Lauren RabainoChances are you’ve shared a class with at least one of them.
Sometimes they sit hunkered down over a book in the library, brows focused and intent on learning the material, and most of the time aloof to the clucking pack of sorority girls or hooting fraternity boys that just walked by.
They sit in the front row, seem to know everything about anything, and at the end of the day, some of them, might even have to go pick up their kids before heading off to that late shift at work.
They’re not instructors, university staff members or evaluators, but rather an on-campus minority that makes up roughly 10 percent of the undergraduate population at Cal Poly – the nontraditional student.
“I’m 33, I live on my own, I pay rent and all that stuff,” said landscape architechture undergraduate and nontraditional student Michelle Neff. “I don’t rely on my parents (and) I’m not claimed as a dependent on their taxes.”
The most current statistic on nontraditional students at Cal Poly, listed by the Institutional Planning and Analysis’ Common Set Date sheet from 2006-07, lists 8.8 percent of its undergraduates as nontraditional students. Cal Poly defines nontraditional students as undergraduates over the age of 25.
“I’ve learned to adapt to the fact that I’m 33 and that almost everybody else is 19 or 20,” Neff said “I don’t mind it too much. It kind of makes me young again. I kind of relive what I went through back then.”
Neff, a New Hampshire transplant, graduated from high school in 1993 and was accepted to Ohio State for the ensuing school year but after a two-week bout with the large amount of people at Ohio State, she returned home and enrolled in the University of New Hampshire for the following spring semester.
“I went to school the first time and bombed pretty much,” Neff said. “I started with marine biology and I failed biology so I figured that wasn’t for me. I tried communications and bombed my communications classes and then I ended up going liberal arts after that and then after that I just got kicked out. I just wasn’t ready at all.”
Cal Poly’s definition of nontraditional differs from that of the United States Department of Education.
The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) more carefully worded a definition for a nontraditional student, stating that nontraditional students are those who: Do not enroll in higher education in the same year that they graduated from high school; attends school at least part time during the school year; works 35 or more hours a week while in school, is financially independent; is a single parent and does not have a high school diploma or GED.
From that set of criteria, the study could evaluate whether a student was traditional, minimally nontraditional, moderately nontraditional or highly nontraditional.
By those standards, a study conducted by the NCES during the 1999-2000 academic year and released in a 2002 analysis found that about 75 percent of college and university undergraduates fell into the category of nontraditional, with the most common cause being students who were fiscally independent.
Public two-year colleges, like Cuesta College or Allan Hancock College, recorded the highest enrollment of nontraditional students, followed by public four-year schools, such as those in the Cal State or University of California systems, and then private schools.
Neff said that she “took some time off” to do her “own thing” after dropping out of UNH and went through moves to New Orleans, Colorado and eventually to California, which she said gave her the time to find a career that she was interested in, as well as the motivation to return to the classroom.
After moving to Santa Barbara, Neff took a job in landscaping and realized that she enjoyed the aspects of the field. “I realized that I really had a feel for working with plants,” she said.
Just being enrolled in higher education for the duration that Neff has been is quite an accomplishment. The national statistics indicate that half of highly nontraditional students who enroll in higher education will drop out within three years.
If she is able to obtain her degree from her five-year program, Neff will be among the 38 percent of students – based on the 2002 NCES analysis – to do so.
“It can take its toll,” she said. “It is kind of exhausting being around much younger kids that don’t take things as seriously, they goof off quite a bit. Overall, I actually enjoy that I’m with (the landscape architechture program).”
Nontraditional undergraduate enrollment at Cal Poly saw a decline from 8 percent in the 2002-03 school year to 5 percent in the 2005-2006 year. But even those statistics are down dramatically from the average of 11 percent enrolled between the 1998-99 and 2000-01 academic years.
Sometimes, however, it’s not a lack of motivation early on or a need to find one’s interest that keeps nontraditional students out of higher education.
“My mom’s mom in Bishop, California wasn’t doing so well and it was basically a family crisis and I moved home … actually in between a semester,” said 24-year-old Grover Beach resident, Craft Jones.
“Some professors understood and gave me credit, and some professors didn’t and didn’t give me any.”
Jones attended Humboldt State University for four years in pursuit of a degree in business, but came up shy of a bachelor’s degree when he left school and moved back home to Bishop to help out during his family’s crisis.
“I’m about 100 percent sure that I need 18 (units) to finish up my bachelor’s (degree),” Jones said.
Jones, who moved to the Central Coast in December of 2007 with his fiance, Julia Watkins, has aspirations of applying to Cal Poly in the next few years but has decided to put his education on hold to work while she pursues a master’s degree.
“I think I might actually wait for Julia to possibly at least enter in and start her master’s program before I go in and finish up my undergraduate … so we have our finances straight for the most part,” Jones said.
Jones is planning on returning to school before 2011, and notes that the return trip to higher education as a nontraditional student could present a change in atmosphere from what he was previously accustomed to.
“Probably the biggest change for me would be (being) back with people and socializing constantly because that’s one big thing about going to college, you know, is that you have to socialize,” Jones said.
Despite that, Jones has no qualms with being a nontraditional student.
“I don’t think it would be any worse than going into any college being a freshman,” Jones said.
“Being a freshman is the worst of the worst. I think being a nontraditional student wouldn’t be half bad at all.”
Neff, on the other hand, said she has experienced somewhat of a self-inflicted pressure to get done.
“I am always focused on my age, I don’t know why it bugs me so much that I’m 33 and everyone else is (young),” she said. “I just feel like I need to hurry up.”