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NPR Ed
Today's College
Students Aren't Who You Think They Are
Elissa Nadworny, Julie Depenbrock
Popular culture tells us that college "kids" are recent high school
graduates, living on campus, taking art history, drinking too much on
weekends, and (hopefully) graduating four years later.
But these days that narrative of the residential, collegiate experience
is way off, says Alexandria Walton Radford, who heads up postsecondary
education research at RTI International, a think tank in North
Carolina. What we see on movie screens and news sites, she says, is
skewed to match the perceptions of the elite: journalists, researchers,
policymakers.
Today's college student is decidedly nontraditional — and has been for
a while. "This isn't a new phenomenon," Radford says. "We've been
looking at this since 1996."
So, what do we know about these "typical" college students of today?
Radford has done a lot of research on this and defines the
nontraditional student as having one or more of the following
characteristics:
Financially independent from their parents
Having a child or other dependent
Being a single caregiver
Lacking a traditional high school diploma
Delaying postsecondary enrollment
Attending school part time
Being employed full time
Close to 74 percent of undergrads fall into one of these categories —
and about a third have two or three. "I don't think people have got
their heads wrapped around that yet," Radford says.
So here's a snapshot of the 17 million Americans enrolled in
undergraduate higher education, according to numbers culled by the
National Center for Education Statistics.
1 in 5 is at least 30 years old
About half are financially independent from their parents
1 in 4 is caring for a child
47 percent go to school part time at some point
A quarter take a year off before starting school
2 out of 5 attend a two-year community college
44 percent have parents who never completed a bachelor's degree
As demographics shift, Radford argues, policy should follow.
It's vital that institutions look at the characteristics of their
undergrad cohorts, she adds, to explore how to address their students'
unique concerns.
Perhaps that means offering services like financial aid, advising or
tutoring after-hours (instead of the typical 9 to 5). Maybe it means
offering child care for student-parents, or extra parking for commuters.
One thing for sure, says Radford, is that it's probably time to coin a
new phrase for nontraditional students, considering they are the new
normal.
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