Non Traditional College

The traditional student is coming straight at of high school and obtaining a lot less life experiences with them. On the other hand, the non-traditional student would be going back to school because of financial hardship or wanting to enrich their lives on their own accord. Thus, there is a significant difference between the two kind of students that can be in a college university. Amy Strage tackles this topic in more detail in her article titled Traditional and Non-Traditional College Students’ Descriptions of the “Ideal” Professor and the “Ideal” Course and perceived Strengths and Limitations. Strage does a quantitative study with the use of surveys with Likert-style/open-ended questions to students that are both traditional and non-traditional.

My question is what kind of student do we want to graduate into the world. To be clear, I am not trying to diminish the traditional student by any means. There is a need for the traditional student in terms of learning about who they are, human development, sending young workers with education behind them into the workforce. However, there is merit to adding the non-traditional student in this equation. The non-traditional student will have a different, probably more mature and experienced, mentality into the world. Furthermore, there is something to be said about a culture of college graduates that are holding that diploma because of reasons that are larger than just “because I want to make money”. By having more graduates with this kind of mentality, we will see a larger shift of professionals in the world that have more depth, meaning, and purpose to their existence in their careers. This not only affects the workforce, but also can influence the climate of the