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Kare 11
Boua Xiong
September 30, 2011
Julie Koerner helps students at North Hennepin Community College find their way around campus. She not only works at the college; she also goes to school there.
Koerner is one of more than 108,000 students attending school in the Minnesota State Colleges and Universities (MnSCU) system that are over 25 years old. The 32-year-old Koerner is part of a growing trend.
"The assumption always is you hear college and you think 18-25 [years old] and that's not the reality," said Landon Pirius, chief of student affairs officer at North Hennepin.
Since 2006 MnSCU, has seen a 29 percent increase in adult students. Pirius said many adults are back in school because of the sluggish economy and he expects that number to continue to climb.
"We're seeing a bubble of adults between 25-55 and that's going to increase for the next 10-15 years and so we're going to see more adult students come to the institution than we have before," Pirius added.
Koerner, a former nursing aid and mother of two, was unemployed for almost a year. She's now studying to be a paralegal. When she started a year and a half ago, she was nervous because she had not been in a classroom in more than 13 years.
"I remember the first day everyone is like I haven't been to school in 10, 15 years and I'm like, me either so, I wasn't alone," she said.
MnSCU is hoping a new campaign called "Graduate Minnesota" will bring more students like Koerner back to campus. Starting this fall colleges, will mail letters to students who started school years ago but dropped out. The hope is by reaching out students young and old will come back to finish their degrees.
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