Golden years
What kind of students do we want - those that buy the Beano or those that
can read? Time to let in the over-50s
John Sutherland
Monday February 21, 2005
The Guardian
What Britain of the future would one find if one opened up Tony Blair's
head? Smiling Christian soldiers, marching as to war, 600 New Labour MPs
(25% ethnic minority, 25% female), and lots and lots of young university
students.
Kim Howells, minister with responsibility for lifelong learning, is
currently wrestling with the implications of his grand title. Life is long
(and getting longer), but university learning is currently reserved for the
very young.
The Department for Education and Skills' definition of "mature student" is,
laughably, 25 (think Pete Doherty, b 1979). Fifty years old (old?) and, as
far as the DfES is concerned, you've passed beyond mature into scrapheap
obsolete. You don't qualify for a student loan, tuition rebate, or any other
higher-education financial benefit. Which for most means no university.
Tony Blair, Gordon Brown and John Prescott (well, let's leave him out on
other grounds) are "young" politicians by Westminster standards. None (all
being well past 50) could aspire to study politics at the University of
Westminster. Too old.
Some time soon Howells (60 next year) must decide whether to lift the ban on
student loans for the over-50s. Age Concern is lobbying; Brussels points out
the obnoxious and illegal ageism; university accountants can see the
attractions; teachers like the idea of undergraduates closer in age to
themselves.
The principal objectors are students themselves. Testicles shrivel at the
idea of grandpa and grandma sitting alongside them, sipping their sweet
sherries in the union bar, wondering whether to vote for that nice young Mr
Kennedy this time. Over-50s? That's what they came to university to get away
from, for God's sake.
The current issue of London Student ("The Voice of 100,000 Students") has a
spiteful little article illustrated with a photograph of what looks like
Camilla's grandmother and the headline Is This the Student of the Future?
There is some puppyish jesting as to how London's institutions should be
renamed. The School of Pharmacy, for example, might become the School of
Infirmacy; Senate House might be renamed Senile House. Cruel.
It's not just a crabbed age-and-youth thing. 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.
American universities, always more pragmatic than their British
counterparts, offer fee remission for "seniors". In many courses oldsters
can "audit" (sit in) free of charge and do "self-paced" study with help from
web-based seniornet learning centres.
Over the past couple of years the Bernard Osher Foundation has poured
millions of dollars into higher education for Californians of 50 and older.
The foundation's boldest innovation is a newly opened "Senior University",
at Long Beach. The All-Grey Degree ceremony is imminent.
In societies such as Britain's and America's where the ratio of young to old
is shifting, treating the over-50s (truly mature students) as an educational
resource, rather than a welfare burden, is sound economics. But to make the
step to multi- generational higher education requires social re-education.
We are used to thinking of university as a kind of wild animal park, where
the young, and only the young, can roam free. We find it hard to reconceive
the university as a community, with strata of young, middle-aged and elderly
citizens. Which is what it ideally might be.
"Youth," said George Bernard Shaw, "is wasted on the young." So too, often,
is higher education. Many aren't ready for it. All would benefit from the
accumulated knowledge of older classmates.
"Fifty per cent of retirees to go into higher education" - a pledge so
crazy, it might just work.
http://education.guardian.co.uk/higher/comment/story/0,9828,1418891,00.html
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