Back to News 
Story and photo by Rex Barber
Johnson City Press
MILLIGAN COLLEGE — College education is for more than just students fresh out of high school. In fact, more non-traditional age students are entering college now to seek advanced degrees or complete a degree from years ago, and Milligan College is seeking to encourage these students as much as possible.
The school recently hired Garland Young to fill the new position of associate vice president of graduate and professional studies. Young said it is important for adults to consider going back to college, especially in a down economy.
“Obviously, part of this job is convincing working adults to act in their own best interests,” Young said.
He said many professions now require advanced degrees for advancement and many jobs require a bachelor’s to get hired. A bad economy can get people thinking of ways to increase their value to their employer to be able to adequately provide for their future and that of their family.
“These are certainly things adults have to be thinking about in these uncertain financial times,” he said.
Young will provide administrative coordination and recruiting oversight to Milligan’s non-traditional programs, which include the master of business administration, master of education and master of science in occupational therapy graduate programs, as well as the adult degree completion programs in business administration and child and youth development.
But for many adults, significant barriers exist, both real and imagined, to enrolling in college.
Time is one barrier, because working adults typically cannot attend a 9:35 a.m. class three days a week. Distance from the campus also is an issue for many adults, as Mountain City, for example, may be too far a drive to make on a frequent basis to attend class at Milligan. And finally the expense is sometimes too great, as adults have mortgages, child care and other bills that take precedence.
Many barriers can be self-imposed, including the myth adults will be out of place in a college classroom with 18-22- year-old students. Young said this assumption is not the case. He said many barriers can also be overcome through Milligan programs.
Milligan and many other colleges offer cohorts for adults returning to college. Cohorts have many advantages, including meeting at night in accelerated courses (five to eight weeks) and the members of the program cohort will be together for the entirety of the program and become friends.
“That builds a spirit of camaraderie that facilitates student success,” Young said. “The students who have a certain amount of academic ability and most importantly the will, we can show them the way.”
At Milligan, Young said accelerated courses typically involve fewer lectures and objective multiple-choice tests. These courses do involve sizeable writing assignments, case studies and outside projects that draw upon the life experiences adult students have.
Young said traditional age students (18-23) have an edge at doing school work and can be taught about how the world works and actually begin to develop individual ethics for work and morality. However, adult students already have a personal sense of ethics and the practical knowledge that comes with years in the work force, being leaders and even parenting.
“You want to lead them to find new ways to apply those things to the life situation they find themselves in,” Young said of teaching adult non-traditional students.
Milligan offers an accelerated MBA program. This is a hybrid program of in-class and online work.
That online aspect is increasingly important for undergraduate degrees but especially for working adults because of the convenience it affords — class at any time and any place.
Part of Young’s job will be helping facilitate the expansion of technology used for teaching courses like the hybrid MBA and the school’s first online program — the computer information systems mobile program — that began last year. This CIS mobile undergraduate program relies heavily on online courses for the major portion of the degree in the final two years.
“We’re trying to extend the reach of Milligan’s mission,” Young said. “I see that as a key role of my office.”
Another way to extend reach is to broadcast classes to remote locations. This fall the MBA program at Milligan will offer a cohort in Morristown by partnering with Walters State Community College. This will utilize television broadcasts. A similar cohort option is in place with Northeast State Community College space in Mountain City, where students use videoconferencing for the accelerated early childhood development program offered by Milligan.
Young said strategic partnerships with other schools and the use of technology are required to accommodate a growing adult student population.
“We’re past the time now where online education is to be seen as of questionable academic value,” Young said, adding the school offering the online options must be reputable, as Milligan is.