Applications to counseling, college student affairs work, administration, and leadership. Human development is a lifelong process . Student development focuses specifically on the development that traditional age students experience during their college careers. Some developmental tasks only begin during college and continue to challenge adults throughout their lifetimes. There are also an increasing number of nontraditional students in college, who may have different developmental experiences.
Development occurs in a variety of arenas including cognitive and psychosocial development.
Personality types and the ways in which students interact with their environments affect development. Each theory or category of theory attempts to explain a different aspect of development. Thus, theories can be combined to explain more about student development. While some staff consider student development to be the primary goal of the university, certainly it is the focus of student affairs staff members. Student affairs staff emphasize the development of the whole student , that is all aspects of students development, including career development.