Eight years after John Walker stopped going to college classes at Murray State University in western Kentucky, he returned as an adult college graduate student at the University of Wisconsin.
But Walker’s path to UW had a lot of detours. He worked in Kentucky as a local journalist, later moving to Germany to work at a dairy farm. When Walker returned to the U.S., he hiked 2,700 miles along the Pacific Crest Trail from Mexico to Canada and eventually ended up in St. Louis as a busboy.
It wasn’t until he was New Zealand on a mountain overlooking at a lake wondering “what next?” that he realized he wanted to return to school.
Walker started his freshman year in 2007 right as the Great Recession swallowed up the United States and graduated in 2012 with degrees in journalism and anthropology. In fall 2020, while in the throes of the COVID-19 pandemic, Walker started his first year as a graduate student in UW’s Library Information Science program, housed within the UW iSchool at the School of Computer, Data and Information Sciences.
“A lot of people — at least in my program who are nontraditional — are still working, or they’ve already had their families and they’re just doing part time classes and they’re not as involved,” Walker said. “I’ve come back as a full time student, and that makes it very different for me than other people usually who are my age.”
Walker is not alone in this unique educational journey, as returning and nontraditional students flock back to gain degrees as the pandemic continues to surge.
At the UW, the Adult Career and Special Student Services offers special and guest student admission, education planning and career services for special/nontraditional students like Scala.
Nontraditional students often fall into the category based on their age or other variables in their lives that can interfere with successful completion of their education, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.
Tuition rates for individual students are calculated based on a number of factors including academic program, the number of credits taken and residency status.
“[Special students] can include high schoolers wanting to take classes at UW-Madison, auditors, and all people in between,” Associate Dean and Director of Continuing Studies Martin Rouse said.
Adult students are typically classified as being age 24 or older and return to school for a variety of reasons, Rouse said.
Like Walker, some older individuals want to finish what they started after years in the workforce. Currently, the oldest undergraduate at UW is 73 years old.
“Often, [special students] never finished, want to come back and want to learn about something they’re interested in,” Rouse said.
Rouse believes other adults, still in the midst of their career, return because they want a better job that requires additional credentials to help themselves and their families.
Nontraditional students face unique challenges in higher education, with factors like fear, children, difficulty with technology and a lack of confidence potentially complicating their experience at UW, Rouse said. He also said there can be more pressing financial concerns for adult students who are busy with their work and home lives and struggle to fulfill the credit load required to qualify for financial aid.
“There’s definitely a lot of times when I feel very alienated from the experiences of — or my lack of experiences [compared to] — my peers,” Walker said. “And that’s okay. It’s not a bad thing, and I just try to find a good synthesis to those relationships and understand that everybody’s on their on journey, on different places.”
Compared to other universities, UW is more traditional in the sense that the percentage of nontraditional students enrolled is significantly lower, Rouse said. According to the NCES, changes in enrollment can be indicative of institutions success — or lack thereof — in reaching less traditional students and attracting them to nontraditional programs.
Before the pandemic, the drop-out rate for nontraditional students after their first year of college was more than double the rates of traditional students. Adult students may face the additional impacts of COVID-19 on their employment and family life, and mental health issues also appear more prevalent among nontraditional students.
But the COVID-19 pandemic has led to the introduction of more online courses and programs at UW and other universities across the country. Adults who have taken on the responsibility of assisting their children with at home school or who have jobs keeping them busy throughout the day may find online schooling to be favorable.
“Offering more online degrees works really well for nontraditional students,” Rouse said.
Adult Career and Special Student Services services coordinator Ace Hilliard said he hopes to see UW expand into online programs to increase accessibility to higher education. Hilliard said online classes bring in different populations, noting the pandemic may bring adults back to school in pursuit of a career change or exploration.
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“Being in jobs related to hospitality, the medical field, teaching … can be detrimental to well being,” Hilliard said when asked if the COVID-19 pandemic has brought in an influx of special and returning adult students.
Walker, who started his first year of graduate school during the pandemic, said he wasn’t able to get the full UW experience due to most of his degree being online, plus the postponement of other programs like Wisconsin Hoofers, an outdoors club, and the in-person events at the Unions.
The ACSSS has also introduced the Badger Ready program — which Rouse called a “forgiveness program” — that specializes in assisting adult students over the age of 25 and veterans of all ages in transferring to UW when they otherwise would not be able to. To qualify for the program, students must have previously completed 24 credits of college work and taken two cumulative years off of schooling.
The program typically requires students to complete 12 credits of UW courses over two to four semesters with a grade point average of at least 3.0. After completion, students may be eligible for admission as a transfer student. To date, Rouse said the Badger Ready program has helped 58 participants over the last three years with six graduates.
Managing Editor Arushi Gupta contributed to this report.
