Study: There's a 75% chance a college student is defined as "nontraditional" these days.

A "nontraditional" student attending a college or university was usually defined as such because of their age. Think of your average 40 or 50-something going back to school to earn a degree.

But that definition has changed. According to the site EducationDive, which used data from The U.S. Department of Education, "nontraditional" today is now defined by three distinct characteristics.


1.) Did you enroll by typical standards?

In essence, did you graduate high school and immediately attend college in the fall? Or did you spend a year backpacking across Europe while picking up a habit for smoking clove cigarettes with a Swedish guy named Bjorn that you met at a hostel in Austria?

Or did you take a semester off in your sophomore year? Maybe because Bjorn was visiting?

Any sort of delay in your four-year college track now defines you as "nontraditional."


2.) What's your financial status?

Are you independent from the teet of mom and dad's checkbook? Can you afford your own groceries without needing a care package in the mail? Are you paying for college so your parents can retire before they're 90? Do you pay for your own apartment (and now, being a poor college student, have diseased lungs because you could only afford an apartment with a mold infestation), or did mom and dad throw cash at some shady landlord for you?

If you're not sucking your parents' bank accounts dry, you're considered a "nontraditional" student.


3.) Did you graduate with a high school diploma or something else, like a GED?

Those in power might call it a "high school equivalency degree," but nowadays there's nothing equal about how you're viewed. Did you get a GED instead? Apparently that makes you "nontraditional" in college, even if the GED is regarding your high school career, not beyond.

Take a second to think the logic through on that one.

As it is, with such broad-reaching characteristics at play, "nontraditional" students now make up three out of every four people attending college.

So if you follow the typical American stereotype of going to college straight out of high school, graduate in four years, and live off your parents, you know what you are now?

A weirdo.