Nontraditional students will find themselves in good company as they attend classes: In 2009, about 40 percent of all college and graduate students were age 25 and older, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. By 2020, the number of students in that age group is expected to rise to 43 percent as 9.6 million older students pursue higher education. //www.nbcnews.com/business/business-news/back-school-older-students-rise-college-classrooms-n191246
Advantage: Life experience
Nontraditional students have experiences from work, prior education, and their personal lives. Skills nontraditional students have from life experience create a broad base to relate new experiences to and are a background for understanding academic work. Often nontraditional students can use prior learning to gain credits with knowledge they have acquired through work or the military.
Experience with co-workers creates a nontraditional student advantage that helps them be successful at team work or in other dealings that require clear communication. Life experience also helps nontraditional students establish relationships with professors and consider them mentors, rather than as a person who judges them. Rather than worry about fitting into an academic setting, nontraditional students can be confident that their life experience will be a solid foundation for success as a student.
Advantage: Motivation
Nontraditional students often have higher levels of motivation than younger students. Jobs and family responsibilities that could seem to have a negative impact can become a positive motivating factor for nontraditional students. Most nontraditional students are completing their education or seeking an additional degree so they can advance in their career and provide stability and a better life for their families. For them, motivation comes from outside sources as well as within. Many of them have a clear academic or career path.
Marcus Johnson, PhD, School of Education at the University of Cincinnati says that a nontraditional student advantage can be “higher levels of intrinsic motivation and interest, which could be attributed in part to having a clearer view of their goals.” //www.apa.org/gradpsych/2015/04/nontraditional-student.aspx
Students who have a clear academic or career path apply can what they are learning to their job. The link between these two important parts of their lives creates great motivation to continue.
Advantage: Problem solving skills
A nontraditional student advantage comes from solving problems on the job and in their careers. Nontraditional students have skills that younger students may not have. They better manage the stress that comes with unexpected situations and roadblocks. Johnson says that compared to younger students who may be more emotional about problems, “By comparison, nontraditional students are more apt to turn to task-oriented coping strategies to overcome the stressor, such as thinking about what steps to take next and devising a plan of action.” Rather than stress about a paper or capstone project that is due, nontraditional students are more apt to create a plan with steps that lead to completion. They have self-confidence that comes with the life experiences of encountering and dealing with different types of problems.
The nontraditional student advantages can be a large part of their success. By seeing their time outside of an academic setting as a learning opportunity, they build confidence. By seeing their differences from traditional students as positive traits, they will find success.
In her 20s and early 30s, Carol Williams thought her life was on track with the American dream. With only an associate's degree in business, her strong work ethic and interpersonal skills landed her a manager role at a restaurant chain by age 24. She went on to a successful career in business management within financial firms, earning enough not only to support her two sons as a single parent, but also to vacation in the Virgin Islands, Las Vegas and Florida.
Then when Williams was 36 years old, her brother died unexpectedly and she began reflecting on the direction of her life.
"I started to really look at how I was spending my time, and I didn't like the work I was doing," Williams says. "If I was not making money for the company, then I was not successful. I believed that the employees were the best asset, but this was not a popular view with upper management. I had a deep desire to use my skills to help people in the community."
She delayed a major career change until her sons were in their late teens and continued working full time while earning a bachelor's degree in social sciences at Virginia Wesleyan College in Virginia Beach. Then at age 47, she cut her annual income in half by accepting a job at a residential treatment program for troubled teens in North Carolina. She fell in love with the work, which prompted her to enroll in a psychology master's program at North Carolina Central University. In May — at age 55 — she will receive a master's degree in clinical psychology, and she is applying to doctoral programs.
Williams is keenly aware that she is in the minority when she walks into classrooms filled with students half her age. National statistics, however, suggest that her choice to enter higher education later in life may be increasingly common in the coming years. According to the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), the number of nontraditional students — defined as those over the age of 24 — enrolled in post-secondary education programs has steadily increased from 1996 to 2010, and this trend is projected to continue.
According to the NCES, in 2010, about 4.7 million students between the ages of 25 and 34 were enrolled in college or graduate school, and that number is predicted to increase by more than 20 percent by 2021. Approximately 3.7 million students age 35 and older were enrolled in post-secondary education in 2010, and that number is expected to increase by nearly 25 percent by 2021.
"It does look like this is a growing trend," says Marie Hammond, PhD, an associate professor of psychology at Tennessee State University who is studying nontraditional students. "People are living longer, and by mid-life they have been in the workforce for a number of years, so it is not unreasonable to expect them to change careers, especially when they have another 30 to 40 years to live."
