This College For Adult Learners Is A Refuge, Not Just A Career Boost

In the U.S., more than 4 out of 10 undergraduate college students are above the age of 25. When people talk about these adult students, you usually hear words like "job skills" and "quickest path to a degree."

But for more than four decades, a special program in Washington state has sought to offer much more than that.

It's called the Tacoma Program. Back in 1972, Maxine Mimms, a professor at Evergreen State College, created a new kind of college at her kitchen table, designed to serve students who are starting over in life, and to give them access to deep, transformational learning.

When we drive up to the tiny, strip-mall campus in Tacoma's historically black Hilltop neighborhood, Mimms greets us wearing a headdress, a robe, a necklace, bracelets and rings crowded with gemstones.