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GSPM in the News
WASHINGTON POST For many busy professionals trying to stay ahead, one master's degree isn't enough. And area colleges and universities are happily creating programs to cater to them Michele Krumm caught the political bug last summer as an intern in the office of Rep. Bobby Jindal (R-La.). The 27-year-old middle school teacher from New Orleans came to Washington hoping to gain firsthand experience on Capitol Hill to use in her civics lessons. She had been back home teaching for only two weeks when Hurricane Katrina hit. During a six-week layoff from school, Krumm realized that her desire to work on policy matters in the nation's capital was tugging at her again. The problem was that she lacked the credentials to land the right job in Washington. She had a bachelor's degree in secondary education from the University of Alabama and a master's in education administration from the University of New Orleans. While the congressional internship provided one bright spot on her résumé, she knew she needed something more. Her answer: another master's. She applied to the graduate school of political management at George Washington University and was accepted. She moved to Washington at the end of October, secured a full-time job as an assistant scheduler in Jindal's office and started classes part time in January. "People think I'm crazy when they hear I'm getting my second master's degree at 27," says Krumm. "But I felt the degree was necessary to switch the direction of my life." Krumm has plenty of company in thinking that an additional academic credential will give her an edge in a competitive job market. Adult education is thriving nationwide, with more than 92 million adults taking college classes. At the nearly 70 two- and four-year colleges in the Washington area, an estimated 175,000 adults are enrolled, 40 percent of them on a part-time basis. And increasingly, college officials say, they, like Krumm, are returning to school for a second advanced degree even as they juggle full-time jobs and families. While such students are not specifically counted by the Education Department or individual colleges, anecdotal evidence from admissions officers and professors suggests that young professionals, in particular, are buying into the idea of lifelong learning. After all, a second advanced degree can help them stand out in an era when everyone seems to have a bachelor's degree, and more and more people have a master's. "The life span of careers means that a credential you may acquire early on, an undergraduate degree and a first master's, may not be enough to sustain individual competitiveness over time," says Daphne Atkinson, vice president of industry relations for the Graduate Management Admission Council in McLean, who holds master's degrees in English literature and business management. "You are simply not competitive in the job market without a refresher." THE STUDENTS AREN'T THE ONLY ONES getting something out of the deal. For the colleges, adult students represent an important profit center. Adult students fill classrooms that would otherwise sit empty at night, are taught mostly by part-time professors paid per class, and require few of the services that traditional undergraduates demand, such as financial aid, dining halls or intramural sports. Adult classes generate profit margins of at least 10 and up to 50 percent. Those dollars typically subsidize areas of the operation that are not moneymakers, such as small undergraduate classes and certain graduate research. At GWU, where part-time graduate and professional students outnumber undergraduates by about 4,000, each school within the university has a minimum financial goal, says Donald R. Lehman, GWU's executive vice president for academic affairs. "If they exceed it, they get part of it back for their strategic plan. So, the professional programs help the entire university." The importance of continuing education to the bottom line, as well as student demand for additional credentials, has led to a proliferation of adult programs in recent years. With a dozen locations in the region, including its home in Baltimore, Johns Hopkins University, for instance, offers 51 part-time master's degrees, nine more than it did in 1998. Joining the mix of traditional colleges are for-profit schools, such as the University of Phoenix, that cater to time-pressed adults seeking a degree. Even with the expansion of such programs in the past decade, the Washington market still has fewer part-time adult education providers than other large metropolitan areas, says Peter J. Stokes, executive vice president of Eduventures Inc., an education research firm in Boston. "There's demand in D.C. that's probably not being met," he says. "What makes D.C. special is the government. Everybody wants to serve the government, so there will be always a steady stream of students and new programs aimed at that singular purpose." Indeed, while master's degrees in education and business remain the most popular choices for part-time adults nationwide, in Washington they are joined by programs in politics, international affairs, law and, especially after 9/11, national security. And in a sign of the area's diversifying economy, colleges also report booming enrollments in biotechnology programs and informatics, the study of collecting and manipulating data using computers. Unlike high school students, who factor in everything from a university's academic reputation to its football team's national ranking when searching for a college, adult students look for one thing above all else: convenience. While price and quality count as well, "adults are really pragmatic," says Stokes. "They want to know there is parking and the courses are scheduled at times they can take them." Convenience was a factor for Brian J. Feldman when he enrolled in the part-time evening program in government at Johns Hopkins in the late 1990s. Feldman was a lawyer at the Justice Department, not too far from Johns Hopkins's Dupont Circle campus. Going back to school for another advanced degree, he says, was a way of focusing on his goal of making a career switch into elective politics. "I certainly could have done it without another degree, but getting back into an academic setting and learning a little more about politics and government in a more formal way was a catalyst," says Feldman. In 2002, two years after he graduated, he was elected to the Maryland House of Delegates. And this summer, he plans to go back to Hopkins's part-time program to teach a class on state politics. Like other adult students, Feldman juggled a career, classes and, in his case, a family. Given those time pressures, adult students concede that they often give short shrift to something in their life during the course of a semester, whether it's a work project, reading for a class or family time. "The first thing that goes is seeing friends," says Neil Porter Shull, a part-time student at GWU's law school who works full time as a clerk for the Blank Rome law firm. When faced with a pressing choice between