Smith's Ada Comstock Scholars give more than they take For most undergraduates at elite Smith College in Northampton, Mass.,
the road to one of the Seven Sisters has been smooth and untroubled.
Despite the considerable work load there is always the comfortable
feeling that the $8,430-a-year tuition bill will be met. But Gilda
Palano is different. For a start, she is 48, and when she graduates
next year with a B.A. in anthropology and sociology she will have
overcome more obstacles than most of the young women around her will
face in a lifetime. Palano has a registered nursing diploma, has been married for 27 years
to a mechanic at a General Electric plant in Pittsfield, had four
children of her own and took in two foster children. Tragedy seems
to have stalked her: her mother left home when Palano was nine, she
lost a daughter to cancer and she suffered a spinal injury in an auto
crash, which forced her to spend her life on crutches. None of
this has stopped her from going back to school, first to a community
college and then, in 1980, transferring to Smith's innovative degree
program for older women. For three days a week Palano lives on
campus, taking courses paid for through a variety of grants and
loans. “Just finding out your brain still works at this age is a neat
thing,” she says. What will make a college degree possible for Palano is Smith's
eight-year-old Ada Comstock Program for women over 22. Named for a
former dean who later became president of Radcliffe, the
program is both generous and uncompromising: there is no time limit for
earning a degree and, for needier students, there is financial help;
but the “Adas” must attend the same classes as
regular four-year students, which means no snap courses and no credits
for “life experience,” a popular trend in adult education. Smith provides an outstanding example of the surge in adult education in
America, as the population of 18-year-olds continues to decline.
One-third of the 12.4 million U.S. students now enrolled in degree
programs are over 25, and the majority of these are women: 2,425,000 in
1981, up from 1 million in 1972. Many of these students are enrolled in
state universities or community colleges, but even highly competitive
Ivy League schools have bachelor's degree programs for older students.
Yale has begun admitting adults on a part-time basis, and Brown has had
a program for adults since 1972, originally intended for returning Viet
Nam veterans. Both Wellesley and Mount Holyoke have vigorous programs
for older women who want to complete a degree, prepare for new jobs or
simply enlarge their horizons. Adult students have a “greater
capacity,” says Smith History Professor Stanley Elkins, “simply
because they are older, have lived longer and have had the experience.” Indeed, Smith sees its older students as such a positive asset that it
is constantly enlarging the program: it began with just 16 women and
this academic year has an enrollment of 161. Of the 82 potential Adas
who applied to Smith this year, only 61 were accepted, and 46 are
currently enrolled. Entry to the program is based on previous academic
performance, an autobiographical essay and letters of recommendation.
