Community colleges can stand out by lighting the way to career goals for their mature students.
Students return to school as adults for a range of reasons. Some want to explore. Some already have firm career aspirations in mind, and know they need additional education to get there. Plenty are motivated to pursue better pay, hours, or working conditions, and feel that education is a critical first step. During times of economic upheaval—such as the recent bout of inflation, a change in career can also be a bid to secure a higher salary or shift to a more stable career field.
Whether they already have a specific career in mind or not, prospective community college students are increasingly career driven. As higher education costs balloon, investment in a degree is no longer the sure bet that it used to be, and this generation of pragmatic students want to know what kind of return they can expect. This goes double for mature students, who are likely already working full time, may be supporting a family, and have all the responsibilities of adulthood to juggle. If they’re going to sacrifice precious funds and free time, they’d like to be sure it’ll pay off.
Community colleges have a great deal to offer mature students, and connecting with this key market is no longer optional as nontraditional students, by some measures, outnumber traditional ones. Institutions can distinguish themselves and attract mature students by demonstrating that they can provide a reliable, achievable path to the kind of career these students want—one that accounts for mature students’ unique needs and priorities. Here’s how.
Highlight your strongest pathways to career success.
Many mature students arrive to community college with a goal in mind: a change of career, or a specific certification to pursue. Others, however, are responding more to external pressures. They may have lost their job, or need a more stable source of income. They may have expenses that necessitate a higher salary, or responsibilities that demand more flexibility in their working hours. These students don’t necessarily have a specific career in mind—they just know they need opportunities, and they believe that education can provide them.
As a community college, your institution is in the business of connecting students with career opportunities. You have what these students are looking for, but you need to let them know what’s possible. With so many conflicting responsibilities on their plates, mature students want an efficient path to their career goals. Connect with these students by emphasizing your institution’s established routes to career success.
Those routes may include guided pathways programs, partnerships with local employers, transfer programs to four-year institutions, and apprenticeship or internship programs—wherever your institution has smoothed the way for career opportunities. This gives mature students a clear picture of their available choices, and builds confidence that your institution can get them where they want to go.
Also key is ensuring that training programs don’t overemphasize youth as a proxy for inexperience. Mature students already face anxiety about integrating with younger classmates, and may conclude that they’re ineligible for on-the-job learning if marketing materials focus too closely on the traditional college-graduate timeline.
Address mature students’ unique needs.
Mature students are frequently working adults, with all the responsibilities that role entails. Community colleges can win them over by acknowledging these hurdles and providing students with the resources they need to manage them. In many cases, that can mean helping to arrange childcare, food, technology, and other essentials—but career readiness resources are also key.
While mature students may have already been in the workforce for years, changing fields—or even changing roles within their field—can be a challenge to navigate. Guidance on resumes, interview practice, and other career counseling will be invaluable for students managing such a significant transition. Marketing these services tells mature students that your institution is committed to their career success.
Give students the information they need to make decisions about their futures.
As mature students evaluate their potential courses of study, they’ll face competing priorities. The more you can prepare them for what to expect on a given career path, the more confident they’ll be in choosing the one that’s right for them. Wherever possible, community colleges should lay out the requirements and expectations facing students on the road to a given career: certifications, courses, timelines, and as many other checkboxes as can be identified. This way, mature students can determine whether a given path accommodates the responsibilities they already have.
In addition to telling students what they can expect on the way to a career, institutions should provide them with a realistic idea of what they can expect to get out of it. Collect relevant, current information on job markets, including data like pay ranges, expected benefits, and turnover rates, and make it available to your mature students. With it, they can decide whether a career path meets their standards and gets them closer to the goals which brought them back to school in the first place.
Emphasize the achievability of mature students’ career goals.
Attracting prospective students with promising career plans is only half the equation. To get them to stay, you need to convince them that you can get them across the finish line. As mentioned above, mature students face hurdles that their younger classmates frequently don’t. If community colleges can demonstrate that it’s possible to fit the demands of coursework around their existing responsibilities, mature students will be more likely to take the leap.
To that end, institutions can highlight flexible options like online and on-demand learning, and alternative start dates and schedules for courses. Financial aid is also critical in encouraging mature students to enroll, particularly when community colleges can help them balance the logistics of paying for school with preexisting student loans, retirement planning, or other financial priorities. Testimonials from your students who have achieved success as adult learners are a concise and compelling way to illustrate that while it may be challenging, it’s possible.
As mature students begin to prepare for a career, networking and building industry relationships will also be a priority for them. Community colleges often host career fairs, onsite events, and meet-and-greets to facilitate student networking, but these kinds of events can be prohibitively time-consuming or logistically impossible for mature students. Emphasizing the other avenues you can offer students to connect with professionals in their chosen fields makes the association even clearer between your institution and career success.
The path to success may look different for mature students—but community colleges can show them that it exists.
Mature students are often just as career oriented as their younger counterparts—and may even be more market savvy, bringing with them a mindset informed by years of working experience and a checklist of goals they expect to achieve with their educational investment. By highlighting the unique ways that community colleges can support mature students’ career ambitions, these institutions can drive enrollment and serve a growing segment of prospective students.
Support your career marketing efforts with information-rich, engaging content from Aperture Content Marketing’s extensive library. Our multichannel platform gives community colleges the tools they need to reach mature students where they are with digital assets, social media, and print magazines. Contact Aperture today to learn more.