50-50 Highlights: Colleges for Non-traditional Students

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In case you haven’t heard, most college students aren’t the traditional 18-year-olds, starting college full-time the fall after they graduate from high school. That’s because the term college students include both part-time and full-time as well as those attending community colleges, for-profit schools, and school that don’t offer degrees.

Ultimately, there really isn’t anything new about the situation. It seems to be reported as some sort of challenge to higher education but that challenge has been around for sometime.

Let’s go over some numbers for today’s college students. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, if you only consider degree granting institutions, non-traditional students lose their majority and make up only 39.3% of all college students. If you just look at students attending four-year institutions, you’ll see that students under the age of 25 (traditional) make-up 61.3% of all undergraduates. And if you look at only full-time students, they account for 72.8% of undergraduates.

Still, that means that over a quarter of all full-time students are age 25 or older. And these non-traditional students will likely have different needs than your average 18-year-old. Yet whatever those differences are, they’ll still share the same goal–to graduate.

According to Completing College: A National View of Student Attainment Rates, the average six-year graduation rate for full-time students 24 years-old and younger is 43.4%. For those who start their degree after age 24, the graduation rate is 35.9%. Clearly, there appears to be some advantages to starting earlier.

However, older students are more likely to graduate while going part-time than those age 24 and younger. The completion rate for older students (at any institution) was 27.5% compared to 9.6% for younger students.

For those looking for colleges for non-traditional students, the following table lists the 50-50 colleges where ten percent or more of the full-time undergraduates are 25 years-old or older. Unfortunately, there’s no way on knowing how many of these students are actually counted in the graduation rate since it doesn’t include students who have transferred or returned to school. It only counts first-time full-time undergraduates.

Yet it seems reasonable that colleges with a larger percentage of older students are more likely to provide services targeted for their concerns. As usual, the four-year rate is used for private colleges and the five-year rate for public universities.

50-50 Colleges with Highest Percentage of
Full-time Undergraduates Over Age 24
(download PDF version for a limited time)

Name	Type	State	Full- time Under- grad	% Full- time Under- grads age 25 & above	6 yr Grad Rate- All	4/5 yr Grad Rate
Everglades University	Private	FL	1184	86	62	58
Indiana Wesleyan University	Private	IN	9581	67	65	55
Keiser University-Ft Lauderdale	Private	FL	12007	63	57	59
Gwynedd Mercy University	Private	PA	1851	40	66	50
The Evergreen State College	Public	WA	3766	33	57	53
Mercy College of Ohio	Private	OH	501	31	68	59
Guilford College	Private	NC	1928	30	57	49
Centenary College	Private	NJ	1610	29	57	56
Arizona State University-Polytechnic	Public	AZ	2789	28	55	51
Arizona State University-West	Public	AZ	2694	26	55	50
Roberts Wesleyan College	Private	NY	1225	26	61	53
Lancaster Bible College	Private	PA	814	25	70	54
Salem College	Private	NC	827	25	64	61
Union University	Private	TN	2175	22	64	51
University of Utah	Public	UT	17319	22	60	49
University of Washington-Bothell Campus	Public	WA	3432	22	68	61
Eastern University	Private	PA	2076	21	55	49
Eastern Mennonite University	Private	VA	1122	20	64	50
College of Our Lady of the Elms	Private	MA	1006	19	68	57
Moody Bible Institute	Private	IL	2413	19	84	65
Mount Vernon Nazarene University	Private	OH	1450	19	61	49
The College of Saint Scholastica	Private	MN	2423	19	68	59
California Maritime Academy	Public	CA	1008	18	59	57
Pennsylvania State University-Penn State Dubois	Public	PA	557	18	56	50
University of New Hampshire at Manchester	Public	NH	599	18	42	56
John Brown University	Private	AR	1571	17	65	55
Mount Mercy University	Private	IA	882	17	73	66
The University of Texas at Dallas	Public	TX	10635	17	63	59
Central Washington University	Public	WA	8996	16	51	50
Mills College	Private	CA	922	16	61	53
Rutgers University-Newark	Public	NJ	5827	16	68	60
Cedar Crest College	Private	PA	640	15	60	50
The Sage Colleges	Private	NY	1446	14	58	52
Trinity Christian College	Private	IL	1106	14	58	49
University of North Carolina at Asheville	Public	NC	3129	14	60	56
Columbia International University	Private	SC	511	13	65	52
George Mason University	Public	VA	17261	13	67	61
Oklahoma City University	Private	OK	1754	13	61	49
Pennsylvania State University-Penn State Harrisburg	Public	PA	3121	13	61	56
The New School	Private	NY	5878	13	63	50
California University of Pennsylvania	Public	PA	5649	12	50	50
Clarke University	Private	IA	877	12	70	59
Geneva College	Private	PA	1475	12	67	59
Milligan College	Private	TN	884	12	52	52
Oklahoma Wesleyan University	Private	OK	571	12	57	50
The Richard Stockton College of New Jersey	Public	NJ	6953	12	65	61
University of North Carolina at Greensboro	Public	NC	12469	12	55	50
Arizona State University-Tempe	Public	AZ	34989	11	59	55
Asbury University	Private	KY	1326	11	64	56
DeSales University	Private	PA	1836	11	70	63
Eckerd College	Private	FL	1947	11	66	59
Missouri State University-Springfield	Public	MO	13805	11	53	50
Mount St Mary's College	Private	CA	2092	11	64	52
Oregon State University	Public	OR	18484	11	61	55
Pennsylvania State University-Penn State New Kensington	Public	PA	524	11	54	51
Rollins College	Private	FL	2366	11	67	61
Saint Joseph's College-New York	Private	NY	3591	11	72	56
University of Central Florida	Public	FL	36229	11	67	61
University of Central Missouri	Public	MO	8290	11	54	50
Washington State University	Public	WA	20312	11	65	62
Adelphi University	Private	NY	4531	10	63	53
Albany College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences	Private	NY	1059	10	72	72
Concordia University-Irvine	Private	CA	1746	10	63	54
Hollins University	Private	VA	561	10	60	56
Simpson College	Private	IA	1486	10	65	55
Texas State University	Public	TX	25683	10	57	51
University of Maryland-Baltimore County	Public	MD	9508	10	65	59
University of North Carolina Wilmington	Public	NC	11408	10	71	68

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50-50 Highlights: Colleges for Non-traditional Students

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