<h1>1 would be my first thought. Cutting back hours at work + Adding Tuition & other school expenses = hardest part of the decision to go back to school.</h1>
Also I agree with KTbird on the scheduling options being important.<br>
- I would like evening or 8AM and 9AM classes - the middle of the day 2-3 days/wk makes it nearly impossible to enroll in some classes.<br>
- Also it’d be nice if I could “stack” classes; classes that are typically taken in the same semester for a particular major being scheduled back-to-back.<br>
- Or have 1 longer day of classes - if I could take 3, 3-hour classes on a Friday or Saturday, would be great.
- And flexible online options are nice as a supplement - for making up any core classes I may be missing, but wouldn’t want it for my major courses.
- Not having to compete with traditional students for spots in evening classes would be nice. I wish non-traditional students would have the option to enroll a day earlier than traditional students for the evening, weekend and 8AM/9AM classes. My first undergrad experience, when I was a full-time student, I would enroll for these classes out of my own want and not necessity; now as a working adult, I see how selfish that was and how I could be taking that spot from someone who NEEDS to be taking at class at that time of day.
As far as the other suggestions made:
2. I don’t have kids, so I can’t relate.
3. Not a large incentive for me. Classroom Theory vs Life Experience are different. As a non-traditional student I look forward to learning the theory and understand/analyze the why’s behind the things I’ve been doing every day. And as a traditional student my favorite classes were the ones with lots of non-traditional students to give some perspective involving real life experience.<br>
4. Again not a large incentive for me, I’m going to be busy. I want my schedule to be efficient and to be able to get in - do what I need to do and be ablt to get back to work.
Topolover’s - I haven’t encountered this, but the process was much nicer at the school’s that had forms that were adaptive to adult students and didn’t ask for all of my parent’s info and so forth.