The "old" new resources for education-student age

Student age in community colleges has been steadily increasing for years. Does this graying of the students affect the quality of the learning in our institutions? If the students in continuing education courses are among the grayest students served by the community college, are they apt to be the weakest students? Questions like these have enlivened faculty room discussions for years. Conventional wisdom is reflected in the observation that evening students are "more fun to teach " than the younger students encountered in morning classes. This study attempts to provide a summary of the related literature and some direct empirical evidence to inform these discussions. The purpose of this research is to explore the proposition that nontraditional college students (older students) exhibit higher academic achievement than traditional (younger) students, using GPA as the criteria for determining achievement. The specific questions examined in this paper include (a) Is there an academic difference between the two student groups? (b) Do nontraditional students have different academic orientations? and (c) What factors, if any, generate differences in academic achievement? Definition of Terms Nontraditional students are defined as those adult college students over 25 years of age. Traditional college students are those college students between the ages of 18 and 22. Grade point average (GPA), on a 4.00 point scale, is used as the measure of academic performance. Prior Research Several researchers have shown that nontraditional students achieve higher grades than traditional students (Honzik &amp