Parents Returning to College
From Stay-at-Home to Back in the Classroom
Andrea Van Winkle didn’t have time to think about going back to school.
She meant to, but she was busy having babies, changing diapers, potty training, pushing swings and getting dinner on the table.
But it was when her husband, a first-class petty officer in the Navy, signed up for classes that she took notice.
“It made me incredibly jealous,” said the New Orleans mother of two. “Next thing I knew, I was about to start classes. And I’ve been grateful for it ever since.”
Van Winkle is in her second year of classes at Kaplan University’s undergraduate School of Business, where she’s pursuing a bachelor’s degree in business administration with an accounting emphasis. As a parent who is looking at secondary education as a way to improve her life, she’s a typical student at many colleges, particularly online universities.
Stay-at-home parents find that if they’re ever going to be able to juggle school with other demands, it’s now.
“There are a lot of women in my classes who juggle home, work, and school and I admire them,” Van Winkle said, in an email interview Aug. 3.
Stay-at-home parents who are attending college classes say they’ve developed strategies for balancing child raising and college, fitting in studying and schoolwork with their children at home.
“ My schedule is crazy,” says Buffie White, a New Jersey mother of a 2-year-old son, who is pursuing a degree in information technology. She gets up at 5 a.m. and does three hours of research and homework before waking her son. Most nights she hits the books again at about 10 p.m. when her son and husband are in bed for the night. “I work until about 12 or 1 a.m. and then get back up the next day and do it all again,” she said.
But parent-students say the work is well worth it. They feel more focused and goal oriented than their younger classmates and the sacrifices are worth it.
White plans to be a Web designer and work from home, so she can continue to be at home for her family.
“Being able to provide a better life for my son is very important to me, but so is being there for him,” she said.
Concord Law School, an online juris doctor degree program, currently has more than 1,800 enrolled students, some who are “mothers and fathers who are studying law while their children are doing their homework,” a Concord spokesman said in an email interview Aug. 18.
Older students there say the benefit of returning to school are
- Keeping themselves intellectually stimulated
- Earning a degree while out of the workforce helps the transition back to employment when the children are grown and it's time to return to work
- Serving as a good role model for their children