school and work, he says, school takes the back seat. "I try to keep it balanced," says Shull, who is married. "I want to do well at both, but I really enjoy my job." WITH TWO COURSES THIS SEMESTER, Michele Krumm is taking what amounts to a full load for a part-time student. Every Monday and Tuesday evening, just after 6, she hurries from her office in the Longworth House Office Building to catch the Metro to Foggy Bottom. On this Tuesday night, she has timed it right. With a few minutes left before the start of her 7:10 class, she grabs a coffee and a bite to eat at the Starbucks near GWU's media and public affairs building. Coffee in hand, Krumm slides into the last row of seats in the lecture hall as students trickle in for the 2 1/2-hour class. One asks Krumm about her Monday night class. Two other students talk about their day at work. For many in the class, these side conversations may turn out to be as important as any lesson they will learn tonight. One reason adults say they enroll in part-time graduate programs is to network, both with fellow students and alumni. "You make these incredible connections that you couldn't otherwise have," says Krumm. It used to be that when people like Krumm were ready for the next stage in their careers their employers would provide guidance and training. Now workers view themselves as managers of their own careers. Call it a "free-agent world," where each credential "is a step on a ladder" to the top, says Stokes, the Eduventures consultant, who recently testified about adult learners before a federal commission studying the future of higher education in the United States. Take Shull, the part-time law student at GWU. At 30, he has a PhD in biochemistry from the University of Rochester. In his final year of graduate school, he interned in the university's technology transfer office, where he became interested in patent law. To pursue that career, though, he needed a law degree. He believes the science background will eventually serve him well as a patent attorney. "I didn't want to work in a lab for the rest of my life," he says, "so it's another way to use my PhD." In Krumm's class, Fundamentals of Political Management, the two dozen students have finally arrived, and the professor, Dennis Johnson, begins a lecture on the conservative political movement in the United States. As Johnson moves quickly through his PowerPoint presentation, he peppers the students with questions. Like any class, there are lulls, and, at one point, Johnson wonders aloud if anyone did the assigned reading. There are a few nods and raised hands. Despite the lackluster response, Johnson later describes the students in the political management program as "dead serious," although younger than in the past. GWU is not the only school in the region that has seen the average age of its part-time students drop in recent years. Looking for a jump-start, more students are coming to the adult programs nearly fresh out of college. That, instructors say, changes the nature of the classes, because discussions focus less on real-world experiences. Getting into a part-time adult program is often a breeze, although the standards for some, particularly law school, are as tough as full-time programs. With colleges trying to squeeze the most revenue out of every course, they essentially take everyone who meets their minimum admissions criteria. While universities have a vested interest in ensuring the quality of their adult programs -- if for no other reason than to protect their brand name -- part-time students realize they may be paying for a slightly inferior education compared with full-timers, who get the regular faculty and the trappings of a main campus. Even so, part-time students have motivation to take their studies seriously. After all, they're usually the ones footing the tuition bill. "They choose to be here," Johnson says. "They can't just blow it off because Daddy isn't paying for it this time around." Few schools set aside their own financial-aid dollars for part-time adults. So those students either apply for loans, tap financial assistance from their employers, or pay as they go. Krumm, already $40,000 in debt from her undergraduate and first master's degrees, is taking out another loan to pay the $5,500 in part-time tuition this semester at GWU. "My mom, who is a CPA, wasn't really thrilled when I told her," Krumm says. Stephen Whetstone is paying out of his own pocket for his second master's degree, in health care administration and informatics from the University of Maryland University College. At 57, many of his friends think he's foolish to waste $15,000 on another credential. "They say I should spend it instead on improving my golf game," says Whetstone, who is director of informatics and biomedical communications at Howard University's medical school. "But I wanted to go back to school to retool. Knowledge becomes dated." In the future, adults like Krumm and Whetstone may have another way to pay their tuition bills. The federal commission appointed by the Bush administration to study the country's higher education system is discussing a proposal to establish lifelong learning accounts for individuals. Similar to 401(k) retirement plans, employees, and possibly employers, would contribute money that could be used later for educational expenses. University officials predict such accounts will trigger a growth spurt in adult education. And local schools are ready. Last fall, the University System of Maryland broke ground on a third building in Shady Grove, just off Interstate 270, at a complex where eight public universities offer degree programs to 2,000 adults. When the building opens in the fall of 2007, it will double student capacity, says the campus's executive director, Stewart L. Edelstein. Degree offerings continue to expand as well, especially in areas that cross traditional academic disciplines. Johns Hopkins, for instance, recently announced a joint part-time master's degree in government and business administration at its Washington campus. "Jobs today draw on knowledge and skills from a multitude of disciplines," says Sarah B. Steinberg, an associate dean. "So we need to provide opportunities for students to learn in the same way." Krumm knows she will likely apply her experience as a schoolteacher in her next career. When she graduates in December 2007, she's leaning toward working on education policy, either on the Hill or for the Department of Education. While she realizes that she might have been able to parlay her current job into a position without the second master's degree, the political management program at GWU gave her an opening to explore. "Here I was, a school teacher from New Orleans who spent one summer interning on the Hill," Krumm says. "I liked politics, but I didn't know all my options. That's what school is supposed to be about. It gives you a chance to look around, to find out what avenue I want to go down and be knowledgeable going into another job." Jeffrey Selingo is an editor at the Chronicle of Higher Education
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