older students?

When I started as a university chaplain one of the things I used to say as part of educating my fellow church people about university was that 'increasingly students are maturer'. Then along came student loans and tuition fees and all of a sudden that trend stopped. You can't get a student loan if you're older and they don't give 'em for postgraduate degrees either [I know, I've been looking into all of this malarkey/malachi]. So the possibiity that the government might decide to look again at this is intiguing. As the Guardian puts it: "For the young, who currently own the campus, any competition from their elders and betters is a dismaying prospect. They are right to be apprehensive. The influx of oldies would gobble up scarce funds. To whom would the prudent bank manager lend? The long-term customer with a perfect credit rating and a paid-up mortgage? Or the hungover, mumbling adolescent with two maxed-out credit cards? Oldies would dominate the classroom. Who would the history teacher rather have in a seminar? A student who has been reading the Guardian for 30 years? Or a student who has just cancelled their subscription to the Beano, is moving on to NME, and has a photo of Charlie, formerly of Busted, over their bed? Lower testoterone and no PMT (let alone STD, LSD or MDMA) means less distraction: more and better BAs, MAs and PhDs."
Personally I think that a better mix of ages on campus would be a good thing: it may even help us to address those worrying issues like binge drinking and STD's ... I say 'help' not 'solve' and I recognise that it may not b=work out that way, either.
EducationGuardian.co.uk | comment | Golden years: