This is off topic, but I think there are people here who have relevant knowledge and/or experience, so I'm curious what people think...


Does age discrimination have to be overt, like, "you've turned 40, so goodbye." ?

Or can new rules and policy changes that disproportionately impact older people constitute it too (students in this case)?

I don't want to get too deep into the weeds, but one of my former students went on to a masters degree program. A year after he started, they reduced the time limit. Previously, a part time student could take one class per term and finish right at the limit, which was his plan. When he reached the new limit, they tried to terminate him, but he pushed back and prevailed. A series of similar episodes ensued, which seem to have escalated into retaliation as they essentially were looking for ways to terminate him because he wouldn't "go quietly" like a lot of other students had.

In the same window of time, they started heavily recruiting full time students, going from 85% part timers to 85% full timers.

In terms of outcomes, while the total number of degrees awarded increased 17%, the proportion awarded to students over 40 dropped from 14% to 6%, and to students over 50 they dropped from 4% to 2%.

The new rules were of little consequence to full time students, who would come nowhere near the deadline anyway, so the students who suffered from them were the earlier part timers, who were largely non-traditional (older students). The undesirable students are those who are taking "too long," but demographically they tend to be older students.

Unfortunately, because he'd enrolled in the "thesis option," all the final retaliation took was for someone on his committee to claim that his work wasn't good enough. After years of sacrifice, and ~20k in tuition, he's out.


Anyway, the above is a huge oversimplification, but it seems to me that he (and others) were subjected to age discrimination when the more stringent rules were applied, and because he repeatedly defended his rights they retaliated, ensuring that he didn't graduate.

There are some academics on this board, so we will see what they have to say.

I went back to grad school at the age of (almost) 34. I was considered a non-traditional student, and so were the majority of my classmates. Most of us were career switchers who wanted to go into teaching. I was part-time, and started off with one class winter term (for three credits,) and then two classes spring term. Starting the next fall, it was three classes each term until I finished -- two and a half years total. I was in a teacher certification program, so there were extra requirements, including additional summer school undergraduate classes that I took at my local community college.

We lost a few cohort members along the way, and I know that my university would have been happy to have them return at some point to complete the program.

It seems to me that the program should have honored the rules under which your former student signed up. But it may be that going for the thesis option is what tripped him up. My school offered both options, and after consideration, I opted for the non-thesis option, knowing that I had no real desire or need for a doctorate.

In your former student's case, I'm not sure that I would consider it age discrimination so much as the school changing its focus. Most programs will consider your credits "stale" if you don't finish your program within a reasonable time frame. I'm pretty sure that my program (which at the time was oriented to part-timers) had a five year limit to complete all degree requirements.



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 12/27/2023 06:28PM by summer.

> There are some academics on
> this board, so we will see
> what they have to say.


Thank you, Summer...

Frankly, I am speechless!

Thanks, Summer

summer Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> It seems to me that the program should have
> honored the rules under which your former student
> signed up.

Yes, it doesn’t seem right for a school to tell you when you’re 3/4 of the way through, and in good standing by the rules they wrote, that you’re not acceptable any longer. But in this case, it seems if they’re challenged that they will grudgingly capitulate.

> But it may be that going for the thesis
> option is what tripped him up. My school offered
> both options, and after consideration, I opted for
> the non-thesis option, knowing that I had no real
> desire or need for a doctorate.

Our school offers both options too. To be honest, I don’t know why anyone chooses the thesis option.

In a series of arm twists, they forced him to reform his committee, and stacked the deck with both dept chair and an assoc dean. He got no help, and only vague criticism, which makes “improvement” difficult. They suggested he try to have his work published, to show it was “legitimate,” so he did. The dept chair, who served as his “advisor,” approved the conference to which he submitted, and then after his paper was accepted, did a 180 and said it was a “weak venue,” and “not worth much.” In other words, nothing he could do was good enough. Double binds. Etc.

> In your former student's case, I'm not sure that I
> would consider it age discrimination so much as
> the school changing its focus.

They definitely changed, and that in and of itself is not bad (IMO), but I think the tactics they’re using to clean house are unethical. Regardless of whether they were right or wrong, they disproportionately impacted older students, which is what I think is the essence of age discrimination here. It wasn’t deliberate (presumably), but a consequence of their actions harmed older students.

The fact that the number of older graduates is dropping, while the total number is increasing, is very telling. FWIW, this phenomenon is only within the engineering school. The rest of campus continues to grow as well, but they also continue to graduate older students at an unchanged rate (and in sync with the overall growth in enrollment).



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/28/2023 01:53AM by Gordon B. Stinky.

I'll add a bit of complexity.

