40% of undergrads are at CCs: IHE article

[polly_mer]

https://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/confessions-community-college-dean/fast-facts-and-challenge

8% of CC students already have a bachelor's degree.

[marshwiggle]

https://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/confessions-community-college-dean/fast-facts-and-challenge

8% of CC students already have a bachelor's degree.

From the article:

The gender split among students -- a double-digit lead for women students -- has existed for some time. In the places where I've had access to the numbers, I've found a pretty consistent and striking skew by age: for students over 25, the gender gap is much larger than it is in the 18-22 group. Put differently, women over 25 are much more likely to come back to school than men over 25 are. The single best theory I have for that is opportunity cost; if women's wages are generally lower, then for a heterosexual couple, the opportunity cost of sending her back to school is lower than the opportunity cost of sending him back. (It's easier to live on the higher salary alone than on the lower salary alone.)

It's kind of odd that he didn't automatically consider the difference between men and women in what kinds of disciplines they study. Taking a look at what disciplines people studied originally compared to what they came back for would be informative. My hunch is that they've come back for something much more employment-focused after studying something much more esoteric.

[polly_mer]

Or women are more likely to change fields after a five or ten years of being a nurse or teacher to get a much more flexible office job with a chair.

I know many people who picked an undergrad major for immediate job possibilities and then found the reality of the job not conducive to the other parts of life, especially after kids.

I know many women who stayed home with the small kids, went back to college/grad school with bigger kids, and then rejoined the workforce with a job in a different business sector.

I also know many people who hit 35 and realized that they need a higher paying job.  Taking a few classes to be eligible for an internal transfer at a large employer is straightforward and doesn't require being a full-time student.  Moving up from an entry-level clerk job by taking classes is a standard path.  If one already has a professional job in a related field then a lateral transfer doesn't need another formal credential.

[eigen]

I wonder what portion of that 8% are in health related and business related classes.

It's really common for my pre-health students to take some CC courses to fill in pre-requisites after graduation while gaining some work experience during a gap year or two, especially those that had a rocky start to college or decided they wanted to attend med school/vet school/nursing school part way through their bachelors.

[apl68]

Or women are more likely to change fields after a five or ten years of being a nurse or teacher to get a much more flexible office job with a chair.

Nursing and teaching are mostly-female professions that have tremendously high burnout rates nowadays.  And yes, women are much more likely to change work fields for child-related reasons. 

[marshwiggle]

Or women are more likely to change fields after a five or ten years of being a nurse or teacher to get a much more flexible office job with a chair.

Nursing and teaching are mostly-female professions that have tremendously high burnout rates nowadays.  And yes, women are much more likely to change work fields for child-related reasons.

That still illustrates the strange idea in the article that it's something inexplicable.

Put differently, women over 25 are much more likely to come back to school than men over 25 are. The single best theory I have for that is opportunity cost; if women's wages are generally lower, then for a heterosexual couple, the opportunity cost of sending her back to school is lower than the opportunity cost of sending him back. (It's easier to live on the higher salary alone than on the lower salary alone.)

Burnout at a reasonably paying job is much more tangible (and testable)  than "women's wages are generally lower", which carries that vague idea of "systemic discrimination".

[Puget]

The 8% doesn't surprise me-- Everyplace I've lived, the local CC sends residents a catalog of classes non-degree students might want to take for personal enrichment (art classes, languages, etc.).

[eigen]

Or women are more likely to change fields after a five or ten years of being a nurse or teacher to get a much more flexible office job with a chair.

Nursing and teaching are mostly-female professions that have tremendously high burnout rates nowadays.  And yes, women are much more likely to change work fields for child-related reasons.

That still illustrates the strange idea in the article that it's something inexplicable.

Put differently, women over 25 are much more likely to come back to school than men over 25 are. The single best theory I have for that is opportunity cost; if women's wages are generally lower, then for a heterosexual couple, the opportunity cost of sending her back to school is lower than the opportunity cost of sending him back. (It's easier to live on the higher salary alone than on the lower salary alone.)

Burnout at a reasonably paying job is much more tangible (and testable)  than "women's wages are generally lower", which carries that vague idea of "systemic discrimination".

I mean, the fact that women's wages are generally lower for the same job is a very tangible and testable thing.

Whether that contributes a causal rather than correlational relationship isn't really any easier or harder to test than the likelihood that burnout was the causal root. You'd set up pretty much the same study to test either one: survey people about why they went back to school and look at gender based differences.

You seem to be taking issue with this because you're biased against the idea that it might be "systemic discrimination" as a cause.

[marshwiggle]

You seem to be taking issue with this because you're biased against the idea that it might be "systemic discrimination" as a cause.

No; as I said earlier, I'm taking issue with the idea that the question of why more women than men go back to school is somehow mysterious. It's weird that the writer puts it down as being probably due to vague "wage differences" rather than to various reasons of career dissatisfaction and/or changing life goals, as other people have outlined.
And none of those specifically rely on any systemic difference between male and female wages. (Presumably burnout is not going to disappear with a wage increase, nor is the desire to spend more time at home raising children.) The wage discrepancy "best guess" seems to be more "Hail Mary" virtue signalling. 

