From Pillars to PCs: The Evolution of the 'Traditional' College Experience

News Beat

A college lecture used to be given to a classroom of newly graduated 18-year-olds looking for the ‘time of their life’ and the ‘full college experience’. However, times have changed.“[In fact], it's been nearly a decade since the National Center for Education Statistics announced that 73 percent of all undergraduates don't fit that mold,” according to NPR. Often these days, students attend college part-time, as well as attend lectures online and are also busy working and/or providing for their family. The majority of “traditional” students are now enrolled in online schools, or at community and for-profit colleges. In 2010, almost half of all college students were financially independent. In addition, about 50 percent were enrolled in college part-time, 38 percent worked full-time, and 27 percent had their own dependents, according to USA Today using National Center for Education Statistics. Also, about 12 million students – which is almost half the amount of college students in the nation – attended two-year colleges rather than four-year schools. “There is a new era of education; the nontraditional student is really the traditional student nowadays,” Rasmussen College Blaine Campus Director Patty Sagert said. “This is really the traditional student of the future.” The Economy Forces Students to Change The economy appears to be the reason so many students originally began to change their expectations of college. As people without a degree began to get laid off or started stressing about the possibility of losing their jobs, they began enrolling in college. They did so because they noticed the minimum requirement to get a new job in the current job market was to have an associate or bachelor’s degree. “…A lot of people [are] going back to college to get credentials to upgrade their skills to be more competitive in the job market,” according to NPR. Like stated earlier in this article, students are no longer moving directly from high ...

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