NON-TRADITIONAL (ADULT) BUSINESS STUDENTS AND THEIR PERCEPTIONS OF ACCOUNTING IN AN INTRODUCTORY ACCOUNTING COURSE

This study examined non-traditional undergraduate student's perception of accounting in an introductory accounting course at five campuses of a Christian university in the southeast region of the U. S. The consensuses of the student's perceptions were positive over the perceptional items measured. However, three of the items FORWARD(I am looking forward this course), DIFFICULT (This course will be difficult), and INSTRUCTOR (The instructor will affect my opinion of the usefulness of this course) indicated a change between the groups. In the pre-survey response, non-traditional students perceived FORWARD and INSTRUCTOR higher than traditional students while both groups have an almost identical mean response for DIFFICULT. However, at end of the semester (post-survey) traditional students now perceived both FORWARD and INSTRUCTOR higher while non-traditional students now perceived the course to be more difficult. The findings in this study support the ideas and premise that non-traditional students are quite different from traditional students, not just because of the obvious age differences but also because of the differences in job, related experiences, and their needs as relate to educational institutions.