Navigating Higher Education “Nontraditionally”: Opportunities and Obstacles in Post-Traditional College Pathways to the Baccalaureate

A growing number of students initially enroll at four-year institutions as “traditional” but encounter discontinuous college trajectories and an extended time-to-degree. Much is unknown, however, about these students, whom we define as post-traditional. Using Bourdieu’s conception of capital as a framework, our qualitative study examines what stands in the way of these students completing a bachelor’s degree on time and what helps them to finish. Using data from 40 post-traditional college graduates, we found that social isolation was a common barrier to persistence, compounding other difficulties with help-seeking and limited financial support. Post-traditional graduates were able to persist and overcome their obstacles by activating capital in the form of economic resources, acquiring bureaucratic know-how, and finding communities of support. By elucidating the complexities of post-traditional student experiences, we argue for higher education to embrace new policies and practices that improve how we serve the students often discussed as “nontraditional.”