Applying the Gray Matter

A boom in adult courses proves you are never too old to learn

Twice a year they descend, a 10,000-strong army of the night, on New York University's Shimkin Hall. There they wait patiently in line to register, at $55 to $117 a ten-to twelve-week session, for more than 800 courses ranging from Arabic to Zen. The electronically minded can choose from among 75 courses that explicate computer wizardry; language devotees can immerse themselves in Gaelic, Serbo-Croatian or Swahili. There are more than 80 courses in the down-to-earth business of real estate. And a beguiling "Broadway Matinee" course offers tickets to four shows and includes directors, producers and critics among its lecturers.

It is all part of the School of Continuing Education at N.Y.U., a leader in the field of adult education since the days when Samuel Morse captivated audiences with the mysterious daguerreotype. Such night schools have been around for years, most of them down-at-heel third cousins of the regular undergraduate programs. But suddenly, thanks to a predicted decrease in the number of 18-to 22-year-olds and growing financial deficits, colleges have realized that extension programs are lucrative and are madly recruiting the older, more serious--and often more affluent--student. Weekend colleges are blossoming. Night schools boast better faculty. Liberal arts colleges, where adults were once treated as gray-haired pariahs, are encouraging older people to participate with regular undergraduates in daytime classes.

In sheer numbers alone, the trend is extraordinary. At the University of Colorado, attendance at continuing-education-department courses has jumped from about 29,000 in 1971 to 41,000 in 1975. California's community college network, which is tuition-free for in-state residents, catered to a staggering 1,265,000 adults last year--one out of every eight adults in the state--a 50% increase over just five years ago. Nationwide last year, 5.5 million adults over age 25--about 50% of total college enrollment--took courses for credit.

Most adult scholars are interested in furthering their careers. Says Hubert Gibbs, dean of Boston University's adult Metropolitan College: "Our students are essentially upwardly mobile people who are looking for better jobs." Many women, either divorcees forced to support themselves or older women whose children are grown, return to school. Elizabeth Mayer, 63, wife of the president of Tufts University and mother of five children, finally earned her B.A. last year in Harvard's extension program, after dropping out of Vassar in the '30s. At first, she recalls, "it was horrible. Everyone was very young, very bright and very articulate." But she stuck it out, and is now contemplating a career in teaching or day care. Florence Pfeiffer, 60, a prospective religious counselor, has just finished her first year of full-time study at Chicago's Mundelein College. "I don't say I found it easy," says Pfeiffer; along with 350 other adults, she has been studying in the same classes as 18-year-olds. "But the younger students talked to me like they talk to each other," she adds happily.

Nor is adult education limited to the classroom, as one new guide to the field points out. The Lifelong Learner, by Ronald Gross, an adjunct associate professor at N.Y.U., chronicles a wealth of public library programs and television courses. And there is always, he adds, the old-fashioned correspondence course. One newfangled participant: Patty Hearst, who while appealing her bank robbery conviction is whiling away the hours with home-study courses.

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