Tuition discount hopes to lure Hoosiers back to college

When you're 30, the first day of school can feel a lot like every other day.

You still have to worry about work, because you still have to pay bills. Those adult responsibilities age you beyond the teenagers and 20-somethings that fill the seats in your class.

Sometimes, those adult responsibilities will actually give you an advantage, a little extra focus. But they'll also work against you.

On this day, they fuel your first-day-of-school jitters more than anything else: How will you juggle it all?

"I'm just going to do it," says 30-year-old human services worker Ryan Morrolf in a half-answer, half-self-affirmation.

For years, she has thought about returning to school to get her bachelor's degree. This year, a timely offer from Indiana University-Purdue University Fort Wayne cinched her decision:

If you come back, we'll give you half off your college education.

Could slashing costs be just the right lure to hook the 737,000 Hoosier adults who once aspired to college credentials but never reached the degree?

State officials think so. Even if just a fraction of those adults with some college and no degree went back to school, it could help push Indiana's low college attainment rates up, squeeze down the widening workforce skills gap and prepare people for better-paying careers.

But for people who decided to start families early, who needed to jump right into work, who just might not have been sure how college fit into their life plans, that decision is not always so simple.

'Not as easy as it sounds'

What makes IPFW's incentive so attractive, and what could inspire another discount program across the state: Affording tuition can be tricky for people who have already dabbled in college.

"What we're trying to do," said IPFW vice chancellor for student affairs George McClellan, "is create a real incentive for people to come back. So here's your chance. If you can come back, we'll give you this amazing price."

Many adults have to pay for college out-of-pocket. They likely have already tapped into — and perhaps tapped out — their eligibility for financial aid.

Look at Morrolf: After serving in the military, she said she exhausted her GI Bill benefits in more than a year at Brown Mackie College.

None of her credits transferred. She decided to start over at IPFW. After one semester, she moved to Ivy Tech Community College in Bloomington for about a year, and then bounced to Ivy Tech in Fort Wayne.

Job searches and a family member's illness stalled her quest.

Despite receiving federal and state aid, she has already collected about $20,000 in student loan debt. She needed that, she said, so she could afford to attend full-time without working.

When she goes back to IPFW this semester, she has at least one year of a federal Pell grant to cover tuition, with some cash left over — but she doesn't know if that aid will run out before she earns her bachelor's degree.

The IPFW incentive, she said, was "perfect timing."

"It means a lot," she said. "I haven't had to take out any more student loans. That's another reason I put off school. Until this past April, I wasn't finding any employment. I didn't see any point in continuing my degree path, because social work doesn't pay much, and I already had all these student loans."

Morrolf is distinct from the 737,000 "some college, no degree" population because she obtained her associate degree, but as an adult learner she faces many of the same challenges on her way to a bachelor's.

For this semester only, IPFW extended the half-off offer to about 3,000 of its former students who were at least halfway to bachelor's degrees but had taken at least a year off. They also had to be Indiana residents who had maintained good grades.

The offer touted a potential savings of $7,800. About 100 students enrolled with the comeback program, IPFW reported.

"It's not as easy as it sounds," McClellan said. "The longer you're out of school, the more comfortable you become. You learn to build a life without a degree."

The state's Commission for Higher Education is working to create a database of former college students who never graduated. That's one in five out of all Hoosier adults.

The database will identify how many credits they have collected, and how much financial aid eligibility they have left, said Sarah Ancel, associate commissioner for policy and legislation.

In partnership with public and private colleges, the state hopes to reach out to those adults by January 2016. The goal: to graduate 200,000 of those returning students.

"That's very ambitious," Ancel said, "but that's driven by what the state needs."

It's such a critical population that state higher education chief Teresa Lubbers is hoping to pitch lawmakers to reward returning adults with a bonus if they go back and finish college.

She said she envisions a completion grant, perhaps by forgiving some of those returning students' tuition costs once they earn degrees.

"It's not something that's a quick fix," said Christine Marson, strategy officer at the Lumina Foundation, an education nonprofit. "But it's certainly doable. It's something Indiana can do if they have the resources and the will to do it."

'You've started, it's time to finish'

But Marson points out that success among returning adult learners is not as easy as just sending a letter and getting them back for one class.

It's hard to say how many college dropouts ever return to school, how many earn degrees and how long it might take them on average.

In a 2012 push to encourage students to re-enroll, Ivy Tech sent out more than 50,000 postcards, emails and letters and left more than 6,000 voicemails for former students. About 8,000 came back.

Similar efforts in other states such as Georgia and Minnesota have reached out to masses of students and enticed small but significant percentages to re-enroll, Marson said. In Georgia, the data showed the recruiting efforts resulted in exponentially larger re-enrollment rates.

Graduation rates of those, however, remained very small in two years of data in Minnesota.

"A college degree. What's it worth to you?" the marketing materials say. "Your degree may be closer than it appears. The more you learn, the more you earn. You've started, it's time to finish."

A key piece of Indiana's push toward bringing former students back to school: Catering to the various and diverse needs of adult learners.

Schools can't stop family and work conflicts from arising, but experts say they can smooth the path to a degree.

That means offering more online classes, giving credits for what students already know and creating accelerated degrees for adults to finish as quickly as possible.

"They want to see the application of, how is this going to help my career?" said David Rose, vice president of nonresidential enrollment management and marketing at Indiana Wesleyan University, which caters to nontraditional students. "It's not just education for the sake of education."

It will also require tweaks to make student services, like advisers and the bookstore, open at night or on weekends.

"The school has to be flexible in order to make these students feel comfortable," said Kathy Lee, chancellor of Ivy Tech's Central Indiana region. "When they do come back, they need to feel at home on campus. It's OK to come back, no matter what age you are. We'll accommodate that you're not 18."

At Ivy Tech, re-entry students have to take a one-credit orientation-type "101" class, on topics such as personal finance, problem-solving, calculating your GPA, tracking your financial aid and interacting with professors.

Returning students might also need help catching up academically if they've been out of school for long periods.

But just coming back, many say, shows proof of persistence. And that drive to return to college often motivates adult students to work through life challenges to finally reach their degrees.

Morrolf, the social worker going back to IPFW for her bachelor's degree, is counting on that to carry her through the rest of her college career while she continues to hold down her job.

She can schedule her clients around her classes and on weekends, writing up case notes at night. If she can get to her degree in two or three years, she said it will bump up her current salary and open up more employment opportunities.

"I'm kind of, you know, apprehensive," she said. "Just because it's going to be a lot of work, with working full-time. But I'm excited. I need to do this for myself, even if I don't want to."

Call Star reporter Stephanie Wang at (317) 444-6184. Follow her on Twitter: @stephaniewang.

By the numbers

737,000 Hoosier adults between the ages of 25 and 64 with some college, no degree

200,000 degrees that the state hopes to produce by 2020 from returning adult students

31 million students across the country have enrolled in college over the last 20 years and left without receiving a degree or certificate

Sources: Lumina Foundation, National Student Clearinghouse

Resources for returning adult students

Christine Marson, Lumina Foundation strategy officer, recommends learningcounts.com and theadultlearner.org for people interested in returning to college.