You’re never too old to learn something new – and the numbers of mature students are swelling across the UK as people opt to go back to university and embark on a new path through life.
Charlotte Hall loved her time as an undergraduate at Liverpool Hope University studying performing arts so much that she stayed on for five years to become a student recruitment officer, talking to young people about their career options.
Now she’s leaving her job to join the student ranks again – taking a master’s degree in film as a stepping stone to change her career.
“I’ve missed being on production sets and it’s a passion of mine,” she says. “The way back in for me, I feel, is to return and be a student. The university has got great links with those kinds of companies, so hopefully that will work out for me.”
The new postgraduate loans – offering students up to £10,000 – helped Hall make up her mind. She will be borrowing the maximum amount to cover her costs.
“That’s enabled me to afford to do the master’s where I couldn’t do that before,” she explains.
Bradford-based Lauren Padgett spent the first years of her career working in local museums, after graduating from Leeds Trinity University with a degree in English and history. She returned to study a master’s degree in museum studies – and then began to think how she might be able to develop some of her ideas even further, while also making an impact on the sector.
She successfully applied for a studentship to pursue PhD research at Leeds Trinity, looking at how Victorian women specifically are represented in museums. The money she receives covers her tuition fees and also includes a stipend.
“It is hoped that my research will encourage museum curators to rethink, reinterpret and redisplay their representations of the lives and experiences of Victorian women in their exhibitions,” she explains. “I knew that I had the professional experience and background that would offer not only a theoretical perspective to the research project but a practical one.”
Some mature students simply want to indulge one of their interests. Robyn Henderson studied English literature at the University of Sheffield, and after some years working in digital marketing decided to return to study a part-time MA in creative writing at Northumbria University. Balancing full-time work with part-time study made her manage her time efficiently.
“I can get a lot more achieved than I ever could before, because I just organise my time, planning my days and I allocate time to certain things,” she says.
And Northumbria University pro vice-chancellor Prof George Marston is delighted that mature students such as Henderson are opting to return to study.
“They are likely to be strongly motivated, and add to the diversity of student cohorts,” he says. “Mature students are a part of the pool of talented people from which universities wish to recruit.”
Stitching together a new business
A marketing communications diploma gave Genevieve Brading the push to set up her own needlework company
I’d already graduated in marketing back in 2001, but when I was 28 I decided I wanted to top up that knowledge because so much had changed with the internet and social media, for example. I’d fallen a little out of love with marketing generally, so the idea of doing a postgraduate course was to get excited about the subject all over again.
Because the course was going to involve taking time off work to study, I needed my boss’s approval. He was able to give me his opinion on which course to go for, which one would help me with my job, but also in my career, and then along the course of the conversation, to
my surprise, the firm offered to pay for the whole thing.
I enrolled on the diploma in integrated marketing communications at the Institute of Direct Marketing. It was really geared up to people who were already in work; it involved three individual weeks in the classroom, so that’s when I had to take a week out of the office to go into class, and then, a bit like at university, I had a lot of reading and assignments throughout the term that I had to accomplish. So the course was quite manageable alongside my career.
The diploma definitely gave me some clarity. It did make me realise that I hadn’t actually fallen out of love with marketing itself, but I’d probably fallen out of love with the environment in which I practised it. Since then I’ve quit the corporate world entirely, and now I run my own needlework business, called Floss & Mischief, so I still use what I learned all the time.
The course definitely topped up my knowledge and experience, and that in turn gave me more confidence in my own skills. Plus, factor in a bit more maturity on my part – and that led me to have more confidence to build my own business.
I’d already graduated in marketing back in 2001, but when I was 28 I decided I wanted to top up that knowledge because so much had changed with the internet and social media, for example. I’d fallen a little out of love with marketing generally, so the idea of doing a postgraduate course was to get excited about the subject all over again.
Because the course was going to involve taking time off work to study, I needed my boss’s approval. He was able to give me his opinion on which course to go for, which one would help me with my job, but also in my career, and then along the course of the conversation, to
my surprise, the firm offered to pay for the whole thing.
I enrolled on the diploma in integrated marketing communications at the Institute of Direct Marketing. It was really geared up to people who were already in work; it involved three individual weeks in the classroom, so that’s when I had to take a week out of the office to go into class, and then, a bit like at university, I had a lot of reading and assignments throughout the term that I had to accomplish. So the course was quite manageable alongside my career.
The diploma definitely gave me some clarity. It did make me realise that I hadn’t actually fallen out of love with marketing itself, but I’d probably fallen out of love with the environment in which I practised it. Since then I’ve quit the corporate world entirely, and now I run my own needlework business, called Floss & Mischief, so I still use what I learned all the time.
The course definitely topped up my knowledge and experience, and that in turn gave me more confidence in my own skills. Plus, factor in a bit more maturity on my part – and that led me to have more confidence to build my own business.
