Two BDN articles this past winter brought attention to “Maine’s brain drain. …” and to myths about college attendance (“College myths don’t fit reality.” While each focused on phenomena related to college-bound high school graduates who leave the state to seek undergraduate degrees, and to the increasing number of college graduates from Maine’s public and private colleges and universities who leave Maine upon graduation, little if any attention was given to those Maine citizens 25 or older who potentially may have a more significant impact on Maine’s economy, its tax base and its national standing with respect to levels of educational attainment, relative to their “college-going” rates.

Consider some of the facts. The 25 and older population represents 68 percent of Maine’s population of 1,253,000 while its traditional college age group (18-24) represents a total of just 9 percent. While 21percent of the adult population do not have a high school diploma, 37 percent have a high school diploma as their most advanced level of education, 16 percent have some college but no degree, 7 percent have two-year degrees, 13 percent have baccalaureate degrees and 6 percent have graduate or professional degrees.

Continuing education beyond high school indeed is one of the smartest financial investments a person can make. Full-time workers who continue their education beyond high school earn higher salaries than those without post-secondary education. Moreover, this income gap continues to expand with time and as successive levels of education are attained. For example, in 1998, the national mean annual salary of a college graduate was $40,478 (nearly twice that of someone with only a high school diploma or GED); a master’s degree raises earnings an additional 26 percent, while a professional degree increases earnings by another 42 percent. Maine’s mean annual personal income for a four-year college graduate is $27,154 (latest census data). While the mean annual income of Maine citizens with a high school diploma is $17,835, that amount doubles for those with advanced degrees ($35,699).

Since the “GI bill” of the 1940s, when the federal government undertook a vast program of incentives for veterans to pursue higher education, thousands of adults have benefited by earning college degrees. Today, most American colleges and universities have adapted to the changing demography (the average undergraduate age is now 26.7) by offering courses through evening and weekend schedules, and increasingly through distance learning technologies. Because many adult students are place-bound by employment, family or life circumstances, they don’t have the luxury of full-time study either in Maine or beyond its borders. They tend to seek degrees on a part-time basis and in programs whose schedules accommodate working students.

Despite the level of loan/grant programs for the traditional-aged full-time student (49 percent receive federal funds; 43 percent receive state support), only 14 percent of undergraduate part-time students receive federal aid and only 1percent receive state support. Many do rely on their own resources and 23 percent are supported through employer-provided educational assistance programs.

Yet, students with families, particularly single parents, and students from low-income families often find that even part-time study is too difficult to sustain without access to affordable childcare and financial aid. House Speaker Michael Saxl’s proposed scholarship endowment fund program would certainly provide a jumpstart for Maine’s financial aid commitment to this student group.

In New England, with its historic higher education heritage and extensive concentration of colleges and universities, students who can study on a full-time basis have many options beyond state borders, regardless of the quality of its state’s private colleges and public universities. In Maine we know the statistics well. In 1975, 71 percent of Maine’s high school graduates enrolling in a college or university remained in Maine, with only 29 percent going out-of-state.

By 1996, only 47 percent attended in Maine, with 53 percent leaving the state, primarily for four-year baccalaureate programs. Numerous strategies have been employed by Maine’s higher education community to stem the student out migration – some rather successfully. However, students will continue to broaden their horizons beyond Maine when they have the opportunity and many will return to Maine and to the quality of life it has to offer – perhaps as working adults and to jobs that provide competitive wages.

If Maine is to achieve its long-term economic goals, be competitive in a knowledge-based economy, and reach the Maine Economic Growth Council’s benchmark level of parity with the New England average of 29 percent of a state’s population having bachelor’s degrees (by 2005), we need a “GI-like” bill of the 21st century designed to stimulate and sustain an aggressive “college-going” plan for Maine adults who have the ability, motivation, and commitment to pursue a college degree.

The Saxl proposal would clearly be that kind of initiative, albeit on a statewide scale. If Maine is to meet the challenge of change in the 21st century, we cannot rely solely on our 18-year-old high school seniors.

After all, many who start their college experience never finish and find themselves in that category of adult with “some college.” They indeed will continue to be a source of college graduates, but significant attention must be given to Maine’s adults who have similar dreams of earning their own degrees.

Robert C. White is the dean of the Division of Lifelong Learning at the University of Maine.