Truths About Education

Many people these days are learning that they need to retrain for a new career at a time when they either expected to be getting their pensions or they have become disabled, unable to continue in their career but changes to welfare force them to find another one, or they have lost their job and are forced by finances and the job centre to look for another job …any job.

Today's student is just as likely to be middle-aged (or older) as a teenager. Yet, one of the major reasons many adults hesitate before starting to study is the simple fear that they will not be able to keep up intellectually, a lack of confidence and a feeling that they are too old to learn new skills. However, many older students do better than younger ones.

Many older students are more motivated than younger ones, possibly because the need to get a qualification and a job to meet financial commitments makes the need greater. Many older students finance their own study so are especially keen to succeed. Also, older students can be less likely to take getting a degree for granted and as a matter of course, because they have not had the chance to do it earlier, quite possibly because they had to leave school and start work as soon as possible.

Older students are also often more used to good time management and have experience of juggling many demands on their time such as work and family as well as their studies, and they are good at prioritising.

If an older person has worked, raised a family, run a home and maybe too had experience in the community then also they will have wider knowledge about certain experiences than a teenager who has not done these things yet. A younger student may well have more recent experience of academic standards, processes, what is expected and how to study but older ones can have a wider experience of people and dynamics, how things and people tick plus knowing their own personal strengths and weaknesses and how these will affect their studies.

I am careful how I express this because it is not of course a universal truth. With so many young people experiencing family breakdown in often more than one generation of their family, there are younger students who are very mature and experienced in life skills and excellent managers of their time. Some older students have led very sheltered lives and do not have a lot of life experience at all considering their age.

However, all students can learn and develop the skills of motivation and time management, and nobody whatever their age need be held back from a course of study or training that will benefit their future.

Valerie Hedges