Tim Lum is one in every of thousands and thousands of scholars who returned to school as an grownup, getting a two-year diploma at his area people school. And this 12 months, on the age of 36, he is one in every of 13 % of the nation’s school college students who transferred establishments in fall of 2023.
He describes the shift from a two-year school to the College of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, which has about 20,000 college students, as one in every of tradition shock.
“It appears like Disneyland, in a way — giant buildings, plenty of folks, crowds, strains,” he says. And within the classroom, particularly since a lot of his group school had been on-line throughout the pandemic, he anxious about whether or not he could be ready for the coursework: “It was feeling like I am not good sufficient — like that slight feeling of inadequacy.”
Lum arrived on campus excited to be there, and wanting to dive into class assignments, be part of scholar golf equipment and become involved. To his shock, although, many different college students seem extra disengaged.
“I’ve talked to plenty of different college students who went the standard or standard path — that got here to the college proper after highschool — and 99 % of them, I really feel like they don’t admire it, or they do not notice what number of assets can be found to them,” he says.
Analysis exhibits that he’s not alone — that always switch college students are typically extra motivated and engaged than college students who come to school straight from highschool. And that may be extra pronounced popping out of the pandemic, when professors across the nation say college students are extra more likely to skip courses or be watching TikTok or be preoccupied by different distractions throughout class.
We first talked to Lum two years in the past, again when he was in group school and adjusting to school life after years of working restaurant jobs and feeling directionless, as a part of our Second Acts podcast sequence about returning grownup school college students.
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For this week’s EdSurge Podcast, we inform the story of Lum’s adjustment to college life, and likewise hear from a professor who has studied switch college students, Benjamin Selznick, an affiliate professor within the School of Enterprise at James Madison College.
Hearken to the episode on Spotify, Apple Podcasts or on the participant under.
