When Lynaea McGee left college, she didn’t leave behind her dream of being a registered nurse.
At the time, she was juggling school, a full-time job, two young children, and a husband whose career required frequent travel away from home.
The hiatus she began in 2004 went on for nearly two decades, but it was just that – a hiatus.
The Ada woman was among the 8,645 college “stopouts” in Oklahoma who reenrolled in 2023-24.
Still, according to new data from the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center, Oklahoma is falling short of more than 40 other states in getting more stopouts – who push pause on college with the intention of returning – back on track toward graduation.
This population of working-age adults with some college credit but no credential to boost their earnings now numbers 38 million people across the U.S.
That is nearly 800,000 more than the count a year earlier, with the number of stopouts up in every state, according to data analyzed and shared by the Associated Press from the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center’s latest “Some College, No Credential Student Outcomes” report.
In recent years, however, colleges, universities, and state and local governments have stepped up efforts to help stopouts get back in class, with measurable success.
In 2023-24, more than 1 million stopouts reenrolled, an increase of 7% from the year before, according to the AP’s data analysis.
Reenrollment of college stopouts was up in 42 states and Washington, D.C.
In Oklahoma, there are 413,576 stopouts aged 18-65. But the 8,645 who returned to college in 2023-24 represented a decrease of nearly 14% compared to the year before.
That fact is not lost on the Oklahoma State Regents for Higher Education, which has made serving this population a priority for nearly two decades.
State initiatives already in place include:
- Promotion of re-enrollment to encourage degree completion.
- Scholarship programs for these adult students.
- Making available learning assessments to help people weigh their options
- Provision of more than 500 career-focused microcredentials to help adults adapt and succeed in the workplace.
“Targeting these students is an important strategy to increase our state's overall educational attainment,” said Angela Caddell, associate vice chancellor for communications at Oklahoma State Regents for Higher Education.
The most common barriers that keep college on the back burner for stopouts, she said, are work responsibilities, family obligations, including childcare or caregiving, and competing financial demands within the household budget.
The state has a special website, ShowWhatYouKnowOK.org, to help people determine how previously earned college and CareerTech credits, licenses, certifications, military training, Advanced Placement, College-Level Examination Program scores, and other learning experiences can be applied toward a college degree.
OSRHE’s main effort to serve working adults who already have some college credits is the Reach Higher program, which has helped more than 13,000 adult students earn degrees since it was established in 2007.
Twenty-seven public and private institutions across Oklahoma participate, ensuring reenrolling stopouts get customized advising and flexibility while balancing family and work obligations.
“Allocations for public higher education's adult degree completion initiatives have nearly doubled in the last five years, and the State Regents have funded over $1.1 million in adult degree completion and workforce re-entry scholarships in each of the last four fiscal years,” Caddell said.
Among those scholarship recipients over the last three semesters was McGee, who in 2023 realized that, with her two kids grown and gone, she could finally return to school.
Now 49, the Ada woman is about to graduate from Seminole State College with not one, but two associate‘s degrees.
She did all of her coursework online while juggling full-time work as a hospice case manager, which requires her to drive between private homes, assisted living and skilled nursing centers to see each of her 20 patients with terminal diagnoses 2-3 times a week.
McGee is still deciding whether to enroll next in a standalone university bachelor’s degree program or a different school that offers concurrent enrollment in bachelor’s and master’s degree programs in registered nursing.
“I want to teach because I want to be able to help shape and mold the next generation of nurses,” McGee said. “I don’t know if it’s because my mom was a teacher and my aunt was a teacher, but I’ve just always loved to show and educate and train.
“There’s also this saying that nurses eat their own,” McGee said. “I actually experienced it not terribly long ago. That is something I also want to teach the younger generation – that we’ve got to get away from clique-like mentality and mean girl behavior. That’s why nurses are leaving the bedside or walking away from nursing as a profession.”
Stopouts, not Dropouts
Seminole State College, about an hour east of Oklahoma City, hosted its latest Reach Higher recruiting event targeting stopouts on Sunday.
“These events are really hit and miss; maybe five people show up, but concurrent enrollment of students in high school and adult learners returning to school are our two biggest student groups served here,” said Josh Hutton, director of communications. “A lot of us are switching gears and tactics to appeal to people who have some credit. For us, too, we push harder on marketing high-demand, critical occupations, like nursing and medical lab technicians. We are really trying to focus on those more than, say, language arts.”
Out of 1,843 students who attended that community college between 2020 and 2023 but departed early, 643, or 35%, reenrolled in classes between 2024 and 2026, Hutton said.
Tracking college stopouts who enroll at a different school is difficult, but in 2024, 5% of the 1,926 students who enrolled at Seminole State were more than 25 years old and already had credits from other colleges.
Tulsa Community College, the state’s third-largest higher education institution, is a Reach Higher participant but also has begun its own initiative called “Back on Track” to aid adult learners amid a sudden enrollment uptick in that segment.
“TCC has experienced an increase in returning students — those students who started their program, stopped out, and now are coming back,” said Eileen Kenney, associate vice president of enrollment and retention at TCC. “We started to see an increase in spring of 2024. At that point we saw a 25% increase in returning students enrolling. We’ve had several additional semesters of increases since then.”
TCC’s academic programs have been aligned with occupations the state of Oklahoma has deemed most critical, with dedicated scholarships, admissions counseling and outreach events specific to adult learners, many of whom already have some college experience but no credential.
One former stopout was motivated to relocate to Tulsa a year ago from the rural area where he grew up in California's Central Valley because of TCC’s offerings.
Just before he graduated from high school in 2008, John Alves’ dream of playing NCAA baseball crashed and burned when his too-low SAT score cost him admission to the university where a coach had offered him a baseball scholarship.
Alves went on to take classes at three junior colleges over the next four years, but said he struggled with motivation and still had no sense of direction.
“I think there’s a bit of a problem with kids coming out of high school who don’t know what they want to do being pressured to go to college,” Alves said. “Now, I’m a lot more driven and focused.”
Alves put school on the back burner and worked for years at a large shipping company, which afforded him a comfortable life, including home ownership.
But sustaining a serious injury on the job a few years ago that required extensive recuperation time led Alves to conclude that physical labor was, well, unsustainable.
“I knew I needed to pivot,” said Alves, now 35.
In 2024, he landed a spot in a cybersecurity bootcamp at California State University–Long Beach that promised entry-level skills by the end of the nine-month program.
By the end, Alves said he discovered the vast majority of the cybersecurity job market requires more advanced skills.
He had taken out a student loan and mortgage payments were coming due, so he began considering selling his house and going all-in on completing a college degree.
“My grandfather was originally from Oklahoma, but the family moved to California during the cotton boom in the 1960s. My grandmother moved back to the family farm in 2022 and my mother moved from California to Choteau in 2023, so it’s been a bit of a reverse migration,” said Alves.
He’s still establishing residency in Oklahoma, with the goal of completing his bachelor’s degree at Oklahoma State University-Tulsa. That has limited him to two courses each semester since he enrolled in the fall of 2025.
But Alves now sees that as fortuitous.
“I was terrified coming back to school last August,” he said. “Fortunately, TCC has a really good amount of returning students. I’ve done really well here, and it has given me a lot of confidence going forward. I was able to get two part-time student jobs. It has been a nice way to assimilate and figure out what works and to start to have a social life. I’m really just trying to build a whole life.”
The Associated Press contributed to this story.
Oklahoma Watch, at oklahomawatch.org, is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that covers public-policy issues facing the state.
