Part-Time Love

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Part-time students, even those studying online, do not necessarily struggle to pass their courses. A new national study from Australia, Is the Problem Us? Helping Part-Time Students Succeed in a Full-Time World, from the Australian Centre for Student Equity and Success (ACSES) at Curtin University, combines national sector data with a more detailed analysis of student-level data from four universities. In those four institutions, part-time and full-time online students had virtually identical raw course-success rates. The larger disparity appeared in retention: part-time students could succeed in one course or semester and still struggle to keep moving through the program.

That distinction in where students are coming unstuck matters because it changes where we look for the problem. If part-time students cannot do the academic work, institutions might focus on tutoring or academic preparation. If students are passing courses but not progressing, the problem may instead lie in the student journey: in course availability, program sequencing, compulsory attendance, financial pressure and policies built around uninterrupted full-time study.

The ACSES study is one of two new reports examining part-time student success from markedly different directions. The other, from Ithaka S+R in the United States, begins with the available causal evidence and is consequently drawn toward comprehensive support programs designed to increase academic momentum. The ACSES report begins with national and institutional data alongside part-time students’ experiences, exposing the smaller obstacles that accumulate across their journeys.

Reading the reports together is instructive. They demonstrate how different use of evidence can produce different diagnoses of the same underlying problem, and why the most rigorously evaluated intervention is not necessarily the one most closely aligned with the lives of the students being studied.

Part time is something students do, not who they are

Part-time enrollment is too large to be treated as a marginal category. In Australia, 360,125 domestic university students—35 percent of the total—studied part time in 2024.

In the United States, Ithaka reports that part-time students represented 33 percent of fall 2023 enrollment and 49 percent of students enrolled at some point during the complete 2019–20 academic year. A third of students is not a special population. At that scale, part-time participation is part of the basic operating model of higher education, whether institutions acknowledge it or not.

It is also a population with permeable boundaries. Among US students entering college in 2011–12, 23 percent of those enrolled exclusively full time in their first year moved into part-time or mixed enrollment in their second. Movement also occurred in the other direction: 26 percent of those who began exclusively part time moved into full-time or mixed enrollment.

The Australian institutional data reveal similar movement within the academic year. Across 2022 and 2023, 34 percent of students classified as full time across the year studied part time during at least one principal semester.

The apparent size of the population also depends on when and how it is measured. Ithaka’s fall snapshot places the US part-time share at 33 percent, while its full-year measure captures 49 percent. These figures describe different observation periods rather than a sudden change in student behavior, but the difference shows how much a single census date can conceal.

Australian institutional policies create another form of variation. Some universities calculate load using only the two principal semesters, while others include summer study and aggregate credits across the complete calendar year. At two of the four universities studied, 5,026 students completed what the government considered a full-time annual load but remained classified as part time under institutional policy because their summer credits were excluded. Meanwhile, 87 percent of summer-term enrollments across the four universities were part time, even though many of those students maintained full-time status across the year.

Part-time status is therefore neither a fixed student identity nor a consistently defined condition. It describes a momentary relationship among a student’s circumstances, course load, academic calendar and institutional rules. Part-time status is a shifting category.

Passing courses, losing momentum

Ithaka identifies online enrollment as one of the characteristics associated with part-time study but does not explore it much further. The ACSES report does, revealing an intriguing distinction between success within courses and progression through a program.

Nationally, the course-success rate for part-time online students was only four percentage points below that of full-time online students (Figure 4A). In the student-level data from four universities, the raw course-success rates for part-time and full-time online students were both approximately 79 percent, with no statistically significant difference between them (Figure 4B).

Online study could itself be contributing to poorer outcomes, but this comparison holds delivery mode broadly constant: it compares part-time online students with full-time online students. Within the same mode of study, enrollment intensity made little difference to raw course-success rates in the four-university data.

The difference becomes more pronounced when the report turns from passing courses to retention, defined in the four-university analysis as remaining enrolled at—or graduating from—the same institution the following year. Among online students, the part-time/full-time retention gap was significant even though the raw course-success rates were virtually identical (Figure 7B).

The adjusted analysis tells a similar story. Compared with full-time online undergraduates, part-time online students had 0.77 times the odds of passing but only 0.67 times the odds of being retained. These estimates control for age, disability, socioeconomic status and several other characteristics. Retention, however, does not reliably distinguish among permanent departure, transfer and a temporary pause.

But the distinction between passing courses and retention changes the diagnosis of the problem. Many part-time online students appear capable of passing the courses they take. The larger difficulty arises in maintaining enrollment across semesters and converting a series of successful courses into progress through a program. Work, caregiving and financial pressures matter, but so may course availability, program sequencing, compulsory attendance and policies designed around uninterrupted full-time study.

The distinction between course success and continued progression provides a useful way to read the two reports’ proposed responses. Ithaka looks across the existing research for interventions that have demonstrated effects on persistence and completion. The Australian report looks more closely at what happens as students move through courses and programs. The first approach favors larger-scale and more intensive interventions; the second makes visible the less dramatic institutional frictions that can interrupt an otherwise successful journey. What each report sees as a promising solution follows partly from what it recognizes as persuasive evidence.

The evidence used shapes the solution

Ithaka explicitly recognizes that many students cannot attend full time and criticizes the historical tendency to treat increased course-taking as the principal solution. Yet its commitment to the strong, but also the most widely shared causal evidence pulls it back toward that same logic. Its first and most prominent research priority is the adaptation of comprehensive support programs modeled on CUNY ASAP.

