Sunday, September 7, 2008

Back To School

The first week of classes has come and gone. This is my second year now as a grad student at UW-Eau Claire, and the first week this year was vastly different from last year. No worries about finding the right classrooms, not many new introductions to be made, and it won't take me a month to unpack and organize everything in my apartment this year.

Something that really struck me during the week, was the number of students in my classes that had already completed at least 4 years of higher education. Several students during those "get to know you" introductions identified themselves as "2nd year seniors," and there was also a number of students who had already graduated with one BA, and were coming back for a second one. There even seems to be a greater number of grad students in the department this year (I think I was just one of a handful of first-year grad students last year).

I wonder how many of these fellow "life-long students" are coming back to school/putting off graduation due to the state of the job market, and how many are continuing their education for other reasons (intentionally or unintentionally).

The increase of student populations within the UW System is clearly a priority for the regents:

"The UW System, under its latest operating budget request, would expand by 7,000 students, including online students."

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