Touro College’s posters in English and Chinese can be seen all over the Flushing Main Street subway station. Photo: Larry Tung

Grace Lee wanted to be a public school teacher, but she spoke limited English and only had an associate degree.

Lee, a native of Korea, wanted to go back to school to get a bachelor’s degree. But she wanted to be close to home so she could take care of her two young daughters. After seeing an advertisement about Touro College’s Flushing Center, she enrolled in 2007. She said one of the primary reasons was the school’s convenient location on Roosevelt Avenue, just one block away from the Main Street subway station.

“It’s closer to my house,” said Lee, who chose Touro over Queens College, a selective four-year college in the City University of New York system, to which she gained admission. Queens College is about 20 minutes away by bus from downtown Flushing.

Lee, 37, is part of the new demographics of adult immigrants whom many colleges are trying to recruit in Flushing. At the Main Street subway station, it is hard to ignore Touro’s posters in English and Chinese because they are plastered all over the station. Pedestrians often get bombarded by fliers advertising colleges and English as a second language programs.

To attract immigrants, many schools hire multilingual admission officers and advisers. At Touro’s Flushing Center, a full-time academic adviser, Chung Pang, is available to serve more than 200 students of which half are immigrants. Pang, a Korean-born Chinese, speaks Chinese and Korean, two of the most popular languages in Flushing.

The most recent data from the city’s department of planning shows that about 24.5 percent of residents over the age of 5 in Flushing speak Chinese at home while 13.6 percent speak Korean.

In addition to language assistance, schools are offering special courses to appeal to immigrant students. Touro, a nonprofit private institution, offers the class Asian American Experience and Immigrant Experience in America as part of its general education electives.

“We were one of the first colleges that went out to neighborhoods, to reach out to under-served populations,” said Eva Spinelli-Sexter, executive administrative dean at Touro, which operates more than 10 sites in New York City.

Long Island Business Institute, with its main campus in downtown Flushing, is a for-profit two-year college that offers programs in office technology, accounting, medical billing and business. Soon the college will offer a program in homeland security and security management, an increasingly popular major among college students.

Since the college opened its Flushing campus in 2001, it has advertised heavily in local Chinese and Korean newspapers and television. The campus has outgrown its original location in Flushing Mall and moved to a two-year-old building on 39th Avenue with an enrollment of 700 students. Administrators declined to comment on the new program.

Anand Reddy Marri, an assistant professor at Columbia University’s Teachers College, wrote in an e-mail that the student population at for-profit colleges is expected to grow at a very high rate.

“These for-profit colleges are very attractive to most non-traditional students and they offer convenient schedules, low barriers to entry, and ready-for-market skills in mostly technical fields,” Marri wrote.

To compete with these institutions, Queensborough Community College, located in nearby Bayside, set up a center in downtown Flushing in 2003. Its popular Port of Entry program, an ESL course that prepares students for college admission, runs eight classes in Flushing but only two on its main campus. The program is advertised in two Chinese newspapers and three Korean ones.

“There is a need there,” said Florence Tse, the program director.

While convenience plays an important factor in many students’ decisions, accreditation is another concern.

Vicky Lin, a native of Taiwan who just graduated from Touro, said she wanted to go to a school where the credits are transferable.

“The librarian at Touro told me that Touro’s degree is recognized by the Chinese government,” said Lin, referring to a list of recognized American colleges released by China’s Ministry of Education.

As for Lee, her positive experience at Touro gave her confidence to continue her education. Recently hired at a local day care center, she is going to pursue at master’s degree in educational psychology at Touro in the fall.

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