We're all aware of the permanent grad student: the person who completes her course work and starts the dissertation but then takes other jobs while continuing indefinitely to describe herself as a Ph.D. candidate at BYU (or wherever). I'm aware of some people who have continued in that status for twenty or more years and then wander away.

Those are precisely the stragglers that the universities want to get rid of. But they are also, by dint of their endless delays, older students. A bright-eyed and bushy-tailed grad student at 22 can become the haggard and bleary-eyed 40-year-old quite easily when confronted with the need to produce a dissertation. So these new regulations, designed to force people to fish or cut bait, inevitably hit older students harder than younger.

Is that age discrimination? I think that in general it is not. Of course, the sort of shenanigans you describe sound suspiciously as if they are discriminatory. But that may be more the actions of a particular faculty than the fault of the university or the department as a whole.

I just checked the university where I got my Master's (under a program geared towards part-timers,) and that program no longer exists. It looks like it was phased out within the past few years. When I went through, there was definitely a place for a part-time Master's (teacher) certification program. Now options appear to be more limited.

The weird thing is that there is currently a teacher shortage, and the options to train people who wish to change careers where I live are not great. It looks like for the most part, you are either in school full-time or not at all. Existing teachers mostly get their Master's degrees online nowadays. That works well for them, but it's not normally a great option for career changers. So I have no idea if the economics of training non-traditional students has changed from either the universities' point of view, or the students' point of view. I just know that the programs that now exist are not adequate to address the current teacher shortage. Alternative certification programs such as Teach for America work for some, but do not have a great track record for retention after five years in the classroom (20%.)



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/28/2023 12:06PM by summer.

There may also be cost considerations for the school. Full time students are simply more cost effective.

This makes no sense to me. For example, what’s the difference between 2 half time students attending for 2 years, or two full time students attending one year each? There are more than a thousand students, rolling admissions, amd most classes are offered every semester, so there aren’t even any scheduling concerns.

I've seen two universities change their rules on this point. A relative was pursuing a Ph.D. at a university on the West Coast of the United States. The university imposed a time limit and a sliding scale for tuition: for the first few years there would be no fees, then there would be modest ones that would incrementally rise. My friend was frankly lazy, not focused on her work, and was ultimately forced out of the program by the new rules.

The other was a friend studying at a European university. That university imposed a new time limit for Ph.D. students and then granted a few extensions for the students caught up in the change. There was no alteration in the zero tuition rule. The university tried to be reasonably tolerant but over the next several years both old and new students were forced out of the programs when the deadlines and extensions expired.

I suspect this has happened at a lot of different colleges and universities. They get tired of people who perpetually claim to be doctoral candidates--essentially profiting from the school's name while doing very little--pay minimal or no tuition, and can demand time and resources from advisors whenever they want. The new ethos is up-or-out.

Thanks for commenting, LW.

I think it’s typical of all universities to be striving to improve. I know in our case, based on required public hearings for changing catalog rules, that the concern was shortening average time to degree conferral in order to be more competitive with other schools.

On the surface, improvement is good, but a germane question here is what cost should the student body bear? You mentioned two PhD programs, and I felt this same “hurry up” pressure when I was in my PhD program. In this case, it’s a masters degree program with a six year time limit (now 4). I think in the big scheme of things, “today” hardly matters. For example, the vast majority of students will graduate earlier anyway, even part timers who take more than one class per term. So we’re talking about a relatively small portion of the students who “need” the full time limit, but even 1/6 of them will either graduate or run out of time each year.

In five years they’ll all be gone, and in the meantime their impact on statistics is minimal, because their numbers are small anyway. And that’s why it’s “ok” to screw them over, because their numbers are so small that there isn’t a huge outcry. But rather than wait a couple years, they want to shave a couple thousandths off the average time to degree (yay), and they only have to screw over a few students who apart from being inconvenient to the “new vision” are in good standing.

Regarding those perpetual grad students, both masters and PhD programs at my school have provisions for terminating students who are not making satisfactory progress, or whose GPA drops below satisfactory. So, to be clear, again, the people that they are squeezing out are students who are absolutely in good standing.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/28/2023 02:35AM by Gordon B. Stinky.

Thanks for the clarification.

I agree that new rules should be adjusted to minimize the burden imposed on people who were accepted under a different regime. If the numbers are small, the challenge to the school should be easily manageable.

My dad was a teacher, my sister is, her daughter, and her granddaughter, AND her husband. I know there have been problem over the many years, but I don't have anyone to ask right now.

There was a time when my dad and some other teachers had some problems with the principal. My dad had a heart attack at that time and one of the other teachers had a nervous breakdown. Luckily the board of education look into everything the principal wads fired.

