While there undoubtedly still are people like my mother today who pursue education for its own sake and live the ideal of education being a life-long process, most people who take courses now are very focused on learning or upgrading skills that will enable them to compete in a rapidly changing job marketplace.

“We see an increasing number of people who want training to upgrade their skills for second and third careers,” says Sherry Rosenberg, director of Computer Learning Network. “Our students range in age from 18 to 60. What’s interesting is that in the past two years the average age of our students has gone up from 25 to 31.” Rosenberg says the need for displaced workers to embark on a new career or for people to upgrade their skills in an attempt to retain their jobs helps account for the increase in the average age.

The story was much the same at many of the schools MODE contacted to learn what was available in our area. For the schools that are not degree-granting colleges, the emphasis is on programs that prepare people for “hot jobs.” And even for colleges, the tendency appears to be away from the traditional liberal arts education and toward something that is more career-oriented.

An area school that is in the midst of the transition from private career school to college is Central Penn College in Enola. According to the college’s marketing director Jim Rineer, Central Penn offers 20 career programs focused in health care, business, and legal studies, with the most popular programs today being accounting, Internet multi/media production, court reporting, optometric assistant, and medical and legal assistant.

“We get a high percentage of recent high school graduates who attend full-time,” Rineer says. “But we also see a number of older students who decide they need more education to be able to pursue their career goals.”

For students who want to pursue additional studies to receive a bachelor’s degree, Central Penn has agreements with a number of colleges and universities so that students can transfer to those residential programs and complete the balance of their work.

Although still called Computer Learning Network, Rosenberg says her school has broadened its offerings considerably in the last several years and now has business, medical, and computer programs. Perhaps still being true to its roots, the school “tries to be sure that all our programs are technologically up-to-date,” Rosenberg says. “For instance, the medical programs include work on practice management software that is actually used in physicians’ offices. So students learn how to use the appropriate software in addition to learning clinical skills.”

To help its students succeed in a competitive marketplace, Computer Learning Network has certifications available for almost all its programs so potential employers will know the students have met prescribed standards. Rosenberg says the relevance of the courses they offer is shown in the high percentage placement rate for their graduates.

To ensure that the school’s courses remain relevant, Computer Learning Network, like other schools, does continuing market research, including keeping in touch with local employers to see what their needs are. They have an advisory committee for each of their programs and at least 60 percent of the committee members represent employers. School officials bounce ideas for new courses and other program enhancements off the advisory committee members since “they are people in the community who are aware of what’s going on.”

Computer Learning Network finds that its older students — the age ranges from 18 to 60 — make excellence students because they generally already have a good work ethic, understand the importance of what they are doing to upgrade their skills or get new training, and take their work seriously. As a result, Rosenberg says, they have a very high success rate in jobs that pay well.

Although Computer Learning Network does not yet have an Internet-based distance education program, its development is “beyond the planning stages.”

Academy keeps its finger on the pulse of employer needs by being active members of many local business organizations, such as the Capital Region Chamber of Commerce, and also state and national groups. The school also regularly surveys its students who are interns in various companies and organizations to profit from their real-life experience.

The Academy spokesman says more and more businesses are demanding the kind of specialized training Academy offers. “The days of getting a good job with a four-year liberal arts degree are over,” he declares. “Industry is asking for more specialized training of people. It used to be that with a liberal arts degree you could get a pretty good job in middle management but now companies want people to be specially trained for management positions.” Focusing on the role of schools like his, he says that according to U.S. Department of Labor projections, by 2005 80 percent of all jobs in the U.S. will require no more than two years of post-high school education.

The Academy is moving slowly in considering how and if to integrate distance education into its offerings. Starr says they recognize the trend in that direction but are not sure how much of an impact it will have on them. “Students would miss the one-on-one instructions,” he suggests. “We purposely keep our classes small, with no more than 12 to 15 people in a section. We offer individual tutoring and encourage a lot of interaction with our instructors. It helps, too, that nearly all of our instructors are professionals who have worked in the field they are teaching.”

New program offerings now being worked on for Thompson’s fall term include some short-term business courses as well as graphic arts.

When asked about trends she sees, Girondi points to health care as a major area for continued growth in employment opportunities. “Our country’s aging population is becoming its largest segment,” she explains, “and they have increased need for health care services.” She particularly sees medical coding and billing as a growth area because of the shift to managed care, and points out it is a business that can be pursued at home as a cottage industry.

Another growth field Girondi sees is computers, especially for people who are technically competent and able to handle minor diagnostics and repairs, as well as install software. “Companies like to have someone on board who can use applications software but can also troubleshoot at a basic level.”

“We have very sophisticated students,” Girondi says. “They are from the MTV generation. And they are living in an era when we readily seek second and third opinions about health care decisions facing us. So they’re not afraid to question and to hold us accountable. The students are our customers. Many of them have been out of school for a while and didn’t like it when they were there. They come to us with some fear or apprehension and part of our job is to help them build some life management skills, helping them focus on their strengths rather than their weaknesses.”

She says that while there are some basic rules that must be followed, Thompson tries to “conduct our campus as an adult environment. Adult learners have some unique characteristics that differentiate them from young children and we need to remember and respect that.”

For people interested in taking some very targeted, career-enhancing classes, Harrisburg Area Community College offers a variety of programs through its Center for Organizational and Business Training and its Public Safety Center. The Public Safety Center focuses on training for firefighters, police officers, and emergency medical technicians, as well as offering CDL licensing for truck drivers. The Center for Organizational and Business Training carries a number of programs into company settings for on-site training as well as presenting public training on the HACC campus.

There are a number of computer-related courses offered as well as professional development courses in management, inter-personal relationships, and leadership, negotiating skills, and business writing.

Center for Organizational and Business Training director David Root says the programs can run from three hours to 40 hours.

While saying that some of the center’s market research has been “hit or miss” in terms of developing programs businesses want, Root says they learn a lot from the side of the center that offers on-site training for businesses. What companies want their employees to learn often is very relevant to other businesses’ needs, he says.

As far as new course offerings are concerned, HACC expects to present more and more CEU (continuing education unit) courses for professionals such as accountants whose licensure requires that they take so many credit hours of continuing education a year to remain in good standing.

Although Penn State’s Capital College might be considered a more traditional degree-granting institution, Continuing Education director Barbara Denison says they actually serve the broadest age range since they run a Kid’s College for toddlers and see adults of all ages. That age spread is reflective of Denison’s personal commitment to education and belief that people should be actively learning their entire lives.

“We have something for every audience you can think of,” she laughs when asked to describe her students. She runs down just some of the programs: courses registered nurses can use to get a bachelor’s degree, professional development courses for teachers, certification for school principals, a program to help teachers learn how to teach writing and integrate it into their classroom work, a Webmaster certification program in association with SETCO, retraining for displaced workers, review courses for professional engineers, food safety courses in association with the Cooperative Extension Office, and programs in forestry resources.

Spreading out into new programs comes as a result of traditional market research as well as following the research interests of the Capital College faculty. And Penn State gains market knowledge from the requests of companies and other organizations that come to them for contract training for their employees.

Another significant area of interest is secondary education certification and a Master of Education program because Penn State Harrisburg is the only other campus in addition to University Park to offer those programs.

Denison says she sees workforce development as a major trend in the future. “Penn State is committed to Governor Ridge’s workforce development vision for Pennsylvania and that’s going to mean changes in the traditional college education.”
She says the emphasis will be increasingly on narrow technical skills rather than the overall picture of being a good worker. As a result, she sees more certificate programs that require a shorter time commitment from the students who take them.