I was recently asked to contribute to a feature in UK Handmade magazine about continuing education which was quite interesting for me.
As someone who had returned to Higher Education as a mature student, I have found it fascinating to compare the differences between my previous experience of University in the early 1980's when access was much more restricted (only about 5-10%) of people went in those days, and today when the attendance figures are much higher. I know that I was doing very different courses (a BscHons Business Degree then, and a BA Fine Art more recently), but I think I was surprised by just how much more casually many of the modern students seemed to take the opportunity that they were being offered - and how many of then did not seem to value it; there were many times when I would be the only person using the ceramics studio for most of the day! The library, painting studio and other facilities also often seemed largely underused and on a course where the majority of the study had to be self directed, this seemed to be a huge waste. The students also missed out on valuable opportunities to interact with and bounce ideas off their peers.
I probably had an advantage because I had been self-employed for many years and so was used to setting my own schedule and agenda and I think that many of the students were suffering from culture shock having come from the much more prescriptive and scheduled A Level environment, but it did leave me feeling that they had missed out on many of the benefits of the course.
