Non-Traditional Student Success in Post-Secondary Education
This paper examines the academic success of non-traditional students in post-secondary education — a broad and growing population that includes working adults, veterans, part-time enrollees, parents, and commuters. Drawing on national completion data and existing literature, the paper identifies barriers these students face and critiques traditional time-based metrics used to measure academic success. It outlines a proposed study of recent non-traditional graduates from a university, investigating the relationship between available institutional supports — including administrative flexibility, hybrid course delivery, and student services — and students' perceived satisfaction with their educational experience. The paper concludes with research questions, a working hypothesis, and a description of survey-based methodology.
- Who Are Non-Traditional Students?: Defines the broad non-traditional student population
- Academic Outcomes and Institutional Shortcomings: Completion data and policy failures affecting students
- Institutional Supports and Student Perceptions: Administrative and pedagogical supports available to students
- Problem Statement and Working Hypothesis: Study purpose and hypothesis about support types
- Research Questions and Objectives: Three guiding questions for the proposed study
- Methodology: Sampling, survey design, and study limitations
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What makes this paper effective
- Grounds its argument in national completion statistics, lending empirical weight to the problem it identifies before proposing a study design.
- Moves logically from population definition to institutional critique to proposed solution, creating a coherent rationale for the research.
- Incorporates a real policy example — the Department of Education's gainful employment regulations — to connect academic concerns to practical, legislative consequences.
Key academic technique demonstrated
The paper effectively uses a literature-grounded problem statement to justify an original research design. Rather than simply reviewing existing scholarship, the author identifies a specific gap — limited understanding of how institutional supports shape non-traditional student satisfaction — and builds survey-based methodology around that gap. This is a strong model for proposal-style academic writing at the graduate level.
Structure breakdown
The paper opens with a broad definition of the non-traditional student population, then narrows to completion data illustrating the scope of the problem. It critiques institutional measurement practices and policy failures, reviews the range of available supports, and ends with a formal problem statement, hypothesis, three research questions, and a methodology section covering sampling, data collection, and study limitations. The structure mirrors a standard research proposal format.
Who Are Non-Traditional Students?
The student population category referred to as non-traditional cuts a wide swath. Depending on the criteria used for inclusion in this category, non-traditional students may be working or non-working adults, active military personnel or veterans, enrolled part-time, returning from an absence from higher education, or enrolling after having delayed entrance immediately after high school. They may also be commuters, parents, or individuals supporting other family members or dependents (Perna, 2010; Wang & Pilarzyk, 2010). Historically, institutions of higher education were not intended for, or designed to accommodate, non-traditional students. Yet the growth rate of non-traditional students enrolled in post-secondary education has surpassed that of traditional students, and this trend seems unlikely to slow or reverse in the foreseeable future (Allen, 1993).
Academic Outcomes and Institutional Shortcomings
A study of students who began their post-secondary study during the academic year 2003–2004 reported that 15% had not completed their program of study by 2009, although they were still enrolled (Radford, Walton, Lutz, Sara, & Shepherd, 2010). Furthermore, 36% — or one-third of the students in the study — left their post-secondary programs without earning any type of credential by June 2009 (Radford et al., 2010). From this and similar research, it is apparent that a substantive number of non-traditional students do not experience academic success, do not achieve the educational goals they set out to attain, or are unable to sufficiently overcome their life challenges given the educational supports available to them.
In order to meet the pedagogical needs and scheduling challenges unique to non-traditional students, institutions of higher education may need to change some of their customary practices or add supports specifically designed to help non-traditional students achieve academic success. Traditional measures of academic success may need to change as well. Most of the ways that colleges and universities use to measure student success are time-based, relying on traditional ways of structuring higher educational attainment (McGuire, 2010). Students matriculate to earn two-year or four-year degrees, and non-traditional students who withdraw, drop out, and then re-enter higher education at another institution are not counted in standard completion metrics.
In addition to the unique challenges faced by non-traditional students, institutions themselves may place undue burdens on students due to a lack of due diligence in evaluating the job market. For example, the Department of Education has taken steps to offset the profit motives of vocational schools that — when left unchecked — are ultimately detrimental to uninformed students. In a press release, Education Secretary Arne Duncan stated:
"Let me be clear: we're moving forward on gainful employment regulations. While a majority of career colleges play a vital role in training our workforce to be globally competitive, some bad actors are saddling students with debt they cannot afford in exchange for degrees and certificates they cannot use." (Hamilton, 2010, ¶4)
Even with appropriate legislation, the burden has shifted onto non-traditional students to be vigilant about post-secondary programs, requiring them to independently research workforce development in their chosen field. The prospect of this happening on a large scale remains remote.
Institutional Supports and Student Perceptions
The literature indicates that non-traditional students may find it more or less difficult to achieve academic success at post-secondary institutions depending on the range of pedagogical and scheduling-oriented supports, administrative practices, and student service options available to them during their matriculation (Hsu & Hamilton, 2008). This study explores the relationships between the array of supports and practices encountered and utilized by non-traditional students who have graduated from the university within the past five years, and those students' reported levels of satisfaction based on their perceived effectiveness of those supports and practices.
Administrative structures and processes. Post-secondary programs may provide a range of administrative options, such as those pertaining to tuition and fee payment, flexibility options, shortened semesters, and student services. Survey questions will explore the influence these options may have had on the attainment of non-traditional students' educational goals.
Type and degree of supports. Over the past several decades, post-secondary institutions have implemented a wide range of supports specifically designed with non-traditional students in mind. Universities and colleges commonly schedule classes during non-working hours for many adults, or arrange pedagogical and learning-oriented circumstances such as hybrid approaches to coursework — encompassing in-class instruction, distance learning through webcasts, and online modules or software platforms. It is anticipated that these supports and practices can be identified through a document and web content search of the university's promotional materials.
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