It’s a statistic that’s sure to surprise: close to 45 percent of postsecondary students in the United States today do not enroll in college directly out of high school and many attend part time. Following a tradition of self-improvement as old as the Republic, the “nontraditional” college student is becoming the norm. Back to School is the first book to look at the schools that serve a growing population of “second-chancers,” exploring what higher education—in the fullest sense of the term—can offer our rapidly changing society and why it is so critical to support the institutions that make it possible for millions of Americans to better their lot in life, in a work that Make magazine calls “optimistic yet simultaneously realistic.”

In the anecdotal style of his bestselling Possible Lives, Mike Rose crafts rich and moving vignettes of people in tough circumstances who find their way; who get a second . . . or third . . . or even fourth chance; and who, in a surprising number of cases, reinvent themselves as educated, engaged citizens. Chapters treat topics from remedial education and bridging the academic-vocational divide to the economic and social benefits of returning to school, the importance of second-chance education for democracy, and the college-for-all debate. Throughout, Rose combines what Education Digest calls “rich and moving vignettes of people in tough circumstances who find their way” with what Publishers Weekly calls “highly practical areas for improvement in higher ed, such as orientation programs, occupational schools, physical campus layouts, and pedagogical training for new teachers.”