When we conjure up the image of the typical college student, we often imagine an 18-year-old student, fresh out of high school who is both nervous and excited to enter this new chapter. For the next four years, this typical student will be living in a dorm, navigating campus life while also negotiating a path into adulthood with the determined hope that he or she will leave college with a degree in hand, and an optimistic future.
But, what if you’re in your late twenties or even older? What if your path to earning a college degree was delayed or interrupted? What if life continued to get in the way?
The first image many people create when thinking of the traditional college student is overly simplified for sure, but the non-traditional student’s circumstances referenced above are in line with many students’ realities. The distinction that is most worthy of emphasis between the traditional student and the non-traditional student, is that for the non-traditional student, the many hallmarks of “being” a college student are not in place. When life outside of school is tugging at you, it can be an ongoing battle to truly believe that you fit it, or that you even belong in college. Perhaps it is not just that this student population is struggling to learn how to be a college student (which of course, is imperative), but even more profoundly, that they are struggling to believe that who they are is enough to be successful. As such, poorly timed advice to utilize resources intended to build skill and dispense knowledge often fail to make an impact. The key to engaging non-traditional students is timely and intentional interventions, and a necessary component of that engagement is approaching their needs from a non-cognitive perspective. It is essential for non-traditional students to cultivate a foundation of belief before they can be receptive to investing in acquiring knowledge or skills.
The beauty is that this vital process can be ignited through digital nudges and that this solution is both economically scalable for institutions, while also holding the potential for enormous student impact.
The critical piece is that all students should not be treated the same – because, they are not the same. Non-traditional students need different nudges and support at different times than do traditional students. They need content that from day one shows them evidence of the success of their peers. They need access to people like them as examples of success. They need their circumstances normalized as part of the modern college experience and to have the felt-experience of “I am not alone”. They need “engineered serendipity” which translates into digital content delivered to them when they need it, not after the disengagement has already surfaced. Most colleges and universities already have the data necessary to make this a reality, but it is yet to be channeled into timely, personally meaningful content so that all students can consume it in an easily digestible fashion.
What would that look like for the non-traditional student to feel a sense of belonging and camaraderie? What would that be like? I imagine that it would have the power to shift student identity; an identity that includes many more faces, ages, and experiences – a more empowered persona that has been identified early and made to feel and believe that who they are is enough and is intentionally mirrored along their path to success.