About Us
The Office of Transfer and Non-Traditional Students (OTNTS) is the policy and advocacy hub for transfer, non-traditional, and adult learners, to support student success efforts via direct outreach and coordination of access to academic resources at Rutgers University-New Brunswick.
As the primary advocate for transfer and non-traditional students within Rutgers-New Brunswick, the Office of Transfer and Non-Traditional Students:
- Advances strategic direction and planning for transfer student credit evaluation, advocacy, and disaggregates emerging trend data, in conjunction with the Division of Enrollment Management and the undergraduate schools at Rutgers-New Brunswick.
- Defines centralized Non-Traditional (NTS) and adult learner standards of practice, policy coordination, outreach, and student success initiatives within service and matriculating units, leading data analysis and synthesis to improve degree completion goals.
- Informs best practices and explore new academic opportunities for transfer, non-traditional and adult learners.
- Responds to the needs of working parents, adults with jobs and other personal responsibilities that may conflict with traditional college experiences.
- Connects transfer and non-traditional students to direct access to the rich academic and student support resources of Rutgers.
- Fosters a learning environment to promote excellence in undergraduate education for all transfer and non-traditional students.
Our History
OTNTS is an expansion of the former University College (UC), which was created to support adult and non-traditional students enrolled in courses on the Rutgers-New Brunswick Campus. University College was founded in 1934 with the mission of serving the academic needs of adult students. The first degree offered by UC was a Bachelors in Business Administration to a graduating class of three students in 1938. By 2006, 3619 students were enrolled at UC.
The age demographics were as follows:
| 60 years of age and older | 19 | 0.54% |
| 40-50 years and older | 490 | 1% |
| 30 years and above | 970 | 12.9% |
| 25 years and above | 1,695 | 48.2% |
| 23 years and above | 2,548 | 72.4% |
| 22 years and above | 841 | 23.9% |
| 22 years and below | 1,285 | 36% |
UC continued to offer degree programs until 2007 when the transformation of undergraduate education united the four undergraduate liberal arts colleges—Douglass College, Livingston College, Rutgers College, and University College--to create the new School of Arts and Sciences. At that time, University College Community was created as a unit to advocate for adult and nontraditional students. Currently adult, nontraditional students applying to Rutgers can enroll in any of the 12 undergraduate schools at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey.