Interface with Academic systems

Although academic systems necessarily uphold standards, the application of equal opportunity legislation necessitates the adoption of some flexibility within these standards. Increased disability is an unfortunate product of increased age and so flexibility of access becomes an issue. Mature students commuting from a distance may require flexible timetabling and virtual materials to enable distance learning. Childcare responsibilities require understanding from academic tutors used to focusing on mainstreamed students.

Each of these examples requires a setting of clear boundaries of what can be considered “reasonable adjustment” in terms of format, teaching access and assessments. This is an area of acute tension in all universities, but particularly in the Ancients with traditional systems, often inflexible because of the sheer length of time they have been in operation. Staff struggle with a changing personal identity as their role includes political judgement and performance dependent on the interpretation of the institutional duty owed to external partners (Whitchurch, 2004). The commitment on behalf of the teaching staff requires not only a response to presenting need, but anticipatory planning and foresight, a point highlighted by authors with pressing insistence (O’Connor and Robinson, 1999; Pinder, 2005). Teaching non-traditional students brings with it different pressures and an increased duty of care for staff. One example would be the recommended preference for group-work amongst non-traditional students (Kember, 1995; Greenan et al 1997). Rather than contradicting further evidence that the social integration is not so important (Duquette, 2000), this actually supports it, for the focus on this group socialisation is targeted on academic issues and within a teaching framework, the area highlighted as important for non-traditional students. However, although active group learning uses academic study as a route for students to interact, share their personalities and learn more about each other, a note of caution may be required. The lack of self-selection sees random students being placed together and the results can place particularly reserved students in an inhibited role, allowing dominance of others and a heavy reliance on the careful and sensitive handling of the mediating academic teacher to avoid uneven contribution of effort.

Read et al (2003) examined the interface of the student’s cultural expectations and the culture of the academic environment and found that the academic culture is neither uniformly accessed nor experienced by students. The student with involvement in extra curricular activities, lunchtime group sessions, and first name terms with lecturers, has a completely different experience to those who remain at a peripheral level, and sometimes in all categories of students, not necessarily by choice.

The financial implications to universities of ensuring inclusion of non-traditional students can be substantial. They can include increasing technological support, providing materials for teaching in alternative formats, adapting physical access to buildings, building nurseries and enlarging student support departments. Managing the terms of conditional government finances, however incongruent with internal values, has become a major challenge for the HE sector worldwide (Eustace, 1994; Dill, 1992). In terms of staffing, due to funding restrictions and reluctance to increase resources, academics operate under an increasingly stretched staff/student ratio. Additionally, staff support is essential with non-traditional students often requiring proportionally more attention in order to succeed in their studies and yet often the least likely to ask for help (Silver and Silver, 1997).

On the income side of the balance sheet, additional cash incentives are aimed specifically at the diverse market, and are offered to admissions departments to widen access to university. Summer schools for students with non-traditional qualifications offer short-term support, and limited funding for specific periods of time are offered by Funding Councils to part-compensate. However the institution has to carry the cost of ongoing support once in the university, often on a long-term basis. On-campus childcare facilities leased to private operators take the burden of health and safety, insurance and professional controls. However, this results in an example of the accountability to more agencies as described in Chapter 3 and puts senior managers in the position of steering change rather than determining it (Deem in Eggins, 2003: 65). To use Shinn’s (1986) analogy once again, this is another piper who will have to be paid to play the tune.

5.6 Summary

Although studying student experience has generated both a body of research, and some interesting projects examining particular groups of students, (for example, Christie et al, 2003) there remain some gaps in the literature within the wider context of the Mature student experience in universities in Scotland. The focus remains on academic performance and the students’ roles as learners (e.g. Walker,

1999; 2000) but the overall experience, including social interactions, is now receiving attention (Tett, 2004).

