Older students face unique challenges
| • | Community colleges bear burden of retraining |
By Justin Pope
Associated Press
HOLYOKE, Mass.— When Donald Vitkus went back to school, there was no first-day spring in his step, no looking forward to new friends and new ideas. There was dread at the prospect of studying again, and of being thrown in a classroom with students one-third his age.
Associated Press
"It overwhelms me," says Vitkus, who came to Holyoke Community College at age 60, after being laid off from the plant in nearby Springfield where he worked for three decades. "It's forced me to step outside the box I've been in for 30 years. I'm scared and I'm fighting."
Donald Vitkus, 60, who was laid off as a factory worker after 30 years, attends Holyoke Community College in Holyoke, Mass. Writing and learning to get along with younger students have been some of his bigger challenges.
Educators say older students who return to community colleges for retraining face challenges vastly different from those of their younger counterparts. Many already have a sense of failure and — once at school — must revive long-dormant skills while balancing study, work and family.
But older students also bring a greater sense of purpose to classes, and a willingness to share their life experiences. Many ask sharper questions, bridge the gap between the ivory tower and the real world, and challenge conventional thinking.
Vitkus, pursuing a degree in human services, has drawn on his own traumatic experiences being raised in a state home for the retarded, where both he and his instructors say he never belonged.
"Don said the first day, 'I have to tell you quite honestly I have not appreciated social workers in my life, and I have learned to distrust them,' " says Bob Plasse, one of Vitkus' teachers. "Right on the first day of class, we began a dialogue about his life experience with social workers. That gave me, as a teacher of social work, such rich material — to actually have someone who had had such a negative experience."
Vitkus says he has gradually come to feel more comfortable. But it hasn't been easy. Neither writing nor getting along with younger students came naturally. Managing his time and navigating the bureaucracy to line up money for job retraining has been frustrating.
Plasse counts Vitkus as a success story. But he says while older students often get the most from the classroom — and add the most to it — they can also have the most trouble finishing. If forced to choose between supporting their families now and investing in an education for later, most will choose their families.
Plasse calls it a noble choice, but a tragic dilemma. "I think it's mostly the world outside that gets in the way."
