Continuing education gets hotter as the job market cools down
By Andy Smith, Journal Staff Writer, Sunday, August 3, 2008
Providence Journal - Providence, RI, USA
Bad times usually mean a boom in continuing education.
The economic rule of thumb has it that when jobs are scarce, more people return to school to
seek marketable skills, while people who already have jobs seek a competitive advantage to keep
themselves employed. “When the economy is down and people are unemployed, they’ll go back
to school and get some retraining to make themselves more marketable …. it’s an investment in
the future,” said Louis A. D’Abrosca, dean of academic administration and continuing education at
Johnson & Wales University.
Educators contacted for this story said they are still waiting to see their enrollment numbers for
the fall, but preliminary indications show an increased interest in continuing education. At the
same time, there is some concern among administrators about how students will pay.
Joanne McQuesten, director of continuing education admissions at Johnson & Wales, said
applications for the fall are up 28 percent over the same time last year. She said Johnson &
Wales now has about 825 students enrolled each trimester in its undergraduate continuing
education programs.
D’Abrosca said Johnson & Wales is offering new certificate programs designed for adult students
who attend evening classes, including basic management, human resources management,
financial services, operations management and travel agent certification.
Annette Cerilli is director of the executive development center at Bryant University, which
provides professional and business education for adults, and has between 2,500 and 3,000
students a year. Cerilli said the center is still gearing up for its fall courses, but judging by the
number of inquiries it’s been receiving, interest is on the upswing.
“People are still interested in investing in knowledge, because knowledge is a competitive
advantage,” she said. “Many companies are still paying for employee development, which is a
way of retaining valuable people.”
Particularly popular, she said, are courses in lean production methods, which are designed to
minimize waste of time and material; business continuity, which teaches how to keep a company
operating after an emergency; business strategies for the nonprofit sector; and project
management.
Dante Del Giudice, interim director of continuing education and summer sessions at Rhode Island
College, said he doesn’t have exact figures, but judging from the number of phone calls his office
has been getting, he also believes there’s an increased interest in continuing education. The
college’s traditional strengths in continuing education are in teaching and social work, he said,
two professions in which credentialing and recredentialing are key.
But he is also hearing from people who are looking for a career change, such as the student who
graduated with a degree in English in 1985 and is now looking to get a nursing degree. “I get a
sense that people are stepping up to improve their options,” he said.
Del Giudice said continuing education students accounted for 24 percent of the 3,216 students
enrolled in Rhode Island College summer sessions. Last spring, continuing education students
made up 12 percent of the college’s 8,549 students. The percentage is higher for graduate
students at Rhode Island College — 57 percent this summer and 48 percent last spring. Del
Giudice said he believes these figures reflect efforts by working professionals to enhance their
employment status.
Continuing education is a term that refers to education beyond high school, generally for adult
learners who are beyond the traditional age of college undergraduates. It can lead to a college
degree, or a certificate in a particular occupational area, or simply improved job skills. While
continuing education courses are often geared toward employment, many are taken simply for
personal enrichment.
Julian Alssid, executive director of the Workforce Strategy Center, a nonprofit consulting
company based in New York City, said two related forces are driving interest in continuing
education. One is the current downturn in the economy. The other is the changing nature of work,
as more and more jobs require some form of post-secondary credentials.
“It’s not just a downturn in the economy; it’s the shift from an industrial economy to a knowledge
economy, and that requires a new set of skills,” he said. Alssid said there has been a lot of growth
at the community college level, which is a primary source for short-term occupational training.
Kristen Cyr, spokeswoman for the Community College of Rhode Island, said the school’s division
for lifelong learning serves 31,000 Rhode Islanders a year, with programs that range from
workplace literacy to pet-assisted therapy. Cyr said there’s a tremendous level of interest in the
health-care field, which has been identified by state economic officials as an area of job growth.
Cyr said CCRI’s pharmacy technician program, new this year, already has 100 would-be students
on its waiting list.
Another new course, she said, is called electronic technology integration, which essentially
means setting up increasingly sophisticated electronics systems for home use, which have
become so difficult that consumers often need outsiders to do it for them.
Cyr said CCRI won’t know for sure until the fall, but her best guess is that there will be an
increase in enrollment, based on the pattern of increased interest in education during tough
economic times.
Charles K. Rogers, special assistant to the president of the New England Institute of Technology,
which has about 3,200 students, said there’s been a surge of interest in information technology
courses, revolving around computer networking and software. “Anything dealing with computers
is kind of on fire,” Rogers said.
The other hot subject, he said, is health care: “A ton of people want to get into the medical field.”
Rogers said about 40 percent of New England Institute of Technology students come directly
from high school, while 60 percent are older. Enrollment has been going up, he said, and he
believes it will rise still higher once the fall semester starts.
In his experience, he said, interest in continuing education does rise as the economy worsens.
But with students facing a credit crunch, high unemployment and high gas prices, he said, paying
for that education is becoming more of a problem. “Lots of people out there need the training, but
it’s more difficult for them to get the money,” he said.
In an e-mail, RIC’s Dante Del Giudice wrote that the downtown in the economy appears to have a
negative impact on overall enrollment at RIC.
At Rhode Island College, state residents pay $716 for an undergraduate course in the summer
session; graduate students pay $932. At Johnson & Wales, tuition is $657 for classes in the
school of business. At CCRI tuition is $128 per credit hour for in-state residents. Cost for
programs at Bryant’s executive development center ranges from $499 to $3,900. Cerelli said
Bryant’s center has been seeing more students who are receiving federal grants administered
through the state’s Department of Labor and Training. Within the past four years, she said,
between 20 percent and 25 percent of the center’s students have been financed by the grants, a
figure “absolutely more than in the past.”
There are two basic financing sources for work force education available through the Department
of Labor and Training. One, the Workforce Investment Act, is designed to provide job training for
unemployed individuals, with the intent of returning them to the work force as soon as possible.
In the last fiscal year, the state received a federal allocation of $1.4 million and provided training
for 900 people. Kim Weiss, chief of labor and training operations at the Department of Labor and
Training, said she expects the number of people it serves to increase by 40 percent in the next
fiscal year. Participants in the Workforce Investment Act program can receive a maximum of
$5,500 to pay for training programs.
The state maintains a list of approved training for Workforce Investment Act clients, among them
programs at Bryant University, CCRI, the International Yacht Restoration School, Lincoln
Technical Institute, New England Institute of Technology, New England Tractor Trailer Training,
Rhode Island College, University of Rhode Island and more.
A second financing source is the Trade Adjustment Assistance Program, which was created to
help workers who have lost jobs through overseas competition or because companies move
production overseas. Last year, the state’s federal allocation for the program was about $1.3
million, with 727 participants in the program.
Alssid said one of the trends in continuing education is the increased popularity of online classes,
sometimes known as “distance learning.” At CCRI, Cyr said the number of participants in online
programs at CCRI increased from 350 last year to 520 this year. At Johnson & Wales,
McQuesten and D’Abrosca said the university offers a handful of online courses, but recently
hired a new staffer to oversee its online offerings, and they expect to see some expansion in that
area.
Alssid said a popular approach to online learning is a “blended” or “hybrid” approach, in which
students take some of their courses online and some of them in a more traditional campus
setting.
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