UNIVERSITY CORNER: Keiser University
MAE 2009 Volume: 4 Issue: 5 (September/October)
A: Our whole focus from the beginning has been to serve adult learners, because adult learners have a totally different set of requirements and a different set of needs than students at the traditional universities and colleges that primarily focus on people [who are] 18 or 19 years old. We’ve created a model that really works for adult learners, and military students are just that. A lot of military folks as they come back and get into a traditional college feel out of place. But 80 percent of our students work 33 hours a week or more, 48 percent have spouses, 68 percent have dependents. That’s much like a veteran, who is looking for a change or looking for an enhancement of a career [using] skills that they developed in the military. We now have over 15,000 students, and 82 percent of students fit that model.
Q: So what roughly is that model? It’s a matter of what time classes start or things like that?
A: We’re very program-oriented, meaning [students attend because they] want to be a nurse, [they] want to be an accountant. We do have an interdisciplinary degree, but it’s a very small part of our institution. Most of our students know what they want when they come in, at least in the career field, and we have 48 different majors that we can serve them with. The programs are, one, focused to the career field. Two, we teach one course at a time, which is significantly different than, say, your traditional semester system. We’re on a semester system in which we teach four courses, but we teach one for four weeks, the next for four weeks, the next for four weeks, the next for four weeks.
Q: And the rationale for that is students can focus on one topic at a time?
A: Exactly. Adult learners who have family, business, who work. It’s very hard to go to your boss and say, “Oh, my God, I’ve got finals, I’ve got four courses I have to study for, may I have the week off?” It just doesn’t work in most work environments. The other thing different from our model is that the students know exactly what courses they’re taking from day one through the end of their program. They don’t have to worry if a course will be available for them 18 months from now.
Q: What roughly is the percentage of military-related students at Keiser?
A: We currently have 880 military students. We are gearing up for a significant increase because, one, folks are coming back from Iraq, and, two, the change in the benefits packages from the U.S. government.
Q: Are there special needs that military students want or need compared with other students at Keiser, or are they pretty similar?
A: They’re similar because they’re adult learners; they have the same problems with family and jobs. Because of the nature of our school and classes being very small, we demand a whole lot of interactivity with the students. The students can’t disappear on us, as they do at some large universities. I think that’s important to the military student who, again, has been out in the field for awhile, been out of education, at least in the classroom environment. Part of what we’re doing is, starting in September, we’ll have a fully discrete program for military counseling, which we’re working with a third party to do. Before a student even gets into the admissions process, they’ll go through a fairly involved but comfortable process in which to deal with their needs.
Q: There are lot of issues related to benefits and transfer of credits. Can they transfer credits, will their military training apply, and so on.
A: That’s why we’re going to put them through this. It’s not a screening; it’s an enhancement, to ask the right questions for them, because many times they don’t ask the right questions. What happens is, they get into the program and they find out they didn’t do what they should have done, [to their] disadvantage, and that creates conflict, and we’d rather not have conflict in the back. We want to get them everything we can up front.
Q: Many students have credits from a number of schools, too.
A: We have an interdisciplinary study program that creates a great deal of flexibility so that students can get their baccalaureate degree using a wide variety of sources. Where the students have taken a lot of courses and not known where they wanted to go, we’re able to pull them all together. We found a lot of people using that, especially those with a variety of experiences that don’t necessarily all fit together. We find it takes a huge amount of time to get everyone’s transcripts. You have students going to five or six different schools before they get to us. Our goal is to help finish them off. The other thing about KU is we have a strong associate program as well as baccalaureate, masters and Ph.D. programs. For someone who’s not looking for the next party, but the next degree, that’s who we’re designed for. ♦