Non-traditional Students Between Online and Offline: Which Way Forward for Higher Education?

The expansion of higher education has led to a more diverse student population, theorized around the concept of the non-traditional student. This term is used to describe students whose socio-demographic characteristics, motivations, study engagement and experiences differ from those of traditional higher education participants. The non-traditional student population is a highly heterogeneous group in which the individual student presents with specific motivations, needs, and constraints, but a common requirement is for more flexible teaching and learning methods to meet their complex educational needs. We here examine this demand for flexibility through the preferences students express for online teaching methods, and we investigate whether differences between traditional and non-traditional students are mainly due to inequalities, the role of parental education in particular, or on the contrary, whether they are related to certain characteristics such as age, employment and residential status. The data used in this investigation was collected during the period characterized by the containment measures linked to the Covid-19 pandemic from students enrolled at the University of Bologna. The results of the investigation presented below confirm that non-traditional students exhibit a clear preference for online as opposed to face-to-face learning and that parental education is particularly relevant for those under 25.