ASAP has produced unusually large improvements in three-year graduation, although the recent 14-year evaluation shows that the permanent completion advantage is considerably smaller than the initial difference.

The difficulty is that the best-supported intervention changes the enrollment behavior that defines the population under discussion. It demonstrates that a comprehensive package can help some students attend more intensively and graduate faster. It tells us much less about how institutions should serve students whose employment, caregiving or health circumstances make sustained full-time study impossible.

Even the part-time adaptations retain some emphasis on enrollment intensity. Nashville Flex participants were 23 percentage points more likely to transition to full-time enrollment, although Ithaka stresses that the program is intended to reduce students’ working hours rather than push them into full-time study. Part-Time SAIL requires at least 18 credits annually, offers larger textbook vouchers for heavier loads and encourages summer enrollment to maintain momentum. Ithaka wants to move beyond ‘make them full time,’ but its strongest available evidence still comes from models that help students increase or sustain their enrollment intensity.

Ithaka’s other priorities include flexible scheduling, recognition of prior learning, financial aid, public benefits and stronger connections between education and employment. These address genuine constraints but operate at very different levels. Some require national or state policy changes; others depend on institutions. The result is a broad research and policy agenda rather than a tightly connected account of where progress through a particular program becomes obstructed and what individual institutions can do about it.

The ACSES report also reaches beyond institutions, recommending changes to income support, scholarship taxation and public-transport eligibility. The difference is one of emphasis. Ithaka organizes its agenda around intervention categories and gaps in causal evidence; the ACSES report devotes much more attention to the institutional machinery through which students must move. Its institutional recommendations fall into three broad groups.

Make each course navigable

An emphasis on course-level changes might seem odd after evidence that part-time online students are generally succeeding in the courses they take. But these recommendations are not primarily about changing academic content or providing remediation. The course is also where students encounter the practical organization of their journey: when materials become available, how assessments are spaced, whether attendance is compulsory and what happens when work or caregiving disrupts a deadline. Friction at that level can make continued enrollment difficult even for students capable of passing the course.

Students therefore asked primarily for predictability and consistency. Ninety-three percent valued well-spaced assessments, 90 percent consistent LMS layouts and 88 percent early access to materials. The report also recommends recordings, clear expectations and routine extensions. None is especially novel, but their cumulative importance is easy to underestimate. Together, they reduce the planning burden placed on students attempting to fit study around relatively fixed work and caregiving responsibilities.

Make the program navigable

The ACSES report is more original when it moves from course design to program architecture. Students wanted explicit part-time pathways showing course sequence, prerequisites, future availability and sensible combinations. Across the four universities, the researchers identified 15 two-course combinations with an average success rate of only 53 percent—approximately 20 points below the rate when the same courses were taken in other combinations. The analysis does not establish that the combinations caused the lower success rates, but it gives institutions a clear set of enrollment patterns to investigate. The report also recommends more reliable course availability and realistic maximum completion periods. These are progression problems: a student can pass each available course and still encounter no workable route to the credential.

Remove full-time assumptions from part-time study

The report also asks universities to reconsider the full-time assumptions embedded in programs that permit part-time enrollment. It recommends fewer compulsory synchronous activities, earlier notice of unavoidable requirements, wider examination windows, part-time placements and recognition of relevant employment. An online program offers limited flexibility if students must attend at a single time, travel to campus repeatedly or leave paid employment for a full-time placement.

The ACSES recommendations are practical, but the evidence supporting them is uneven. Students overwhelmingly prefer consistent LMS structures, early materials and recorded classes, but preferences do not demonstrate that these practices improve retention. The scholarship comparison is observational, while the extension case study cannot fully isolate the policy’s effect. The report provides institutions with a credible map of frictions to investigate, not a proven package guaranteed to increase completion.

Some changes will also be difficult to implement consistently. Universities have encouraged common course templates and recorded classes for years, often with uneven adoption. Reliable part-time course sequences and flexible placements require coordination across academic departments, scheduling, advising and external partners. The recommendations are smaller than a comprehensive program such as ASAP, but they are not necessarily simple.

Rigor, relevance and the missing evidence

Read together, the reports expose an awkward problem in the evidence base. The intervention with the most widely-known causal evidence, ASAP, was designed around full-time enrollment. The interventions most closely aligned with sustained part-time study—predictable course design, flexible attendance, better sequencing, realistic completion periods and part-time placements—have much weaker evidence about their effects on completion.

That gap should not become an excuse for institutional inaction. The ACSES report identifies a succession of smaller institutional barriers that can prevent individually successful courses from adding up to a completed credential. Institutions can examine course combinations, course availability, LMS consistency, compulsory attendance and maximum completion periods without waiting for a new national program or a randomized trial. They can also evaluate the changes they make and begin strengthening the evidence the report currently lacks.

These institutional changes will not, by themselves, overcome financial insecurity, caregiving demands or the consequences of accumulating credits slowly. Ithaka appropriately keeps comprehensive support and public policy in view. Institutional friction is only part of the problem, but it is the part over which universities have the most immediate control.

The challenge is to combine Ithaka’s demand for credible evidence with the ACSES report’s attention to the student journey. Helping students pass their next course matters, and helping some take more credits may matter too. But part-time student success ultimately depends on creating a pathway through which the courses students can realistically take eventually add up to a credential, and on developing better evidence about what keeps that pathway open.

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