Our minds and memories tend to simplify reality. We can all provide examples.

In terms of the mobility and success of college students, we tend to see 18-year-olds heading directly from high school to campus, where they spend four straight years learning, socializing and maturing before embarking upon a chosen career in which they fare better or worse over the next several decades.

Of course, some pursue alternate paths, but the basic model is clear and ubiquitous.

Back to reality: This model represents only a small fraction of today’s college students. Increasingly, students are forging their own nontraditional educational pathways, not bound by age, institution or degree requirements. Like the modern worker, the modern student is mobile, adaptive and evolving, and so are their goals.

Across the country, millions of students begin their educational careers at a community college and then transfer to a bachelor’s program, or bring their new skills directly to the work force.

In 2006, an astounding 45 percent of graduates at four-year institutions in the United States earned some portion of their degree at a two-year college.

Many see this as the new normal, yet this is just one glimpse into the larger picture of student mobility.

A new study by the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center on Transfer and Mobility illustrates just how complex a student’s path to success can be, and just how inadequate our traditional systems of measuring that success have become.

According to that study, onethird of all students who began college in 2006 at one institution were later enrolled at a different institution. Of these mobile students, nearly a quarter changed institutions more than once, and 27 percent crossed a state line while making the move. Nearly 16 percent of students who started at a four-year college in 2006 later transferred to a two-year college, while 13 percent of students who started at a two-year college simply transferred to another two-year college.

It’s easy to imagine students transferring from a two-year institution to a four-year institution — and many do exactly this.

But huge numbers of today’s students have left the well-worn paths of our imagination. More than 400 of SMCC’s current students had already earned degrees before they enrolled in their programs with us. This includes more than 200 individuals who already hold bachelor’s, master’s, doctoral or other professional degrees. This confirms that they find value in what we have to offer.

This study reinforces much of what we see every day in higher education. Students are earning credits from a variety of sources. They are not just changing majors, they are changing careers and colleges and redefining their own goals for success along the way.

Today’s students are also working on their own schedule, taking more than four years to complete a bachelor’s degree and more than two years to complete an associate’s degree. Common explanations for this particular new normal include the inadequate academic preparation of many high school graduates and the many competing demands of complicated familyand work-lives.

Student success is the goal on which all agree, but how we measure that success bears a closer look. Success is typically measured by an institution’s graduation rate, but in a mobile world this measurement is increasingly a reflection of whether the institution succeeded in its goal of retaining the student. More elusive and more important is determining whether students succeeded in achieving their goals, regardless of the institution where they studied.

So what about all those students who do quite well at SMCC for a semester or more, successfully transferring to the bachelor’s program of their choice without actually finishing their associate’s degree? We proudly call those students successes — but they are successes you won’t find in our graduation rate.

Single-institution yardsticks can become foolish when used to measure multi-institutional dynamics. In the words of the National Student Clearinghouse report: “Trying to stop or reverse student mobility isn’t going to help students succeed.” We’ll keep our eye on the prize — the true goal of student success. In today’s complex world, student success takes many forms and follows numerous pathways. As colleges and universities, and as a state, we need to learn from our students and align our measurements with their goals.

RONALD G. CANTOR, Ph.D., is president of Southern Maine Community College.