Hammond believes that the unique challenges and strengths of the nontraditional student can often be overlooked, and acknowledging these differences will benefit the older student as well as the entire cohort. "Graduate programs need to start preparing for this student population and exploring how we take advantage of the knowledge and expertise these people can bring to our society," she says.
Accepting the age difference
One of the first barriers Williams faced was a sense of discomfort because she was older than anyone in her cohort.
"During the first couple of weeks, I was just so self-conscious because I looked old enough to be one of the professors," she admits. "The professors were very respectful, but the classes during the first year were very difficult and I questioned whether I could succeed because I did not have the stamina of a 25-year-old."
She quickly recognized that isolating herself from her younger peers would be academic suicide, because graduate school was harder than anything she had done in her career, and she would need support to succeed. She joined study sessions with a group of four other highly motivated students. The group met regularly to share notes and study for tests.
"In graduate school, you really need people you work well with," Williams says. "Even though they are a lot younger, we study well together because we have the same values. We want to get into the doctoral program, so we work hard."
Deleene Menefee, PhD, faced similar insecurities when she started graduate school at age 40 with three young children.
"I would think that I was too old for this, I won't understand the material or that the math was too advanced for me," says Menefee, who attended the psychology program at the University of Houston in Texas. "I had to overcome this erroneous belief that I would not finish school because of my age."
Menefee confided in two professors about her concerns, and her honesty paid off. They reminded her that she had been accepted into the program because they believed she could succeed. Menefee went on to earn two national APA awards for academic achievement, including the National Award for Excellence in Internship Training and the Mathilda B. Canter Education and Training Award. She is now a staff psychologist in the women's inpatient center at the VA Medical Center in Houston.
Back to student status
Nontraditional students may also chafe at the downward mobility that often accompanies a decision to return to school. Amy Berman, 39, had been working as an assistant director at the University of Maryland in the College of Education when she decided to apply to psychology doctoral programs.
"I had worked at the university for several years and people looked to me for advice, and I had pride around that," says Berman. "Initially, my family was not supportive because my decision to go back to school seemed like poor financial life planning. I had owned a home and was earning good salary, and I was giving that up to become a student who would be renting with a roommate."
Berman had earned a master's degree in psychology in her mid-20s, but after a decade of working in education policy related to low-income college students, she was frustrated with her inability to effect change. She wanted more education and training, which would give her the background she needed to influence policy at a higher level. She is now a third-year doctoral student at the Tennessee State University.
When she first started there, Berman was hesitant to share her previous work experience with younger peers for fear it would accentuate her differences, but she discovered that students welcomed the expertise she had gained in the workforce. At one point, she worked with younger peers to submit a grant proposal, guiding others through a process that had been part of her previous job.
Married, with kids
Another potential obstacle for nontraditional students is juggling school with the responsibilities that come with family.
"Graduate school is a long commitment, and there is a huge shift in relationships when a parent is suddenly not available to spend evenings, weekends or vacations attending to the spouse and children," Hammond says. "It also impacts the family financially. People are often giving up decent salaries and now living on a graduate assistant salary. Children may not understand why parents can't buy things, go on vacations or go out to dinner as often."
The tension in relationships is exacerbated because spouses and other relatives may not understand the graduate student experience, Hammond says. According to U.S. Census Bureau data, less than 5 percent of the U.S. population has earned a doctoral degree, which means few people know firsthand what it entails.
One strategy for warding off family conflict is good communication and planning before starting graduate school, Hammond says. "One of the things that can make school difficult for families is a sudden shift in routines," she says. The application process takes a year, and couples can use that time to start making little changes before school starts — such as rearranging the daycare schedule or adding a regular date night, she explains.
Seth Roseman's sons were 1 and 4 when he decided to apply to graduate school at Wayne State University in Detroit. He believes careful planning is one reason his family has fared well during the transition.
"My wife and I took one-and-a-half years to get our finances in order to prepare for our family to live on my wife's income," says Roseman, 37, who previously worked as a development engineer in the auto industry. "We got rid of car debt, credit card debt, cut our spending and built up our savings."
Every semester, Roseman talks to his boys about his schedule and explains when he will be spending time with them. When he started school, for example, he made a point of getting them ready in the morning and taking them to school because he would have less time with them in the evening while he was in classes. He and his wife also discussed Roseman's plans with the boys' preschool teachers and asked them to watch for any emotional changes. Luckily, neither of the boys appeared to have a negative reaction when Roseman started school.
