Careers and Fears : Long-time workers returning to college seeking new skills and new credentials
Atlanta Journal Constitution
May 1, 2010
At 41, you wouldn’t think Douglas Hartley would be retooling his career for the third time, but he is. Hartley, video technician-turned-information technology worker-turned college student, is only days away from getting a mechanical engineering degree he hopes will give him a stable career with good pay.
These days, he’s got plenty of company and competition, not only from students barely half his age but from other returning students who are years or even decades older.
Indeed, in the worst recession and financial crisis since the 1930s, many older workers have returned to school after losing their jobs or being battered by shock waves hitting their industries or their retirement savings.
Enrollment in Georgia’s 35 public colleges and universities has surged 16 percent in roughly three years, to more than 300,000, as people have sought to make themselves more marketable in the difficult economy.
At Georgia State University, enrollment of older students has grown more than twice as fast as the overall student population since the recession began. Since the fall term of 2008, the number of students over 50 years old has grown 13.6 percent, compared with 5.7 percent for total enrollment, according to the university.
Meanwhile, applications have jumped about 40 percent in the past 18 months at Experience Works, an Arlington, Va.-based nonprofit that provides federally funded employment retraining for low-income people over 55 years old in 30 states, including Georgia.
Such retooling, experts say, could help counter stale job skills, age discrimination and other challenges that may otherwise sideline many in the nation’s graying work force.
“It can be very successful if it’s a career in demand,” Billy Wooten, Experience Works’ co-executive director, based in Savannah, said of these so-called “encore” careers. But to compete effectively in the job market, older workers also need to brush up on their technology and interviewing skills, he said.
Many haven’t done job interviews in years. “A lot of people don’t know how to sell themselves,” Wooten said.
Older workers often are hindered by employer perceptions that they are more costly and less flexible than younger workers, he said. But such attitudes seem to be declining as the dearth of workers behind the aging baby boom generation raises the prospect of talent shortages, he said.
“Very shortly, the majority of our work force is going to be older” than 55, said Wooten. “They really can’t discriminate against themselves.”
But aging job seekers and employers alike will still face a complex tangle of conflicting forces as baby boomers born between 1946 and 1963 head toward retirement at the same time the nation recovers from its worst recession in decades.
