You’re 27 years old. The capitalist hellscape known as the retail job has, by this point, chewed you up and spit you out not once, but three times. You decide it’s time to go for a degree. Because, quite frankly, you’re tired. Tired of breaking your back every day only to make a dollar while the boss makes a million, tired of being spoken down to and tired of being taken advantage of. Society has promised you that a $50,000 piece of paper is what will somehow miraculously make your life better.
You, and students like you, are what’s called "nontraditional," meaning you fit at least one of the following criteria: low-income, first generation, above the age of 23, financially independent, living off campus, and/or are attending part-time. According to the most recent complete study performed by the National Center for Educational Statistics, nontraditional students make up almost 34 percent of overall college and university enrollment. Unfortunately for you, being part of that particular 34 percent all but guarantees that you won't fit in anywhere else, no matter which campus you're on. Though, you don't find that out until later.
You do the whole community college song and dance because, as it turns out, it’s cheaper to go to Tech first than it is to go straight to USC. And where was that information when they were recruiting in high schools? So you fill out the FAFSA—nightmare—and fill out the application—they waive the $35 application fee—and shell out twelve bucks plus postage to get your high school transcripts sent off.
Your freshman year is almost entirely online because of the pandemic. Any and all communication from Tech is solely through email, so at first, you don’t really notice that none of the administrative offices are open past 5 p.m. Not until you go to set up an in-person advising appointment for your first sophomore semester and you have to take half a day off from work to meet with your assigned advisor. When you call during your 15 minute break and ask if there’s another advisor available to meet with you after your shift, you’re told that the advising office closes at 4:30 p.m. and no advisors are available after that time.
Later that semester, when you have a technical issue with the integrated learning platform at 7 p.m. and an assignment due by midnight, you call the number for technical support. An automated message informs you that the help desk closes at 5 p.m. and will reopen tomorrow at 8 a.m. You get a zero on the assignment because technical issues aren’t considered a valid excuse for late submission, as stipulated in the syllabus.
You write these—and several other similar instances—off as just an isolated incident. It was just a Tech issue, not a systemic thing. You find it a little odd, though, that a school that markets itself so heavily for your demographic would not have more flexible hours for the population they claim to serve.
You’re almost 31 years old when you submit the transfer application to USC. Working and going to school has slowed your academic progress, but you’re determined to see it through. You’ve come this far, after all.
You pay the $65 application fee and pay the $12 to send off your transcripts again. Not that you’re counting. Not that you need to count. It’s not like you’re broke or anything. It’s not like it’s taking everything you have just to keep your bills paid and keep up with all the fees and expenses of college not covered by financial aid.
Your application is accepted. "Congratulations!" the email reads. You get another email shortly after telling you that you have to schedule your mandatory transfer orientation. They give you only two dates, both of which are during the week, and both of which occur during a work shift. Orientation also costs $130 and is not covered by financial aid. You put it on a credit card and resolve to worry about it later.
When you get to orientation that early May morning, you realize something kind of startling. You’re… old. Well, older. You'd wager that you're one of the oldest students at the event, older than almost all of the others here. It’s hard to tell at first, because there are so many parents attending, but in August, when classes actually start, it becomes more obvious that you’re something of a unicorn by USC standards—not quite unique, as there are maybe a handful of others like you, but definitely rare.
You learn very, very quickly that you should probably keep your age to yourself. The one—and only—time you volunteer the information, it clearly makes some of your younger classmates uncomfortable. Some of them stop talking to you like you're one of them, and start talking to you as if you're an authority figure, strangely deferential. Others stop talking to you at all. After, when you slip up and say something that hints at being older, or in situations where you’re asked your age outright and don’t want to lie, the response is, invariably, the same:
“Wow, I never would have guessed you’re so old!”
The first time, it feels almost like a compliment—if you squint and don’t read into it too hard. But as time wears on, it starts feeling less like a compliment, and more like an indictment. An almost imperceptible air of "What are you doing here?"
Which makes sense. You’ve been wondering what you’re doing here since the day you stepped onto campus. All these people are younger than you, better looking than you, more in shape than you, and, most frustratingly, seem to be having an easier time being a student than you.
You also are beginning to realize that your experience at Tech wasn’t an aberration. It starts to become clear to you that higher education was not made with someone like you in mind, despite the fact that, in recent years, the average age of the college student has increased. Almost 74 percent of undergraduates fit at least one of the characteristics of a nontraditional student, according to NPR. College infrastructure just hasn’t caught up with folks like you—at least, not yet.
This is driven home when, in your second semester at USC, something goes wrong with your financial aid—you think it’s a FAFSA issue, but your fault or not, the funds are being held up anyway. You don’t have the money to pay even a fraction of your tuition out of pocket, and if you don’t make a payment before the deadline, you’ll be dropped from your classes. You need to talk to someone in student financial services as soon as possible to help fix the issue. The problem becomes even more frustrating, however, when you go to their website to get the phone number and see that their office is only staffed from 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. When you call after hours, there’s no option to leave a message.
Now you have a choice: you could email them, and maybe you’d get a response back before it's too late. Or, you could try to go to the office in person. Except now, you’ve got another problem—the same problem you always have. Your schedule.
Your schedules—school and work—are pretty tight. You don’t have a lot of wiggle room. You’re in classes from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Tuesdays and Thursdays. You get more financial aid if you have a full-time class schedule. You have a lab early Wednesday. And you work the other three days of the week. The financial aid office is, of course, not open on weekends when you actually have time to spare. This means you can either miss a class, which you don’t want to do, to go down to the office while you’re already on campus, or you can miss work, which you can’t afford, to come up to campus on a non-class day. In the end, you take the L and miss class.
It’s your second unexcused absence, the limit for that class. You briefly consider filling out the class absence form. You're tempted to get in writing that school-related issues don’t qualify as an excuse just so the person in the Student Advocacy office whose job it is to write the email can appreciate the irony.
For your entire tenure at USC, you’ve heard nothing but boasting about its “stellar” student experience, about its various top rankings, its leadership opportunities, ad infinitum. The announcements, the emails, the posters are everywhere. Sure, you’re already barely keeping your head above water, but you also don’t want to miss out on the “traditional” college experience. At least not the parts that are accessible to you. You want to diversify your experience, take advantage of and enjoy some of the multitude of university-sponsored events. "There’s so much to choose from!" the university tells you.
How about a guest lecture? It’s $25 for a student ticket.
A literary event? This one’s free, but it’s not anywhere on campus with decent parking.
Maybe the back-to-school bash? Every single event occurs during, you guessed it, your work or class hours.
It’s not as if you don’t know these folks—all the administrative staff, professors, event organizers—have lives outside of the university. But… so do you. Why is their time worth more than yours?
According to one study published in 2019 by the NCES, only 61 percent of full-time and 32 percent of part-time nontraditional students finish their degrees because of various institutional barriers to success.
You wonder if that’s your future. You don’t want it to be. But if universities and colleges refuse to adapt to or accommodate the needs of this growing population of students—students like you—where does that leave you? Where does that leave any of us?
