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Encore Colleges

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Encore Colleges

A huge demographic shift is creating an historic opportunity for colleges to become “encore colleges,” helping baby boomers manage transitions to their encore careers and meeting pressing workforce needs in areas of high social need.

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Innovative Initiatives

Community Colleges Aid Encore Transitions

Posted 06/30/2009 - 10:18am

Civic Ventures and MetLife Foundation have awarded $25,000 grants to community colleges in eight states that are creating programs to retrain experienced adults as solar panel installers, bilingual community health workers, math and science teachers and other positions identified as local workforce needs.

The Community College Encore Career Initiative supports community colleges that are helping individuals over age 50 prepare for encore careers that combine continued income with personal meaning and social impact.

>>See a map of encore colleges offering programs for older students.

>>Read about the 10 Encore community colleges selected in 2007.

by: Terry Nagel | Read more >>

Community Colleges Prepare Boomers for Their Encores

Posted 07/13/2009 - 4:45pm

As a corporate manager, Wylie Schweider started a used car superstore; now he teaches math in Richmond, Va. Jan Albert stopped selling real estate in Southern California and started her own caregiver business. Both made their leaps after taking courses for midlife career switchers at their local community colleges.

Now, new community college programs designed to assist those making encore career transitions are helping Americans in midlife retrain for jobs likely to remain in demand through the economic downturn. The offerings prepare older adults for encore careers as health navigators, math and science teachers, green-energy trainers and other jobs that combine social impact with continued income.

>>See a map showing where these community colleges are located.

by: Terry Nagel | Read more >>

What's New

Boomers Burn the Midnight Oil at Community College Training Programs

Posted 10/29/2009 - 4:47pm

A less-inspired student might have given up, but Winston Chin, 57, wants to be a surgical nurse so badly that he hurries directly from his eight-hour shift as a lab technician to a writing class at Bunker Hill Community College in a Boston suburb.

Here’s the kicker: The class runs from 11:45 p.m. to 2:30 a.m. Chin is one of many older students who are attending courses in the dead of night and the very early hours of the morning because the nation’s community colleges are experiencing enrollment booms, according to Abby Goodnough in The New York Times.

You can learn about community college encore career programs here and here.

by: Terry Nagel | Read more >>

Obama Taps Community Colleges for Bigger Job-Training Role

Posted 07/15/2009 - 11:33pm

Community colleges are being thrust to the front lines of a large-scale overhaul of the American workforce, the success of which is urgent, crucial and still in doubt.

As part of their efforts to re-skill workers of all ages for jobs that are expected to be in high demand as the economy recovers, the local colleges are increasingly retraining aging baby boomers choosing encore careers that give back of their talent and experience.

That makes the more than 1,000 community colleges around the country connectors not only of younger and older and community and business, but of human abilities to the work that needs to be done.

>>Read about new community college encore career programs here and here.

by: David Bank | Read more >>

Tuition waivers for Encore Careers retraining

Posted 01/12/2009 - 1:47pm

The Community College of Allegheny County and two other colleges in the Pittsburgh area have announced they will offer tuition waivers for displaced workers. The tuition waivers apply to five high demand areas, three of them in healthcare fields: emergency medical technicians,certified nurse-aide training, and phlebotomy.

by: Judy Goggin | Read more >>

Harvard's Encore 'Advanced Leadership Initiative'

Posted 12/15/2008 - 8:31am

Steve Lohr of The New York Times reports:

Harvard kicked off a small but ambitious experiment this week that it hopes will become a new “third stage” of university education. For the student-fellows in the program, most in their 50s and early 60s, the goal is a second-act career in a new stage of life.

by: David Bank | Read more >>

Encore College Resources

AACC Plus 50 Initiative

Posted 01/26/2009 - 3:30pm

The American Association of Community Colleges’ (AACC) Plus 50 Initiative is a 3.5 year effort to identify a pilot group of two-year institutions that will create or expand campus programs to engage the 50+ population in learning; training/re-training programs; and/or volunteer, civic, service activities.

| Read more >>

American Council on Education

Posted 03/01/2009 - 9:38am

Reinvesting in the Third Age: Older Adults and Higher Education is a two-year research project, funded by the MetLife Foundation, to examine how colleges and universities can more effectively address the factors that drive older adults to postsecondary education to broaden their participation and work with other sectors to meet older adults’ educational needs. More information from the American Council on Education.

by: David Bank | Read more >>

Additional Community College Resources

Posted 03/03/2009 - 11:39am

Articles and publications detailing the emerging role of community colleges in helping boomers transition to encore careers. http://www.civicventures.org/communitycolleges/resources.cfm.

by: Judy Goggin | Read more >>

People

Mary Beth Lakin

Mary Beth Lakin is the associate director for special projects in the American Council on Education's Center for Lifelong Learning and is currently the project director for a two-year study, Reinvesting in the Third Age: Older Adults and Higher Education, funded by MetLife Foundation. She has more than 20 years of experience serving adult learners on college and university campuses—as an instructor, academic advisor, and administrator of prior learning assessment programs.
Read Mary Beth's full profile

Discussion

Encore Colleges

The online community of innovative "Encore Colleges" that are pioneering new ways to prepare baby boomers for second (or third!) careers in education, health care and the nonprofit sector. This is an opportunity to share your successes and challenges and learn from colleagues who are also pioneering new ways for adults 50+ to transition to their encore careers — work that matters in the second half of life.

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