A perpetual student, also known as a professional student (though the latter term has more than one meaning), is a college or university attendee who re-enrolls for several years, typically more than what is necessary to obtain a given degree.
Reasons for such behavior include:
- Time constraints (inability to devote full-time to studies due to a job or raising a family)
- Indecision (changing one's major one or more times)
- Inability to find a job
- Pursuit of more than one degree or major
- Inability to complete a final thesis or dissertation
- Student loans becoming due for payment once student status is lost
- Unwillingness to abandon the social aspect
- Desire to continue participation in extra-curricular activities, particularly competitive ones that require participants to be registered students
- Political organizing
- Desire to avoid getting a job.
Read more about Perpetual Student: Examples, Portrayal in Movies and Television
Famous quotes containing the words perpetual and/or student:
“The ingrained idea that, because there is no king and they despise titles, the Americans are a free people is pathetically untrue.... There is a perpetual interference with personal liberty over there that would not be tolerated in England for a week.”
—Margot Asquith (1864–1945)
“Adolescents have the right to be themselves. The fact that you were the belle of the ball, the captain of the lacrosse team, the president of your senior class, Phi Beta Kappa, or a political activist doesn’t mean that your teenager will be or should be the same....Likewise, the fact that you were a wallflower, uncoordinated, and a C student shouldn’t mean that you push your child to be everything you were not.”
—Laurence Steinberg (20th century)