This is far from the same thing other than it was discrimination. I had the same job for YEARS and we lost our long-time account doing transcription. I went looking for jobs. ATK was a horrible job. I was paid half what the people younger than I was. I only lasted 2 nights, but that was a horrible, horrible job for an old lady.

Then I went to Sam's Club. They had the need of hiring enough old ladies and men. And we were treated as thought we were stupid. I couldn't have been happier when I quit. The manager treated me poorly. I got an e-mail from the main offices and they asked me how it was to work there and I told them. She tried and tried to call me, but I wouldn't answer.

So glad that I don't have to deal with stuff with this job.

I saw quite a bit of discrimination at Thiokol. They didn't like the mormons and some of the mormons in the big management jobs didn't try to cover up how they felt. I was also treated poorly as I wasn't supposed to work somewhere like Thiokol if I was a good mormon girl. I worked for a lot of mormon men who didn't act like that, but it was obvious what some of them were doing like one said to me that I didn't smile at him enough. When I did transfer out my boss (who I just love) told me it would be better for me to get out of there as the division manager didn't like me. I had so many comments about working out there. I met some really wonderful people there, but there was a lot of this stuff going on. It was in the 1970s to 1980s.

Oh, they didn't like the fact that I called them on something they did and all the big guys in our area were in a meeting in the Division Manager's office. My boss came back and told me what they were going to do. They had HR on the phone. I said so what about Karma? She was an alcoholic secretary who only came in a few times a week and they'd mark the time card as vacation, sick leave, and then noncomp. She would mail her work to me. My boss started to laugh when I said "Can I sue them?" They were scared to death as I had proof. My boss said you'll win. He said when he sat down and told them what I said, they all gasped and he laughed. So they were happy to give me what I wanted. He also told me all the men in our area would be behind 100% and they would have been. It happened to other people out there all the time. I didn't plan of course to go on and on.

Age discrimination is definitely a thing when it comes to employment. As an elementary teacher, once I hit my mid-40s, I knew that no other school district would be interested in me. The districts want younger, cheaper employees. It's like that in a lot of jobs. Ironically, with my new certification (in a high need area,) I could very well be hired now, even though I'm of retirement age. They just wouldn't want to pay me what they'd have to pay me.

I think you’re right. Age discrimination is rampant in a lot of ways. As an older PhD candidate, it was difficult to find faculty willing to work with me. And even they didn’t always like a “grown up” who was confident enough to question them and hold them accountable.

I retired from industry in ‘09, before I went back to school, but it’s now pretty common knowledge that age and experience are not “assets” in the tech industry.

I'm not sure why people would do some of these university courses since they're neither useful nor enjoyable. One of the local colleges here does a course in "Communication" which it boasts about, except the course is not accredited properly and not recognized within the industry. From what I can tell, it is very dry as well. Yet people still go on it, pull their hair out and stress over it. What do they get at the end of it? A piece of paper they can't do anything with.

One of my friends is in her fifties and has mental health issues which stop her from taking a job. So she does these university courses instead over long periods of time. She already got one degree but keeps trying for another. She keeps switching courses and the university hates that. She often comes to me for help with coursework. One of her recent ones was on art history, but it was all based around intersectional theory. The essay topics she was being given to do were all politically loaded and trying to condition the students to think like the people setting them. I realized that if she gave a non-ideological interpretation of the art she would fail the course. I made the mistake of signing up to a similar course some years ago, but quit in protest against this kind of material. I had passed all the coursework, but as it went on, it became more and more politically charged. I made a point of complaining about this in the feedback. People are there to learn not to be brainwashed.

I have no idea what course your friend is taking, but I'm going to guess that it was her choice to take it, and to continue with it.

Here's a discussion of art and intersectionality:

https://www.artsy.net/gene/intersectionality

Yes, sometimes art and politics cross over. Picasso's masterpiece, "Guernica" comes to mind. You simply can't discuss the painting without noting its anti-war theme. If your friend is not interested in art where feminism or other topics are the concern of the artist, why is she taking this course? There are plenty of other art history courses that she could take.

Business is business. Sometimes tough decisions are required to keep one healthy. Many want to see our institutions as benevolent organizations that should be catering just to their own individual desires. Even churches don't do that.

I don't know if this is related, but when people are selecting a school, they look at various stats and compare.

Of course things like cost, size, faculty to student ratio, and programs available get compared. However, metrics that might be relevant are the graduation or success rate and how long the the average student takes to graduate. Of course this could include issues with the student's age and the need to work while attending.

If I had to select a school, I'd pick one that has a higher success rate getting diplomas completed. I don't think it would occur to me right away to consider ageism and the need students have to work. Maybe schools don't like having their stats in comparison tables look bad?