Promoting success for Non-Traditional Students in Portugal – a preliminary diagnosis Joana Bago 1 , Henrique M. A. C. Fonseca 2 , Lucília Santos 3 , Teresa Gonçalves 4 , António Fragoso 5 , C. Miguel Ribeiro 5 , Rute Monteiro 5 & Helena Quintas 5 1,2,3 Universidade de Aveiro (UA), Portugal 4,5, Universidade do Algarve (UAlg), Portugal Keywords Traditional students; non-traditional students; students older than 23; Portugal Summary The access to Higher Education for mature students older than 23 in Portugal was made easier on the sequence of the implementation of the Bologna processes, that allowed a national Law to be changed in order to take also into account the eventual professional experience of the candidates. In this paper we will present a research project 6 involving the universities of Algarve and Aveiro, which aims to study deeply the non-traditional student’s situation in order to create conditions for improving their academic success and reduce dropout. In this context we report the first (still superficial) results on the profile of these students, its time evolution and retention/dropout rates, with some considerations regarding those results. Introduction The Bologna process in Portugal is challenging national Higher Education Institutions (HEI) to face the multiple demands of a society increasingly knowledge-based. In this context a progressive path of moulding the educational trajectories is being designed in order to foster equality and social cohesion trough the synergies raised between Higher Education (HE) and the main objectives of Lifelong learning (LLL). Although we do not possess a strong historical tradition regarding Adult Education (Lima; Guimarães, 2004), the commitment of our governments was mainly intensified in 1995, and has come a long way since then. In 2008 Portugal presented one of the EU-27 lowest levels in LLL but some progress can be seen during the latest years: 5.3% in 2008 against 3.4% in 2000 (Eurostat, 2008). According to the European Community Commission, LLL can be defined as “all the intentional learning activities developed throughout life, in formal, non-formal and informal contexts, with the purpose of acquiring, developing or improving knowledge, skills and competences, on a personal, civic, social and or professional perspective” (Comission of the European Communities, 2001, p.42). So, actually, students can reorganize their academic paths making use of several ways to enter or re-enter a HEI, to change between academic courses subject, or even between HEI. Since 1 Uinfoc (longlife learming unit), University of Aveiro, Portugal, joanabago@ua.pt 2 Uinfoc & Department of Biology, University of Aveiro, Portugal; hfonseca@ua.pt 3 Uinfoc & Department of Physics & CIDTFF(Research Centre for Didactics and Technology in Teacher Education; this centre is funded by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology - FCT), University of Aveiro, Portugal, lucilia.santos@ua.pt 4 ESEC (Higher School of Education and Communication), University of Algarve, tigoncalves@ualg.pt , Portugal 5 CIEO (Research Centre on Spatial and Organizational Dynamics; this centre is funded by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology - FCT), University of the Algarve, Portugal, aalmeida@ualg.pt ; cmribeiro@ualg.pt ; rutemonteiro@ualg.pt ; hquintas@ualg.pt