School Sucks

School Sucks

An exploration of identity, motivations and concerns of non-traditional students at different stages of higher education
Jacqui Taylor & Becky House
Non-traditional students are increasingly making up a larger part of the student body and can include students from various groupings, for example, differentiated by ethnicity, socio-economic class (SEC), disability, residential location or age. The aim of this initial exploratory study was to investigate whether and how the motivations, identity and concerns of different types of non-traditional psychology students differed from each other. Previous research has either investigated all types of non-traditional students together with no breakdown according to specific category, or focused on one category (e.g. mature versus non-mature students). A questionnaire was sent to a cross-sectional sample of pre-University, first-year, second-year, thirdyear and graduate students to collect mainly qualitative data. Questions addressed a number of areas: motivation to go to University; post-University aspirations; identity; and student concerns. There were interesting gender differences with regard to the motivations to go to University; with males more likely to give reasons relating to intrinsic factors and females stating extrinsic factors, supporting previous research. The findings relating to identity showed that mature students were more negative in their self-descriptions, but for second-year and third-year students, mature students were more likely to indicate changes to their identity since joining University. It will be interesting in the next stage of planned research to track changes in identity over time; as this study provides just a snapshot at each stage of the degree. The findings showed that student concerns frequently related to the reason for their being classified as a non-traditional student. For example: financial concerns were more often stated by those from lower socio-economic backgrounds; and mature...