Eckerd College Ending Some Programs in St. Pete, Tampa

ST. PETERSBURG, FL — Students hoping to earn their degrees through Eckerd College’s flexible Program for Experienced Learners are out of luck. The school announced Friday the program will soon come to an end.

The Program for Experienced Learners, or PEL for short, was launched more than three decades ago as a way to enable busy students to take night and weekend credit courses in Tampa and St. Petersburg. Years of dwindling enrollment, however, prompted the decision to “stop new enrollment immediately and begin a phase out of the 35-year-old program,” Eckerd College wrote in an email to media.

The school explained that there has been a shift in the adult education market to online classes rather than the face-to-face sessions PEL provided.

“Our mission always has been to provide a personalized education for undergraduate students,” Don Eastman, Eckerd’s president, said in a statement. “We do an extraordinary job, but lifestyle changes and market demands have made it much more attractive for adult students to take courses online.”

The college’s board of trustees gave administrators control over deciding the program’s future back in 2013. Since then, Eckerd has attempted to bolster the program’s popularity by adding new study areas, changing course formats, beefing up outreach and more. Despite those efforts, the college said enrollment declined.

“We sincerely regret the impact this will have on our current students, and we will do all we can to ease the transition for them,” Eastman said.

More than 5,300 students have graduated from Eckerd’s PEL program since its inception.

For more information about Eckerd College, visit its website.

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