Degree helped county recorder adjust to change

Editor's note: This is the first in a three-part series on adults who have furthered their education as nontraditional students at Southwestern Community College.

As Paula White sat down for her interview Wednesday at the Union County Recorder's Office, a tech worker was replacing equipment and updating the office computers. It's something White said she has someone do every five years.

There’s always something to keep up with, said White, who has been county recorder for 20 years and has worked in the Recorder’s Office for the past 30.

“Everything is in constant change anymore,” she said. “You cannot get locked into doing something a certain way because it’s going to change. That’s all we can be sure of.”

This changing landscape is the reason White made a personal decision to take night classes at Southwestern Community College in 1995, her first year as county recorder. White had already accumulated years of on-the-job experience in her field: She had worked at Union County Abstract Inc. during high school and had been Union County’s deputy recorder for 10 years. But she also knew she needed to get a head start on developing trends and technology.

“I think whenever you take a college class, it expands your thoughts of different views,” she said. “It basically helps you learn to adjust to change.”

White started with classes she knew would be useful, like accounting, business law and writing. Not intending to earn a degree, she would usually take one course per semester. But as time elapsed, she set a new goal.

“At first it was like, ‘I’m just going to take a few classes I think I need,’” she said. “As I started getting the credits, it’s like, ‘Well you know, I could actually have enough to get the two-year degree.’ And I really wanted to do that, so I just kept pushing.”

Ten years after beginning, White walked across the stage to receive her associate degree in business. It was the same year her daughter, Stacy Bowers (now Henryson), who had been 12 when White started college, graduated from the University of Northern Iowa with a major in economics.

The plaque White received, complete with a photo of her dressed in graduation attire, now hangs in her office.

The trend

In the 1990s, several adults like White were going back to school. A 2002 report on adult learning from the National Association for Education Statistics states there was “increasing interest ... in adults’ participation in learning activities” during the decade and attributes the growth to factors like technology and increased skill requirements for employees. According to the report, the number of adults enrolled in postsecondary education increased 171 percent between 1970 and 1991.

The number of adults enrolling in college remains significant today. However, it has been decreasing in recent years.

Bill Taylor, vice president of instruction at SWCC, said the number of SWCC students over age 25 has been dropping since 2011, when the percentage was 25.5 percent. During the fall 2014 semester, that number was 17.5 percent. For Iowa community colleges, it was 29 percent. Nationwide, it was 40 percent.

Taylor attributed the lower percentages at SWCC and Iowa in part to an improving economy, as well as the number of students who are dual-enrolling.

“Iowa’s got a pretty strong economy right now,” he said, “so most of our nontraditional students have jobs.”

Despite the decreases, adult learners still constitute more than one-sixth of SWCC’s enrollment. To accommodate their schedules, Taylor said SWCC offers several hybrid courses, where two-thirds of the class time is face-to-face and one-third is online. SWCC also offers fast-track courses, which last six hours a day for eight days. Other services that can help adults are writing labs, tutoring, a success center and the Pathways for Academic and Career Employment program (PACE), which provides transportation, child care and other services to help nontraditional students overcome barriers to education.

For White, one of the most helpful aids was having an adviser to coach her through her 10 years of education. She also took some online classes when they were first beginning, which fit into her schedule.

As someone who had graduated from high school in 1975, she said it was interesting to come into her first class in 20 years and sit with younger students.

“I walked in and sat down and this young person had a can of pop on their desk, and I thought, he’s going to be in trouble,” she said. “It’s just a whole different environment in college. Plus, things had changed a lot in 20 years.”

However, she was also surprised at how quickly things returned to memory, even the algebra and trigonometry.

White’s advice to other adults who are weighing whether to take the plunge: Follow your interests.

“Just start out with something you’re interested in,” she said. “You need a plan maybe of what your ultimate goal is, but start out and say, ‘Well if I can do one class and get through that, I’m really interested in that,’ and then move on to the next class. Before long it really is something you enjoy.”