Service-Learning among “Nontraditional” College Students: Contexts, Trends, and Implications

Abstract

Nontraditional students account for a notable proportion of community college students, indeed of students in all of higher education. In the last in-depth, national-level exploration of nontraditional undergraduates by the US Department of Education, Choy (2002) found that only 27 percent of American undergraduates in 2000 met the criteria most commonly associated with “traditional” college students.¹ Put another way, around the turn of the twenty-first century, roughly seven in ten undergraduates were in some way “nontraditional.” Nontraditional students are no longer the exception in American higher education; they are the rule. This fact becomes even more obvious when we observe the proportion of traditional versus nontraditional students by institutional type. While nontraditional students remain the majority in most cases, they are overrepresented in the community college sector. For example, though private and public four-year institutions have surprisingly high percentages of nontraditional students (50 and 48 percent respectively)—especially given the dominant narrative of such institutions as serving more traditional students—these figures were notably higher at public two-year and private for-profit institutions (90 and 89 percent respectively).