Higher education looks to adult learners to boost enrollment

Inside a strip mall in east Macon, students at E.L. High School Academy find the tools for a better life, said school director Elaine Lucas.

The school is open only to students 16 and above who haven’t yet earned a high school diploma. 

The academy held its new student orientation last week, where a handful of students sat around a table in the school’s office and learned more about the program.

Ahmad Harden, educational advisor at the Mercer University Educational Opportunity Center, shared resources with students for college and career preparation, which include admissions assistance, financial literacy courses and travel reimbursement. 

The resources are offered for free to many adult students — 19 and above — as well as high school seniors.

“A lot of people say it’s to get students to go to Mercer, but honestly it’s an opportunity for them to get to any school,” Harden said.

Nontraditional learners like the ones coming out of the academy are becoming increasingly sought after to bolster university enrollment as colleges grapple with a phenomenon experts are calling the “enrollment cliff.”

According to those experts, the cliff is the gradual decline in high school graduates caused by lower birth rates after the Great Recession of 2007-09.

The number of high school graduates is expected to decrease 13% by 2041, with the dropoff beginning next year, according to the nonpartisan, nonprofit compact known as the Western Interstate Commission of Higher Education.

Stephen Schultheis, vice president for enrollment at Middle Georgia State University, said the public university is beginning to feel the effects of a shrinking pool of high school seniors, even as MGA reported a record-high enrollment of 8,409 students in fall 2024.

While schools in the northeast U.S. have been dealing with the cliff for several years, higher education institutions in the South now face greater competition and a larger number of students choosing to study out of state, he said.

Diana Faircloth, Mercer’s vice president for enrollment management, said the private university  draws from a diverse population of students, including transfer students, graduate students and professionals.

She said the university aims to enroll a yearly freshman class of 950-1,000 students.

Mercer works at “staying nimble” by offering a wide array of programs, she said.

“Mercer won’t see a large impact,” Faircloth said. “But it is something that we have to keep a pulse on, because we know that that is the reality out there with that population decline.”

E.L. High School Academy enrolls about 30 students a year, and more than 2,000 students have graduated from the program since it was founded in 2011. Tuition costs $100 a month and, instead of an entire day of classes, students take one class over a single month. 

Students learn through home study with a mentor, working through a curriculum designed by Lucas, a former longtime county commissioner who currently serves on the Macon-Bibb County Water Authority board. The program also requires students to do community service and vote. 

“Most of our students are very highly motivated because many of them were pushed out of an education,” she said. “They didn’t just leave.” 

Last year, 16% of the new undergraduate class was made up of adult learners. This year, that number has bumped up to 19%, Shultheis said.

The university uses dual-enrollment programs to attract high school students from local school districts, and it partners with companies to bring adults back to school.

“A big part of that [plan] was where can we get new pockets of students to almost make up for this possibility that we may see decreases in high school seniors coming here,” Schultheis said. 

Schultheis said MGA is the most affordable state university in Georgia, and he expects to see breakthroughs with its nontraditional enrollment this fall.

“Adults really just want to get their degree done,” Schultheis said. “Adults want speed.”