The adult undergraduate experience: Critical reflections about being in college while being in life.

Adult undergraduates were asked to reflect on the effects of completing college while maintaining the other roles and responsibilities of adulthood. The degree-completion program these students attended is a contemporary example of the 150-year history in American higher education of extending a general education curriculum to mature, part-time learners. Critical learning theory is used to organize respondents' personal reflections into a model for understanding the types of developmental experiences being described. Research into cognitive and life-span psychology provides a unifying theme: Through maturation, intelligence is fostered. Conscious use of intelligence--critical thinking--can lead to insights about individual life in contemporary society. An inductive comparative analysis of sixteen hundred pages of student writings and transcribed interviews from forty-seven learners and six experienced instructors of adults, reveals that the developmental effect of going to college needs to be considered in a personal/home/work context. Cognitive attitudes are identified, ranging from a low point of arrested development to a high point of liberating transcendence. The analysis suggests that while attending and completing college as an already successful adult can be developmental, some of the individuals in this study attained a sophisticated level of cognitive attitude quite independently of a formal general education in college. Twelve observations about the effect of college on adult undergraduates and six propositions about fostering critical thinking are offered. Three conclusions are suggested: (1) Because the pace and scope of change is so intense in our daily lives, it has the power to fragment--it is both a threat and opportunity; (2) Because healthy, intelligent humans can play a significant role in constructing their daily world from the many opportunities they encounter, a critical approach to meaning making is possible and beneficial; and (3) Because educators know something about how to foster development, schools can play a significant role in transforming the perspectives of those willing to participate.Doctor of Education (EdD)EducationUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/105833/1/9226825.pdfDescription of 9226825.pdf : Restricted to UM users only