Nontraditional education is interpreting and evaluating a student's prior work experience for academic credits. Traditional education provides standard curricula with programs which are identical or comparable to similarly titled programs across the land. Non-traditional education provides new or unique, special purpose curricula in programs not commonly available from traditional institutions. Traditional education is prescribed for the student by the institution. Nontraditional education provides for some self-prescribed curriculum as input from the student in a learning contract with the institution.
Traditional education puts institutional and faculty needs first.
Non-traditional education puts the student's needs first. Traditional college education has been designed for uninterrupted filling up with knowledge by internal, full-time students. Nontraditional college education advocates intermittent learning with its application in the real workplace, using acquired knowledge and skills by external, working, part-time students. Nontraditional college education 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. Traditional college-level education requires expansive buildings and grounds including classrooms, stadiums and massive, bound library holdings at central campuses.