Glender Anderson is thinking about getting a degree in social work.
Or maybe religious studies, instead.
At one point she considered engineering, but that interest has shifted.
When Anderson does return to the classroom full-time, following retirement from her job with United Auto Workers, one thing is certain — even if her major isn't.
She wants to earn a bachelor's degree.
"I get started and don't finish," said Anderson, 54, who works as a work/family representative with the UAW Local 652 chapter in Lansing. "If I decide I'm going to do something else, I wanted to have some more knowledge of the field I was in."
Anderson's interest in going back to school full-time was sparked after completing a two-year program in modern labor concepts at MSU. With higher education tuition assistance offered by the UAW — $4,500 a year for active employees — Anderson enrolled at MSU as a lifelong education student.
Declaring lifelong education status allows students to take classes in a field of interest, often to decide whether to pursue a degree, said Sandra Buike Phillips, MSU's summer study and lifelong education student affairs coordinator.
Lifelong education students can't earn a degree while enrolled under this status, but the credits they earn in their courses can be transferred into a degree program. These students enroll for a variety of reasons, such as gaining access to MSU courses they otherwise might not have been able to take or
setting their own academic pace in pursuit of a bachelor's or master's degree.
"For a lot of working adults, they look at (if they can) handle coming back to school," Buike Phillips said. "For some life-altering reason, they had to drop out of school, and they never lose the desire to get that degree.
"It's that thing left undone."
How it works
At its core, lifelong education is simply an enrollment status — a way for people to gain access to university courses without the requirements of attending full-time.
But to the students, it's more than just a status. It's an opportunity.
"It allows you to pursue your education, and you don't have a certain time to do it," Anderson said. "This way, you can have your life and do what you want to do, and pursue your degree at a slower pace."
She says, emphatically so, that without the option of enrolling as a lifelong education student, she wouldn't be able to even consider earning an undergraduate degree.
Only 16 credits earned as a lifelong education student can be transferred to an undergraduate degree, compared with 10 credits at the graduate level.
Anderson thinks she'll have her bachelor's degree in five years, if not sooner.
She doesn't regret not getting it when she was younger, but her life just followed a different path.
After graduating high school in 1969, Anderson attended Indiana University. But a year after starting college, she got married. By 1971, Anderson had given birth to her first child.
She tried returning to school in 1984 after being laid off from her job as an electrician at U.S. Steel in Gary, Ind. But it didn't last. Anderson moved to Lansing in 1986 and planned to pursue an engineering degree at Lansing Community College, which also didn't pan out.
She has tried so many different things, she said, because "the Lord gives us a lot of different talents."
Spirituality plays a large part in Anderson's life. A Bible lies open on a coffee table in her living room. She is active in her church. Now, Anderson said, she will let her faith guide her decision of returning to school.
"I want to go to Michigan State, but it just really depends," she said. "I don't know what the Lord has in store for me."
'Winning the lotto'
Jeff Triezenberg spends his days working in downtown Lansing as a bridge designer for Alfred Benesch & Co., a civil engineering consultant firm.
He spends his evenings doing homework.
Triezenberg, a 2003 Calvin College graduate, is considering a master's degree. He will gain more understanding of his field but might have to leave his full-time job to become a full-time student.
He's not sure if he'll go through with it.
So he's taking a few classes as an MSU lifelong education student to find out. And he's learning that, even only a few years removed from college, it's harder than he thought to jump back in.
"When I finished my undergrad, everyone was like, 'If you're going to do a master's, do it right away because you'll forget,'" Triezenberg said. "You forget things you haven't used in three years.
"It's reminded me what it's like to be a student and what it's like to learn, because it's a different mentality than when you're at work."
Triezenberg first learned of the lifelong education program through a co-worker. Since then, he has taken two 800-level civil engineering classes. His company is paying for his current class, CE 806 — advanced structural concrete design.
Although he's still unsure of whether or not he will pursue a second degree, Triezenberg said there is no denying how lifelong education helps in weighing his options.
"It helps you to decide whether it is worth the time and money you would put into a master's degree — kind of like a dry run," he said. "I thought this would help me understand what it would be like if I went back to school. I figured it'd just be a good thing to do."
For Candice Morrison, returning to school had been a constant, if elusive, goal.
All her life, she had dreams of being an accountant and of attending a university like MSU. But after a year at Lansing Community College, Morrison, of Holt, couldn't afford to continue.
But years later and with tuition assistance from the UAW and General Motors Corp., where she works the second shift doing final assembly at GM's Lansing Grand River plant, Morrison, 33, began taking a labor class as a lifelong education student to gain certification.
She didn't stop there.
"I don't think it's ever too late to go back to school," Morrison said. "I have no complaints about (my job) one bit. But I don't think you can work final assembly your whole life."
Morrison now is approaching her second year of pursuing an accounting degree at MSU — still as a lifelong education student because she's not attending full-time, but she intends to transfer to a full degree program in the near future.
"I cried when I got that first certification because it was that first sense of accomplishment," she said. "I never dreamed in a million years I'd be able to do Michigan State."
By the time she's 37 — four years from now — Morrison hopes to be established as an accountant. She estimates she has three years left until she can receive her diploma.
Her eyes brighten as she talks about her education, especially when describing how things have changed since she first attended college classes. There are a lot more choices now, for instance, and the availability of online courses has opened the doors for so many more people.
"You can have something cooking in one room and on the computer in the other," said Morrison, who has taken accounting classes electronically through MSU.
She says returning to school is like "winning the lotto."
"I love going to school," Morrison said. "I hated it when I was young, but I love it in my 30s.
"It's fulfilling a very large hole."
