Throughout my time working with online adult learners, I've never found a sound or standard way to measure persistence for online adult learners studying part-time (taking 11 or fewer credits per semester). The approaches I have seen range from severely misguided to intentionally disingenuous.
Consider the private university that counts a student as "persisting" if they enroll in at least one online course per calendar year, regardless of how many times they stop out and step back in over the same year. This formula works if you haven't spent much time around adult learners or given much thought to what the word "persistence" actually means. At one course per year averaging three credit hours, even a student transferring in 30 credits would need roughly 30 years to complete a 120-credit-hour bachelor's degree. That's not persistence, but it does serve the university's maddening desire to report flattering numbers.
Then there's the private university that counts a student as persisting as long as they haven't formally requested to stop out. So if a part-time online student at this university remains technically "active" in the system without filing withdrawal paperwork, they are considered on track and persisting toward degree completion. No courses taken last semester or completed this semester? Still persisting, and that's utterly ridiculous. A student who is enrolled but not enrolling is not moving toward a degree. They're just... there.
These poorly constructed models reveal the serious and consequential gap in how higher education defines and measures success for non-traditional learners, particularly adult learners studying online part-time. A more meaningful persistence metric for these learners should account for credit accumulation over time, the ratio of credits attempted to credits earned, and realistic enrollment benchmarks, perhaps a minimum of six credits per year with consistent semester-over-semester activity. And it must distinguish between students who are slowly but steadily progressing and those who simply haven't filed the paperwork to leave.
There is very likely a validated and reproduceable persistence model for this population that I'm not aware of. But if it does not exist, I'd welcome a conversation with researchers, institutional leaders, accreditors, and adult learning advocates to consider how best to build one together. Adult learners deserve metrics that reflect their reality, not definitions invented by people unfamiliar or unconcerned with that reality to begin with.
No comments:
Post a Comment