Particularly burdened and on the verge of dropping out? Nontraditional students at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic

The Corona pandemic led to profound changes in studying and living situations, as well as financial and psychological stress, which may particularly affect non-traditional students. In this context, we analyse here how non-traditional students, traditional students, and students with a subject-related or technical college entrance qualification differ in their perceptions of stress and their intentions to drop out. Our results show that the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic do not differ significantly for the three groups studied here. Thus, the pre-university educational path has less influence on the students’ perception of stress and intention to drop out than their particular life situations.