I heard a student offer an idea on Monday that hit me with the force of the retrospectively obvious.
Does your campus have advisors specifically for returning adult students?
It would make sense. Returning adults – say, over age 22 or so – may have very different needs than 18 year olds. For one thing, they’re much likelier to be parents themselves. Often, they have to juggle childcare, work for pay, and classes. Sometimes it’s even more complicated than that: they may have some ugly conflicts with the non-custodial parent, which can be a minefield in itself. Add abrupt changes to childcare arrangements and some nasty car repairs, and the issues the advisor needs to address become much more challenging.
