College knowledge plays a key role in the success of mature students in third level, according to doctors Ted Fleming and Mark Murphy of NUI, Maynooth. Access courses, including Return to Learning, VTOS and the provision offered at the NCI, though highly rated by students, are "an Irish solution to an Irish problem", they say.
These programmes aim to prepare students for third-level studies but do not grant any right of access. If ordinary second-level students get the points they get the places. Adults from non-traditional backgrounds have no sense of what they need to achieve in order to get a college place, the two academics argue.
The findings of their study are reported in the proceedings of a conference on Higher Education - The Challenge of Lifelong Learning, organised by the Centre for Educational Policy Studies, NUI Maynooth.
Fleming and Murphy draw a distinction between access and accessibility. The former, they say, is about routes into college but the latter relates to what happens when students arrive. Mature students report being overwhelmingly satisfied with college life, but register dissatisfaction with library, creche and counselling facilities, study skills and feedback on assignments and exam performance.
"The success of the sector in attracting non-traditional students and working with them effectively will depend on how the system deals with these areas. The quality of the product, customer satisfaction and accountability are not just add-ons for these new groups, but essential requirements."
Life for male mature students is far easier than it is for women, who arrive in college with wide-ranging family commitments. Men are "disconnected, unfettered and guilt-free", while for women "sick children at exam time put the whole project at risk".
Going to university can damage relationships. They call the jolt in a marriage caused by one partner reinventing him or herself "developmental envy".
According to Fleming and Murphy, all the evidence shows that mature students do at least as well as other students at university and enjoy higher pass rates than their more traditional counterparts. However, gaining a Leaving Cert during one's schooldays is a benefit which stays with mature students throughout their college careers.
"This "raises challenging and provocative questions for the higher education sector as to how it can help to objectively change this reproduction of inequality."
Money is an important factor for mature students. A study at NUI Maynooth shows that all the mature students who failed first arts in 1997 were in receipt of social-welfare allowances. No social-welfare recipients achieved full honours.
HOWEVER, while these issues are significant, it is the learning process itself which presents mature students with the greatest barrier to achieving a degree, Fleming and Murphy note. Essay writing and examinations are major causes of anxiety for older students.
Many mature students are unaware of what is expected of them and are unfamiliar with the academic structure of essays. The challenge for universities is to help people who are "submerged in common-sense or experience-based knowledge to explore a different kind of knowledge that is more critical, more interested in generality than anecdote . . . How can the student be helped to move to a more abstract, theoretical, contextualising, investigating of reality?"
Universities must redefine access and accessibility as core issues dealing with the identity of the university and its understanding of knowledge, learning, teaching, curriculum and teacher/student relationships, Fleming and Murphy argue.
All the signs are that adult education is set to get to the top of the educational agenda. The reduction in the birth rate in recent years and the growing skills shortage means that the main untapped labour source supply is to be found among the unemployed and among (mainly) married women, argues Professor Patrick Clancy of UCD in the report. "The labour force changes and especially the skills shortages have fundamentally altered the policy agenda. The labour force is no longer a `residual' after emigration. It is now a resource which must be maximised."
This, he says, has major implications for adult education at all levels and for further and higher education in particular. "The coincidence of acute labour market demands, the beginning of a decline in the school-leavers' cohort and our increased capacity to fund extended educational provision, all require us to prioritise the education of adults," he says.
Ireland has one of the lowest mature student third-level participation rates in Europe. The percentage of full-time students aged 23 or over was 16.6 per cent in 199697, Clancy observes. However, "the level of demand from mature students is not fully reflected in the enrolments achieved".
An analysis of CAO applications in 1997 shows that while 69.5 per cent of all applicants received an offer, only 50 per cent of mature students received one. Nonetheless, 80 per cent of the mature students who received an offer accepted it - compared with an overall acceptance rate of 75 per cent.
In recent years, the Government has made a great push to increase second-level participation rates. However, "countries which want to upgrade attainment rates more quickly, can also aim to do so by expanding adult education," Clancy says.
Research shows that people with the lowest levels of educational attainment tend to come from the lower socio-economic groups. The growing link between education and employment means education is now viewed as a form of economic capital. The opportunity to acquire this capital, Clancy argues, is a human right and should not be an accident of birth or generation.
We must put in place policies, he says, which will allow a major expansion of mature student participation in third-level education. For many adults, part-time education is the preferred option, yet at third level part-time courses are still subject to fees. The present arrangement, says Clancy, discriminates against those who choose to pursue higher education as part-time students.