Although he gave up a high-paying job, Roseman is eager to find work in a field that will use his skills to help people solve problems that will affect their future — rather than their cars.
The pros of maturity
Although Roseman occasionally felt a twinge of envy when his younger counterparts had more freedom to do research or study at all hours, the benefits of being a little older were also noticeable.
"Managing stress seemed a little easier because I had learned what was really important in life," he says. "I felt like I had a different perspective on how to approach classes, and I noticed that younger students seemed to have fear about exams or papers."
After 10 years in the auto industry, Roseman was also cognizant of his strengths and weaknesses, and could compensate accordingly. For example, deadlines in the business world had taught him how to budget his time. He also knew that he was not the type of student who would do well if he stayed up late finishing a 10-page essay the night before it was due.
A study published in 2012 suggests that the wisdom Roseman had accumulated with age may be a common experience for nontraditional students. In the study, published in the Journal of College Student Development, researchers surveyed traditional and nontraditional students to investigate differences in coping strategies, and they discovered that traditional students were far more likely to employ emotion-oriented coping strategies.
"They tend to focus on their emotions when they confront a challenge," says Marcus Johnson, PhD, lead author of the study and an assistant professor in the School of Education at the University of Cincinnati. "For example, if they begin to feel stress about a deadline, instead of being active in trying to meet the deadline, they are more likely to focus on negative emotions."
By comparison, nontraditional students are more apt to turn to task-oriented coping strategies to overcome the stressor, such as thinking about what steps to take next and devising a plan of action. Johnson is conducting a follow-up study, and he has found that nontraditional students report higher levels of self-efficacy than their younger counterparts.
"They have a more optimistic belief that if they put effort into their studies, they will succeed," Johnson says. "They also report better relationships with professors and instructors and see them as an academic resource."
He has also found that the older students report higher levels of intrinsic motivation and interest, which could be attributed in part to having a clearer view of their goals.
Johnson believes that his findings contradict the cultural stereotypes about older students. "I think there is public perception that nontraditional students are challenged academically and the odds are stacked against them, but in reality they have more adaptive psychological characteristics and these students tend to fare pretty well," he says.
Age diversity benefits schools
Older students may also have a slight advantage when it comes to grasping course content simply because they have often had more opportunities to encounter different people.
"Their life experience can help them come into the program understanding the wide range of human behavior," says David Cimbora, PhD, director of clinical training and an associate psychology professor at Biola University in California. "When they walk into a psychopathology course, they will likely draw on these experiences with people to understand abnormal and normal behavior."
A longer life history also can be an asset when working with clients during practicum and internships, Cimbora says. "We know that it is easier to make empathic connections with shared experience, and older students usually have had more opportunities for shared experience with clients," he says. "Younger students who are single, without children and have not been in the workforce, for example, may struggle to understand what those circumstances feel like for a client."
Cimbora believes the perspective that comes with age not only helps the nontraditional student succeed individually, but it also benefits the entire cohort. During the admissions process at Biola, psychology professors discuss with applicants the importance of developing relationships within a cohort that is quite diverse. To facilitate cohort bonding, the school sponsors a dinner, luncheon and picnic early in the program; family members and significant others are encouraged to attend.
"Nontraditional students are an important population, and we need to understand how to best educate and train them," Cimbora says. "If we are about providing human service, then we have to be a diverse field. I or any other psychologist may not be the best psychologist for everyone, but collectively we can be the best for someone."
School after retirement
According to APA membership records from 2013, the likelihood of returning to graduate school decreases with age. Approximately 66 percent of APA members were 34 or younger when they received their doctoral degree. About 16 percent were 35 to 39 years old, about 8 percent were 40 to 44, and only about 5 percent were 45 to 49.
Despite these statistics, Robyn El-Bardai, 74, of Oakland, California, says it is never too late to return to school. After working in education and personnel management for 30 years, she decided to apply to psychology graduate school to pursue her lifelong interest in helping immigrants and refugees. She grew up in Australia and had never forgotten the immigrants who flooded Australia after World War II — and were disliked by local Australians. She earned a PsyD degree at the California School of Professional Psychology and is now applying to jobs related to her dream.
"I'm very excited about my next step," she says. "I always had my eye on the goal, and I didn't mind being older than my instructors and sitting with students who were younger than my own children. I can see all of the different threads of my life and how they led to where I am today, and it just keeps getting better."