Exploring psychosocial experiences of non-traditional students in a vocational and technical education: a case study of fashion students

The aim of the study was to assess and contrast psychosocial wellbeing of traditional and non-traditional students in fashion programme. The study was necessitated by a lack of evidence on students' general psychosocial wellbeing, especially the increasing number of non-traditional students who are choosing to pursue higher education for a myriad of reasons. The study utilised a cross-sectional approach in which data were gathered from a sample of 394 traditional and 207 non-traditional students. Data were analysed by means of independent t-test and Pearson correlation. The study found a high prevalence of anxiety-stress and depression among the participants which require attention, even though non-traditional students coped better and performed academically better than traditional students. Again, anxiety-stress and depression were positively related to academic workload such that students who experienced higher academic workloads tended to also experience higher levels of anxiety-stress and depression.