Nontraditional students add minimal administrative overhead.  There are plenty of schools that are dysfunctional or pad their budget for various reasons, but done well this is really cheap.<p>Universities spend ungodly amounts on things like recertification, advertising, internal busywork, fundraising, government requirements etc.  Abstractly this stuff adds zero value for students, but good luck telling an auditor you have better things to do with your time.  And internal politics is all about how someone changes things not how this pet project actually helps students.