having children at home on adult student learning could be interesting. This report is based on her Journal article and an interview with WIHE.

The study

Lundberg focused on factors that influenced adult students' success, differences by age groups and how time limitations affect success. In her study an "adult" is a student older than 23. She defined "time-limited students" as those with off-campus commitments that limit on-campus time, such as those who commute, those enrolled part-time or those working more than 20 hours off campus.

Lundberg sampled 4,644 undergraduates who took the College Student Experiences Questionnaire during the 1998-1999 academic year, who were drawn from a larger pool of 20,000 students from 20 schools. The questionnaire assesses where students expend effort in college and what they learn there. Although she said adult students make up about 40% of the U.S. college student population, they made up 49% of her study.