April Floyd didn’t enter college when she was 19. She gave birth to a daughter.

Now, 10 years later, Floyd, Basehor, is on her way to completing a Kansas University architectural engineering degree she’s wanted for as long as she can remember.

“Mom was 16 when she had me, and I wanted to break that cycle,” Floyd said. “I wanted to show my daughter it could be done.”

The number of nontraditional students such as Floyd is increasing nationwide, according to a U.S. Department of Education report released last week.

Under the department’s broad definition, more than 75 percent of undergraduate students in the United States are nontraditional. According to the federal government, nontraditional students are those who are financially independent, attend part time, didn’t enroll directly after high school, work full time, have dependents or earned a GED.

The percentage, based on the 1999-2000 academic year, is up from 73 percent in the 1992-1993 year.

The report also cites the need for universities to attend to the needs of nontraditional students, because 50 percent of them leave school without a degree, compared with 12 percent of traditional students.

Narrower definition

KU’s definition of nontraditional student is less broad. At KU, a nontraditional undergraduate is anyone who:

Delays enrollment after high school at least three years.

Commutes at least 10 miles to campus.

Is a parent or is married.

Is a military veteran.

KU doesn’t keep official numbers on how many students fall into one or more of those categories.

But based solely on age, the number of nontraditional students appears to be decreasing. In fall 1993, when KU began recording the ages of undergraduates, 11.5 percent of students were 25 or older. That number was 7.4 percent last fall.

Laura Morgan, assistant director of KU’s Student Development Center, said nontraditional students added another type of diversity at KU.

“As far as adding variety and real-life experience in the classroom, I think faculty relish the perspective nontraditional students bring,” she said.

Though the number of students over 25 is decreasing, Morgan said other types of nontraditional students including commuters are on the rise.

“We try to capture and not label students but use our services to systematically do some outreach for students who have more than the average difficulties to surmount when getting their degrees here,” she said.

Balancing responsibility

Floyd, 29, felt those difficulties from the start.

After years of being a stay-at-home mom, she decided to attend KU four years ago. Someday she wants to restore historical buildings.

She said she felt like she had to prove herself to her professors and to her fellow students, who were as much as seven years younger than her.

“You have to re-learn everything again,” she said. “You don’t realize you know how to study until you don’t do it for awhile.”

And having to study in the evening didn’t mean her home responsibilities went away.

“You’re trying to balance being a wife, a mother and a student,” she said. “At some point you have to accept Cs and Bs are pretty damn good and As are a miracle.”

Travis Plummer, who finishes his classwork in electrical engineering and computer science this summer, faced similar challenges. He took some classes at Labette County Community College and Pittsburg State University before joining the Navy 10 years ago.

“When I initially got out of high school, I went to college, but I didn’t really know what I wanted to do,” he said. “So I joined the military.”

‘It’s personal’

Plummer, 29, plans to someday earn his master’s degree but plans to spend the remaining nine years in the Navy until his retirement.

Dori Gerdes, an administrative specialist at KU’s Hall Center for the Humanities, will begin work on a marketing and communications degree at KU this fall.

Gerdes, 33, has a 12-year-old daughter and is engaged to be married next year. She previously spent a semester each at Ohio University, Ohio State University and Johnson County Community College.

“I was such a young mother,” she said. “I tried college, but it was too tough to juggle being a single mom and taking classes full time.”

She said she’d like the additional money and stature a bachelor’s degree brings. But that’s not her only reason for taking classes.

“It’s personal,” she said. “It’s just to further my education to eventually say I have a degree. It’s been my goal in life since I was a child.”