The Night Shift

(Photo illustration by Mary Kocol)

For many busy professionals trying to stay ahead, one master's degree isn't enough. And area colleges and universities are happily creating programs to cater to them

Michele Krumm caught the political bug last summer as an intern in the office of Rep. Bobby Jindal (R-La.). The 27-year-old middle school teacher from New Orleans came to Washington hoping to gain firsthand experience on Capitol Hill to use in her civics lessons.

She had been back home teaching for only two weeks when Hurricane Katrina hit. During a six-week layoff from school, Krumm realized that her desire to work on policy matters in the nation's capital was tugging at her again.

The problem was that she lacked the credentials to land the right job in Washington. She had a bachelor's degree in secondary education from the University of Alabama and a master's in education administration from the University of New Orleans. While the congressional internship provided one bright spot on her résumé, she knew she needed something more. Her answer: another master's.

She applied to the graduate school of political management at George Washington University and was accepted. She moved to Washington at the end of October, secured a full-time job as an assistant scheduler in Jindal's office and started classes part time in January.

"People think I'm crazy when they hear I'm getting my second master's degree at 27," says Krumm. "But I felt the degree was necessary to switch the direction of my life."

Krumm has plenty of company in thinking that an additional academic credential will give her an edge in a competitive job market. Adult education is thriving nationwide, with more than 92 million adults taking college classes. At the nearly 70 two- and four-year colleges in the Washington area, an estimated 175,000 adults are enrolled, 40 percent of them on a part-time basis. And increasingly, college officials say, they, like Krumm, are returning to school for a second advanced degree even as they juggle full-time jobs and families.

While such students are not specifically counted by the Education Department or individual colleges, anecdotal evidence from admissions officers and professors suggests that young professionals, in particular, are buying into the idea of lifelong learning. After all, a second advanced degree can help them stand out in an era when everyone seems to have a bachelor's degree, and more and more people have a master's.

"The life span of careers means that a credential you may acquire early on, an undergraduate degree and a first master's, may not be enough to sustain individual competitiveness over time," says Daphne Atkinson, vice president of industry relations for the Graduate Management Admission Council in McLean, who holds master's degrees in English literature and business management. "You are simply not competitive in the job market without a refresher."

THE STUDENTS AREN'T THE ONLY ONES getting something out of the deal. For the colleges, adult students represent an important profit center. Adult students fill classrooms that would otherwise sit empty at night, are taught mostly by part-time professors paid per class, and require few of the services that traditional undergraduates demand, such as financial aid, dining halls or intramural sports. Adult classes generate profit margins of at least 10 and up to 50 percent.

Those dollars typically subsidize areas of the operation that are not moneymakers, such as small undergraduate classes and certain graduate research. At GWU, where part-time graduate and professional students outnumber undergraduates by about 4,000, each school within the university has a minimum financial goal, says Donald R. Lehman, GWU's executive vice president for academic affairs. "If they exceed it, they get part of it back for their strategic plan. So, the professional programs help the entire university."

The importance of continuing education to the bottom line, as well as student demand for additional credentials, has led to a proliferation of adult programs in recent years. With a dozen locations in the region, including its home in Baltimore, Johns Hopkins University, for instance, offers 51 part-time master's degrees, nine more than it did in 1998. Joining the mix of traditional colleges are for-profit schools, such as the University of Phoenix, that cater to time-pressed adults seeking a degree.