Our Changing Students and Their Impact on Colleges: Prospects for a True Learning Society.

Abstract

Some educators look at predicted changes in student characteristics ? especially at demographic projections ? and see mostly threat. Others look toward markets and needs and see most ly opportunity. By and large, the pessi mists are in traditional colleges geared to serving a selected, residential, full-time student body of 18to 21-year-olds. As educational planners and budget officers know only too well, the number of 18to 21-year-olds in the U.S. will peak this year and then drop until 1995, when it will begin to rise again. Today's optimists about the future of higher education tend to come from open admissions, nonresidential colleges serv ing part-time and full-time students across the full spectrum of age and ability. Theoretically, open-door commuter col leges are nowhere near their growth ceil ing, and they appear to be in a strong position to tap two groups of potential college students who are underrepresented in the college-going population today. The majority of working adults are not now taking college classes, and neither are the majority of 18-year-olds from the lower socioeconomic half of the popula tion. There is a lot of talk these days about a student clientele, commonly referred to as new and stu dents. While these terms are bandied about without much precision, there does seem to be a general understanding that and nontraditional students are all of those who were underrepresented in col lege student bodies around the year 1950. They consist of rising proportions of ethnic minorities, low-income students, women, low academic achievers, adult part-time students, and the handicapped. In the interest of clarity, I separate the student clientele into two major groups, defining them not by Census Bureau descriptors such as age, sex, and race, but in terms of educational needs. In