The voice of non-traditional students must now be heard as their move into the mainstream of Higher Education is recognised. However, if monitoring and tracking these students is necessary in order to gauge success of programmes specifically designed to help them integrate and achieve their potential, the exercise becomes, essentially, a quantitative one. With this methodology, boundary definitions are required; a complex process when dealing with diversity. Objective “labels” have to be applied and, even where the government has opted out of labelling others, they then have to rely on data based on self-declaration, an inconsistent and volatile process. This has led me to consider a critical concept within this study, that of self categorisation of a developing identity. Within the criteria used to define us, there may be similarities with others, allowing a grouping to develop with those of a shared characteristic. However a major question emerging from the literature is whether or not Mature students share self-defining characteristics to the extent that they can be considered a homogeneous group. Being in an “Out group” can foster an alternative “In-Group” and it would be interesting to investigate if this has been the experience for the participants in this study.

The literature surrounding “Structure” and “Agency” offers another lens through which to view the experience in terms of whether the Mature student can control the outcome of the experience or their processes to that point. The debate links into consideration of the mainstreaming of diverse students as opposed to the provision of focused and targeted attention directed at them, for example, in Access courses.

The theoretical literature on identity has described the importance of the late- adolescent stage, but the reasoning behind this is shared with the features of a Mature student losing their familiar way of life and adopting a new role within a new environment. It is a life-changing process which demands adjusting or

reforming of the old identity. However, the commuting element of the Mature student life in an essentially residential university setting compounds the ambiguity of the two inescapable, everyday, roles of student and home, consequently raising anxiety.

Once a sense of identity has been established at the interaction point, this study will examine where the Mature students think that identity belongs. For example, how do Mature students categorise themselves, if at all? How important is integration to them, particularly in terms of academic and/or social perspectives? Is Duquette (2000) correct in the claim that non-traditional students do not rank social integration as a priority in their lives? How does their positioning of social integration impact on their understanding of their wider university experience?

The challenges to Mature student integration are highlighted in the existing literature in terms of family concerns, financial burdens, and lack of institutional resources; stressing that none of these, alone, are enough to lead to attrition. The academic interface has been examined with the acknowledgement that not everyone accesses the experience uniformly, but a recurring theme raises the notion that non- traditional students are called upon, and apparently willing to, make more sacrifices in their personal lives for the sake of their study.

The final chapter in this Part II reviews the literature which will assist in giving us some idea of previous research into measuring student experience. Concentrating on the period post student and university interaction, the retrospective view examines what studies have said about losses and gains, ranging from the extreme loss of attrition through to more abstract gains such as self-improvement for the individual.

Chapter 6

Reflections – The Value of the University Experience

Reflections on the Interaction

6.1 Introduction

This chapter takes us to the centre of the research question: once the losses and gains are measured, on both an institutional and individual basis, what is the value of their university experience to the students involved? The harvest of these student experiences provides marketing intelligence on the received service or the other side of the partnership. Mature students have joined in the larger choir of non- traditional students, the vocalisation of whose experiences prove important, as Haselgrove (1994:6) notes:

“these ‘marginal’ students have now moved into the mainstream where their voices can be less easily ignored”

This chapter explores the areas of loss and gain as described in the literature by researchers studying from the perspective of both the Mature students and institutions. The original findings of the empirical research in this study, which are focused on the exploration of the value of the experience (Chapter 11), can be embedded within the theoretical frameworks uncovered in the literature reviewed in this chapter, but those of Chapters 3, 4 and 5 must also be considered.

______________________________________________________________ Institutional

Loss Gain

Resource Impact (Chapter 5) Funding Council Backing (Chapter 3) Staff Impact (Chapter 5) Social Acceptability of Inclusion

(Chapter 3) Student Attrition Student Retention

______________________________________________________________ Individual

Loss Gain

Academic Failure Degree

Academic Stress Academic Credits

Stability of Wages Employment Opportunities (Chapter 4)

Finance Finance Benefits (Chapter 4)

Personal Relationships Social Status (Chapter 3) Self-Confidence Loss Self-Confidence Improvement

______________________________________________________________

The degree is the ultimate loss or gain for the student, but consideration of the attainment of academic credits can be viewed positively, even if ultimate retention is not achieved. Following on from the body of retention literature, employment and financial benefits of a course in HE emerge in another focus for research tracking non-traditional students in employment. Moreover, the symbolic interpretation of what a degree means to them is examined in terms of self-image, a more difficult area to tease out but, nevertheless, critical.