Whether that contributes a causal rather than correlational relationship isn't really any easier or harder to test than the likelihood that burnout was the causal root. You'd set up pretty much the same study to test either one: survey people about why they went back to school and look at gender based differences.

But that still isn't automatically going to establish whether it's causal, since the different factors interact. For instance, if both members of a couple are equally unhappy with their jobs, but one has more interest in working part time and having more time with family, then that may determine their choices even if there is a small difference in their wages. If the wage difference is larger, then that may push things in the other direction.

The point is that the difference between male and female wages is unlikely to be the explicit major factor in the decision. It may be implicit in career and life choices, etc. in which case it's not the primary factor.

[eigen]

You seem to be making an awful lot of definitive statements without providing any data to back up your reasoning. I'd expect to see a lot more to back up your points if you want to suggest something is "unlikely". So far I've seen you present nothing hard to support your assertions that the given reasoning is unlikely other than you don't like the suggestion because it "seems like 'Hail Mary' virtue signalling.

I'm also interested that you are both upset that the author isn't pinning down a specific reason (citing it as a mystery) while simultaneously arguing that it's too complicated of an entanglement to easily pull apart. Seems like you agree with the author that while there are possible explanations, the exact reason is, in fact, a mystery?

They have their "probable" cause based on their experience (it's an opinion piece, after all) and they give more support to their argument (systemic wage issues that are well known) than you do to your "everyone knows" arguments about burnout.

[Hegemony]

I wonder how many of these women are in heterosexual couples, as opposed to single or non-heterosexual. The author seems to assume that most of them are, and that either person in the couple would go for further education if it weren't for the salary difference.

My own guess as to the prevalence of women retraining is that it's due to the preponderance of women in higher education generally. For whatever reason — we can wrangle about that another time — women are in the majority even for regular BAs, and are in the majority in many fields requiring graduate or professional school. My informal take on it, just from talking to people, is that women prefer a structured path to a career. Similarly women are the majority in study-abroad programs. The men say they will graduate and go abroad on their own (which in fact they don't end up doing in the numbers that say they will). So it makes sense that in wondering how to move forward with some kind of career change, women would look for the structured path, i.e. more schooling.

[Aster]

Most of my students who already have bachelor's degrees are nontraditional-aged students (at least in their late 20's) that are wanting a very different career change. This doesn't seem at all unusual to me. I applaud these students for having the time and energy to pursue a new course of academic study.

I also have some students coming back to college because their original bachelor's degree is from a foreign country whose Higher Education system did not align well/properly for the that bachelor's degree to be fully accepted by U.S. employers. This also doesn't seem at all unusual to me.

[Hegemony]

Here's something the writer doesn't mention, as well. Women on average have lower salaries, which means that they (according to the writer) are more "available" to go back to school for training. Which means they will have increased student debt. So those that don't have, now have even less.

[apl68]

Some more interesting statistics from the informational graphic that the article cites:

Over 20% of CC revenues are local.  I'd always assumed that their public funding was almost entirely from state appropriations.

28% of CCs have on-campus housing.  Again, it's surprising to hear that it's that high.

15% of students are single parents.  Almost all single moms trying better to support their children, I'm guessing.

Three decades after my BA, 25 years out of grad school, and with over 20 years of full-time library work, I'm now making almost the median figure for somebody with an associate degree.

[spork]

Some more interesting statistics from the informational graphic that the article cites:

Over 20% of CC revenues are local.  I'd always assumed that their public funding was almost entirely from state appropriations.

28% of CCs have on-campus housing.  Again, it's surprising to hear that it's that high.

15% of students are single parents.  Almost all single moms trying better to support their children, I'm guessing.

Not familiar with data on this, but I think it's reasonable to assume that the percentage of first-time, full-time 18-22 year old undergraduates at four-year institutions who are single parents is far, far lower than 15%. I think this is one reason to plow pandemic-related aid to higher ed into community college systems. Women, especially mothers, and especially single mothers, have withdrawn from the labor force at higher rates during the pandemic because their jobs disappeared or they couldn't afford child care while K-12 schools were closed.

Three decades after my BA, 25 years out of grad school, and with over 20 years of full-time library work, I'm now making almost the median figure for somebody with an associate degree.

For many women who want to increase their incomes, especially those who have become single parents, community college makes far more economic sense than a master's or Ph.D.

Examples that illustrate the above, just two of the many such people I have encountered in my usual travels:

A dental hygienist who had been a stay-at-home mom with two children under the age of four, who suddenly found herself divorced at age 25. Became financially self-supporting after an eighteen-month community college dental hygienist training program.

A nurse who was a corporate lawyer in NYC in 2008 and who saw that her employer was not going to survive over the long term. She decided to switch careers. ADN from community college and she now works full-time as a nurse, with a schedule that has allowed her to have children.