Metropolitan College in New Orleans Closes Its Doors

UNO cutting its night school
by John Pope, The Times-Picayune
Saturday August 01, 2009, 9:20 PM

The image is part of the American dream: the shift worker who puts in a full day on the job and then heads to night classes to earn a college degree and build a better life.

To accommodate these students -- people who are older than the typical collegians and have jobs, mortgages and families -- colleges not only offer evening classes but also have set up departments to make things easier for them.

Among four-year colleges, major departments offering night classes have existed at Tulane and Loyola universities and the University of New Orleans.

But last month, in implementing steep budget cuts, the University of New Orleans announced the closing of Metropolitan College, which has housed these classes and UNO's international programs.

Formed in 1980, Metropolitan College had enrolled 952 students just before Hurricane Katrina hit in August 2005. Enrollment was 643 in the spring of 2006, according to UNO figures, and 703 last fall. Its budget for the 2008-09 academic year was $4.7 million.

Chancellor Tim Ryan insists that act was a matter of administrative streamlining to save money by eliminating duplication. Besides, he said, the courses still exist, but the administrative aspects have been transferred to academic departments, with, for instance, the history department handling courses for traditional and nontraditional students.

But others in the field of continuing education worry that such a move, similar to changes made to Loyola University's City College as part of post-Hurricane Katrina restructuring, eliminates the support structure that these students need.

Because these students can face difficulties such as caring for sick children, dealing with job-related stress and stretching a paycheck -- difficulties that don't confront most traditional college students -- they need a school structure that understands their situation and caters to their needs, said Richard Marksbury, dean of Tulane's School of Continuing Studies.

"They're going to school to better themselves, so you have to learn to work with them, " he said. "One shoe size doesn't fit all."

Different priorities

Rick Osborn agrees. He is the president of the Association for Continuing Higher Education, a national organization.

"What tends to happen is that institutions tend to think they can decentralize and let various academic departments deal with nontraditional students, " said Osborn, who will become East Tennessee State University's dean of continuing studies this month.

"Those students get neglected, " he said, "because faculty and departments are focused on 18-year-olds."

This is an attitude Harriet Royce, 44, has confronted frequently. A receptionist at a downtown law firm, she is working on an undergraduate degree at UNO and studying to become a paralegal.

"Professors who teach day students and get stuck with a night class sometimes say, 'You better get your priorities straight, ' " she said.

"I don't know what to say, " Royce said. "My priorities are straight, but I have to pay my bills. Their lives are on the campus. They don't realize what it's like to juggle classes and a job and get a paper done. Sometimes, it's very disheartening to hear that."

Royce had been able to take classes at Metropolitan College's downtown office, but next semester she will have to hurry after work to attend classes at the Lakefront campus or UNO's Jefferson Parish site.

'Lost in the shuffle'

She also will lose access to the staff members in the downtown office who kept longer hours to accommodate nontraditional students who needed the computer or might arrive late because their bosses wanted to talk to them after their shifts ended.

Because those people spent their careers working with nontraditional students, they "understood that your situation was different from that of a 24-year-old student who was working at Starbucks, " she said.

They are vital in these programs, Marksbury said, because they can help nontraditional students adjust to college life -- no small chore, he said, because many of these students are the first in their families to go to college.

Without such easily accessible, empathetic personnel, "I'm afraid they're going to lose a lot of the older students, " Royce said of UNO. "A lot of people like me are lost in the shuffle."
Ryan doesn't think the situation will be so dire.

While acknowledging that nontraditional students have "special needs, " he said, "we have those same kinds of students on our regular campus -- adult students coming at night. We're used to dealing with that."

To try to accommodate them, Ryan said counselors accustomed to dealing with these students and their situations will be at all of UNO's sites in the New Orleans area.

"We're trying to accommodate them better, " he said, "and we think bringing them into the mainstream will do that."

One-stop shop

This system can work, as long as there is a center that is tailored to deal with nontraditional students, said Melissa Landry, admissions counselor for Loyola's Evening Division.

The Evening Division had been the name given to this part of Loyola before 1970, when City College was created. After the post-storm restructuring, colleges took over academic responsibilities, and the Evening Division became what Landry called "a one-stop shop" for nontraditional students that also offers four degree programs.

"It's an art form over here to do as much as we can when the student is on campus, allowing them to handle parking and tuition and financial aid all in one place, " she said. "We have tried to get with various offices on campus to try to streamline things to get students extended hours so when they get off at 5 o'clock, they don't have to worry about an office's shutting its doors."

Even though City College doesn't exist anymore under that name, "we never stopped serving those students, " Landry said.
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