Tim Lum is certainly one of tens of millions of scholars who returned to varsity as an grownup, getting a two-year diploma at his local people faculty. And this yr, on the age of 36, he is certainly one of 13 p.c of the nation’s faculty college students who transferred establishments in fall of 2023.
He describes the shift from a two-year faculty to the College of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, which has about 20,000 college students, as certainly one of tradition shock.
“It seems like Disneyland, in a way — massive buildings, a number of folks, crowds, traces,” he says. And within the classroom, particularly since a lot of his group faculty had been on-line in the course of the pandemic, he frightened about whether or not he could be ready for the coursework: “It was feeling like I am not good sufficient — like that slight feeling of inadequacy.”
Lum arrived on campus excited to be there, and desirous to dive into class assignments, be part of pupil golf equipment and become involved. To his shock, although, many different college students seem extra disengaged.
“I’ve talked to a number of different college students who went the normal or standard path — that got here to the college proper after highschool — and 99 p.c of them, I really feel like they don’t respect it, or they do not understand what number of sources can be found to them,” he says.
Analysis reveals that he’s not alone — that always switch college students are usually extra motivated and engaged than college students who come to varsity straight from highschool. And that is likely to be extra pronounced popping out of the pandemic, when professors across the nation say college students are extra prone to skip lessons or be watching TikTok or be preoccupied by different distractions throughout class.
We first talked to Lum two years in the past, again when he was in group faculty and adjusting to varsity life after years of working restaurant jobs and feeling directionless, as a part of our Second Acts podcast collection about returning grownup faculty college students.
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For this week’s EdSurge Podcast, we inform the story of Lum’s adjustment to college life, and in addition hear from a professor who has studied switch college students, Benjamin Selznick, an affiliate professor within the School of Enterprise at James Madison College.
Hearken to the episode on Spotify, Apple Podcasts or on the participant beneath.
