Who Goes Back After 30 Years?
Karen started college at the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff in 1986. She was close enough to graduating to taste it, but life intervened. Marriage, a move back to Memphis, motherhood, and steady work became her focus.
Years later, in inventory roles at major companies, she kept running into the same wall that prevented her from advancing. She lacked a college degree. Some call this barrier to upward mobility, “the paper ceiling”.
“They kept bringing in people for me to train and then telling me I couldn’t have the job because I didn’t have the paper.” Twice at one employer, and earlier at another, she heard the line that stuck: “If you had your degree, we’d probably promote you.”
That last rejection lit a fuse. “I know I can do this job,” she told herself. She called her sister, Renee, together they made a plan, and Karen took the first step.
She needed her old transcripts, so requested her 3-decades old transcript from University of Arkansas.
It was terrifying.
Would anything she took way back when still count?
LeMoyne-Owen College, an HBCU in Memphis, TN, reviewed it, and said yes, the old credits count. In total, Karen estimates they accepted 88–90 credits out of the 120 credits typically required for a bachelor’s degree.
Karen was thrilled. Having those credits would save her lots of money and lots of time. Afterall, she was nearly in her 50s, and in her mind, it was now or never.
“Who goes back to school after 33 years? I did,” she proudly proclaims.
Her job may have lit the fuse, but Karen wasn’t just chasing a promotion. She was honoring a family legacy by returning to college to complete her degree.
Her parents were entrepreneurs and former sharecroppers with not much formal education. But they knew the value of it, and they had pushed all their children toward college. Karen was the only one in her family without a college degree, and this had weighed heavily on her over the years. As her own daughter, Brianna, approached college-going age, the weight seemed to get heavier.
“How was I going to tell her to go to college if I didn’t finish?”
Once Karen had made the decision that it was her time, support flowed from every direction.
Renee’s steady, “Sis, you got this”
Her parents’ check-ins
Brianna’s encouragement
“My biggest cheerleaders were Renee and Brianna. They made it easier. Not easy, but easier.”
Karen enrolled in an accelerated adult program and turned her dining room table into her study area. “I spent many hours right there writing papers, researching, doing homework. Most Friday nights I didn’t sleep to prep for Saturday class.”
In 2016, within weeks of her niece’s and daughter’s graduations, she crossed her own stage and claimed her degree with her proud parents in the audience.
Karen’s degree was a triumph for her whole family.
Career wise, the doors opened fast. First came a higher-paying role at her then employer. Then in 2019 she took a position with the school district as an inventory associate in asset management ensuring equipment is accounted for and compliant across schools. It is meticulous, meaningful work she loves.
“At this stage of my life, this is the best fit.”
Karen’s message to other adult learners is simple and strong: Go for it.
“There were many nights I said, ‘That’s it, I quit.’ But I had this little girl looking at me saying, ‘You got this, Mom.’ Life doesn’t pause for our goals. 'Life keeps on lifing,’ but we can still do hard things in the midst of life.”
Degrees can change a a lot including trajectories, families, and futures.
Just ask Karen.
Karen is one of fifty adult learners featured in Beyond the Degree: Stories of Adult Learner Comebacks and What They Teach Us. Read her complete story in her own words, and discover what these remarkable comebacks teach us, in the book from the Center for Academic Innovation.