Core Davidson - Comparison Chart Traditional and Non-Traditional Education

COMPARISON CHART TRADITIONAL AND NON-TRADITIONAL EDUCATION
The following comparison chart provides a brief overview of the differences between traditional and non-traditional education.
	Traditional Education	Non-Traditional Education
Age of Students	Students are 18-22 years of age	Students are 23-? years of age
Learning Format	Involves internal students attending resident classes conducted by internal faculty members on a campus	Involves external students studying independently under advisement of an external mentor at a distance from the institution's homebase
Responsibility	Places responsibility on the instructor	Places responsibility on the student
Required Courses	Taking new courses or retaking old courses for academic credits	Interpreting and evaluating a student's prior work experience for academic credits
Curricula	Provides standard curricula with programmes which are identical or comparable to similarly titled programmes	Provides new or unique, special purpose curricula in programmes not commonly available from traditional institutions
Duration of programme	> 4 years	Recognition of prior learning and life experience significantly decreases the duration of the programme (many students earn their degree after 6 months)
Curricular Standards	Prescribed for the student by the institution	Provides for some self-prescribed curriculum as input from the student in a learning contract with the institution
Priority of Interests	Puts institutional and faculty needs first	Puts the student's needs first.
Higher Education and Work	Designed for uninterrupted filling up with knowledge by internal, full-time students	Advocates intermittent learning with its application in the real workplace, using acquired knowledge and skills by external, working, part-time students
Expiration of Credits	Inclined to pronounce extinction of courses by arbitrarily decreed life spans (5-7 years) requiring the retaking of presumably updated courses of the same or a similar title	Claims to provide for students to close gaps in the currency of their education, resulting from the continuing knowledge explosion, through independent preparation as needed for challenge examinations
Infrastructure and Tuition	Requires expansive buildings and grounds at central campuses which consume extensive funds and increase tuitions	Utilizes small already existing facilities for distributive purposes
Radius	Provides academic faculty members, counsellors, and literary sources at central campus locations with limited geographical radius	Designs equitable national and international distributions of human and literary resources utilizing electronic retrieval, and an evolving electronic media technology