This paper discusses the ways in which mature students orientate themselves towards the future in making decisions to access higher education (HE). Their narratives connect their past, often difficult, educational and personal lives to their future aspirations and to their current experiences in further education (FE) and HE. The research was part…

A Gap Year is a break in an educational career, principally taken between leaving school and beginning university. Previous research on the Gap Year has suggested it is a form of social class positioning or forum for undertaking transitions in identity during young adulthood. This paper extends this research into the context of higher education…

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of a peer-assisted study session (PASS) program for a large class of Bachelor of Health Science (Paramedic) students. This cohort was made up predominantly of mature aged students who have not undertaken any study for many years. Within a bioscience first-year core subject, student…

Research has highlighted the challenges that women face as mature-age students in higher education. The challenges are particularly acute when a woman is the first in her family to go to university. Many women begin their journey as students with considerable self-doubt and lack of confidence. They may also face an ongoing struggle to find a way…

Mature learners often invest a great deal of emotional energy in starting a higher education qualification. They have complex needs which are often less to do with their ability to learn and more to do with aspects of confidence and levels of self-belief about achieving or feeling "good enough" to participate. This article explores the…

African American males fail to graduate from colleges and universities as compared to any other demographic. The impact of this non-completion failure continues to touch the African American family structure, community stability, economic reduction at all levels, and an increasing situational hopelessness. The literature surrounding the struggles…

This article presents findings from a study of mature part-time students and their reported benefits of study. It is based on data from a questionnaire survey of graduates from two major--but very different--providers of part-time higher education: Birkbeck, University of London and the Open University. Response items were grouped within a…

In this paper, I advocate for enhancing critical thinking skill development in undergraduate education by taking advantage of the increased experiential maturity of today's students. I argue that many undergraduates are in fact "adults", by virtue of their age or experiential maturity, and they should be educated as such. Undergraduates who have…

Non-traditional students are increasingly making up a larger part of the student body and can include students from various groupings, for example, differentiated by ethnicity, socio-economic class (SEC), disability, residential location or age. The aim of this initial exploratory study was to investigate whether and how the motivations, identity…

The projections for higher education indicate a large number of senior academic leadership posts being vacated in the future due to retirement of existing leaders. The gap in leadership positions lends itself to an increased importance for developing a pipeline of talent to fill these positions. The leadership lifestyle lived by academic leaders…

This paper is based upon two empirical studies, which identify care-giving responsibilities as a key mediator of mature students'--a target group within the widening participation strategy--experiences of higher education. Employing a feminist lens on care, we identify a disjuncture between how students experience the challenges of negotiating…

Jealousy may be perceived as either good or bad depending upon the moral maturity of the individual. To investigate this conclusion, a study was conducted testing two hypothesis: a positive relationship exists between conventional moral reasoning (reference to norms and laws) and the endorsement and level of jealousy; and a negative relationship…

A combination of high occupational score and a low men-in-general or women-in-general score on the Kuder Occupational Interest Survey is moderately predictive of interest stability and occupational consistency. (Author)

Many studies of mature students within further and higher education portray them as a distinct social category with particular shared characteristics. Such representations are sometimes sub-divided further along lines of social division. For instance, attempts to determine "types" of mature learners have variously identified class,…