RETURNING WOMEN STUDENTS IN THE COMMUNITY COLLEGE: A FEMINIST PERSPECTIVE (RE-ENTRY WOMEN)

Three ninety-minute in-depth phenomenological interviews were held with each of eighteen returning women students in nine community colleges in four states. The central problem of the study was to identify the constitutive factors in the experience of these returning women students, to explore their educational experience as they viewed it, and to discover what it meant to them. Through a qualitative analysis of the interview material, the study attempts to understand, describe, and explain, from a feminist perspective, the educational experience of women from twenty-five to seventy years of age who have returned to traditional schooling after an absence of four to fifty years and who have chosen a community college as their first point of re-entry. The study examines those factors which appear to lead to growth and change for individual women and to a sense of equity and power in their lives. Forces that limit growth are also identified. Significant themes in the experience of the participants are such issues as: how older women students are advised and taught in the community college; what it is like to study, keep a job, and care for children simultaneously; and how race, class, age, and gender intersect in the two-year educational setting. Implications are drawn and recommendations for action on the part of community college administrators, faculty, staff, and students are made