Adult Education
Picture a "college student." Most likely, you will imagine someone under 25 years of age.
This reflects the belief that education is something experienced and completed during the first two or three decades of life and rarely supplemented after that.
However, many colleges and universities Each college student is eventually exposed to these competing subcultures and must determine which (if any) seems most in line with his or her feelings and interests.
The typology used by these researchers reminds us that school is a complex social organization-almost like a community with different neighborhoods.
Of course, these four subculture's are not the only ones evident on college campuses in the United States.
For example, one might find subcultures of Vietnam veterans or former full-time homemakers at community colleges and four-year commuter institutions.
Sociologist Joe Feagin has studied a distinctive collegiate subculture: Black students at predominantly White universities.
These have witnessed a dramatic increase in the number of older students pursuing two-year, four-year, and graduate degrees.
These older students are more likely to be female-and are more likely to be Black or Hispanic than is the typical 19- or 20-year-old college student.
Viewed from a con-flier perspective, it is not surprising that women and minorities are overrepresented among older students; members of these groups are the most likely to miss out on higher education the first time around.