For many parents who split their time between 40-hour workweeks and taking care of their kids, the idea of continuing their education seems almost impossible. An online learning site called eLearners.com has helped parents overcome the three main barriers to returning to school: time, money, and lack of confidence, says Helen MacDermott, content director for eLearners.com. The site launched Project Working Mom 2010, a program created to award up to 285 full-tuition scholarships from eight accredited online institutions worth about $5 million in total to working mothers and fathers. Project Working Mom 2010 is the fourth in a series of programs run by eLearners.com to "tackle the crisis of the undereducated adult population in America."
Of parents ages 22 to 50, 19.6 percent of males and 20.4 percent of females had bachelor's degrees, according to 2009 data from the Census Bureau. (To view these or other tables of education data, visit the Current Population Survey Table Creator.) College degrees pay off in the long run: On average, adults with a bachelor's degree make $26,000 more annually than those with just a high school diploma, according to 2008 Census Bureau data. With tough economic times, more people are going back to school online to continue their education. More than 4.6 million students were taking at least one online course during the fall 2008 term, a 17 percent increase from 2007, according to a Sloan Survey of Online Learning report, "Learning on Demand: Online Education in the United States in 2009."