This article first appeared in the St. Louis Beacon, Sept. 13, 2011 - When St. Louis Community College first applied for a grant to be part of the Plus 50program, designed to help ease baby boomers into classrooms, Heather Ellison figured it would give prospective students a leg up on becoming volunteers or engaging in new kinds of leisure activities.
Then the recession hit, and the focus changed dramatically.
"Some of the feedback we got from the community showed us that people were focused on job training," she said, "or access to either new kinds of skill training or even how to go about dealing with the newfangled employment scene. They'd been working somewhere for maybe 15 or 20 years and thought, maybe I was going to retire. Now, they needed another job."
So it wasn't bad enough that many years after they had left campus -- or in some cases, in a situation where they had never started higher education at all -- people 50 and up had to figure out college schedules, pore over course catalogs and mingle with fellow students who were the age of their children, or younger.
Now, what might have been a luxury -- being able to enjoy pastimes that had interested them before but never fit into busy work schedules -- became a necessity. And many of them had to learn the hard economic lesson that work experience may count, but not necessarily in a positive way.
Plus, they often were entering into an environment where some techniques and skills that came naturally to their younger competition may have been as challenging as starting a foreign language. Take, for example, this description of a course titled "Re-Wired Employment Seminar":
"Is retirement not your immediate plan? Whether by design or a result of the economy, you want to find employment where you can earn a living and perhaps make a difference. Re-inspired? A career coach will work with you to determine your values and goals. Re-hired? We will explore resumes and interview strategies. Re-wired? By networking, using LinkedIn, Craigslist, submitting online applications and cover letters, you will use new skills to land the next opportunity."
But landing the next opportunity is far from a sure thing for students anywhere, whether they are in the Plus 50 program or not. Take Carolyn D. Young of Pasadena Park. At age 52, with a 10-year-old son, she watched her information systems job move to India. She went back to school for training in two new fields, then took a course in a third.
So far, no new jobs have resulted. She had a few phone interviews, but nothing came of them. For someone with a long work history, the situation is worse than discouraging.
"I'm at the point now," she said, "where I'm really thinking about selling my house and relocating."
Baby Boomer Boost
The American Association of Community Colleges created its Plus 50 Initiative in 2008, with the focus on how to help members of a large generation approaching retirement age move to the next stage of their lives.
"With Americans healthier and living longer," the program noted in a report on its first-year accomplishments, "they are less interested in traditional retirement. Many of those who do not need to work for income will seek work to stay active and engaged, and others without the resources to carry them through their retirement years will work because they need to. And baby boomers often want to stay connected by giving back to their communities through volunteering."
Taking advantage of community colleges' long-time focus on non-traditional students -- those who aren't entering higher education straight from high school but instead take different paths to a college classroom -- the program was designed to help the schools build and sustain programs to help the 50-plus generation with whatever its goals may be.
Its three main program areas were workforce training and career development; learning and enrichment; and volunteering. And it paid particular attention to providing the kinds of support needed for students who may face "a variety of barriers to attending community colleges that younger adult learners in their 20s, 30s and 40s may not experience."
Older students, for example, may need larger print materials or have other physical or medical needs that their younger classmates don't have. Students who have been out of school for many years may not even be aware of the kinds of courses available, or they may simply require special nurturing to help them feel comfortable in an academic atmosphere.
Just as the students may have needed extra help in adjusting to campus, the schools in the program also worked together to share ideas and techniques. St. Louis Community College, for example, worked with Metropolitan Community College in Kansas City.
A report last year shows how the program has addressed a need and a generation that had not received a lot of attention in the past. Its data said that while community colleges had often welcomed older learners, that group had been targeted more for enrichment courses than for those that would help them maintain a standard of living during tough economic times.
With the recession, though, that emphasis shifted. Schools involved in the Plus 50 initiative offered far more workplace training courses than other schools, helping its target audience keep its skills sharp in their current jobs or develop the talents to find new positions at a time when their savings may have shrunk to the point that retirement was not an option.
Based on comments collected from their customers, the schools' efforts were helpful, at least in developing new skills.
"Coming into the class," said one, "I knew nothing. Boy, what a switch. I now can do things never thought possible."
Added another:
"The content was excellent, but I enjoy the friendships of the other participants just as much. My needs were met in every way."
Concierge Teams
That kind of success is no accident, according to Ellison at St. Louis Community College. All the schools in the Plus 50 initiative want to make sure they are responding to the special needs of a specific age group.
"We have tried to create a concierge team on each of the campuses," she said, "so there will be a live person they can go to. There should be a designated Plus 50 expert, someone people would be able to meet with at their initial point of contact.
"This is who you have to talk to for financial aid, for example. It's not like these people just graduated from high school. They won't have 50 years to pay back any student loans they might need."
The shift in focus to job training from leisure or volunteer activities has worked to the benefit of both the students and the schools, she added.
"Lots of times, we are dealing with people who may or may not have had a college education," Ellison said. "When they got out of school, they may have been in a situation where they didn't need to pursue that kind of training, so they've experienced a whole working life without additional education. There were good manufacturing jobs to be had, so there wasn't a necessity for additional training."
She said that feedback from their target audience has been an important factor in shaping the courses and programs. Sometimes, all that students need is a brief stint of training to help them get back into the workforce, like computer software instruction, so they may not be taking courses toward a degree at all.
"Most of the work we do is open enrollment," Ellison said, "so our classes pay for themselves. We can't run something just for the sake of having it."
In the end, she added, the 50-plus audience has been able to take advantage of attention and care that hasn't always been available before.
"The program addresses a need that has not previously been discussed," Ellison said. "I don't think people were ultimately prepared for the difference between the aging boomer population as opposed to previously senior populations.
"A lot of that is inherent in the makeup of that generation. They don't perceive themselves as being old, and they're not interested in things that smack of seniorness. A lot of programs address an elderly generation, but I think this is just the start of people addressing a different way of aging."
Varying Degrees of Success
How well that new approach translates into finding new jobs for baby boomers in a supertight job market is another question.
Young, the woman whose job hunt has been less than successful so far, said that while she has taken some employment training at the college's Florissant Valley campus, she didn't really get any help from Plus 50.
After working in information systems for more than 20 years, she needed retraining to find something new, what she calls "a halfway decent job."
She got certification in biomedical engineering technology, then electronic engineering. When those didn't help her land a new position, she took an energy auditing course at the college's business center downtown.
Nothing worked, she said, and after having worked all of her adult life, her new enforced idleness was a shock.
"It was a big adjustment," Young said, "but you do what you have to do. You make adjustments in your life. When you are the primary breadwinner of the family, when you have a child to take care of and you're trying to go to school, that's a lot to take on. It's managing the time and managing the stress."
She said her background in information systems made her re-entry into college life a little easier than it would have been for someone with a less academic work history. But her work future has been anything but easy to deal with.
At this point, Young added, she looks for work, then steps back from the hunt, then starts up again, seeking any advantage she can get to find the job she needs.
"I have to redo my resume in some kind of way," she said, "so they can't figure out how old I am."