Background to the Research

• The family circumstances of mature students is given scant coverage in studies concerned with higher education. Rather, the focus tends to be on educational policy such as widening access in general terms, the implication being that education exists in a vacuum separate from the rest of society. One of the key concerns of this research was to pursue the relationship between mature women's family circumstances and educational reform aimed at widening access.

Research Approach

• The research draws on the experiences of 23 women involved in a Sociology degree course at Queen's University in Belfast. All the respondents were interviewed by the author, which were tape-recorded and subsequently transcribed. The interviews were semi-structured and sought to elicit information on (1) women's motivations for returning to study (2) their evaluation of Access courses as a preparation for university (3) their experiences of university life and the effects returning to education has had on their personal relationships and domestic commitments.

Main Findings

Sample Profile

• Fifteen of the sample entered Queen's through a Humanities and Social Science Access course. The remainder studied A-levels at part-time evening classes before entering Queen's.
• Respondents were aged between 23 and 51, with the majority falling between 30 and 49.
• Twelve of the sample were married, five were divorced or separated, two were single parents and the remaining four respondents were single.
• Fifteen of the 17 respondents who were married or divorced/separated had children. Three quarters of this group had between one and three children, while the remaining quarter had four or five children.
• One third of married respondents had husbands who were long-term unemployed.
• All of the women classified themselves as working-class, although in three cases the women claimed they had achieved middle-class status through their husband's occupations.
• Seventeen of the sample left school between the age of 17 and 18 with A-level qualifications. Half the sample had worked for a period in chip shops, factories or in hairdressing salons. Two had worked as nurses while the remainder worked in mainly low grade clerical occupations.

Motivations for Returning to Study

• Responses to this question fell into two broad categories: instrumental motivation and personal motivation. Those who returned to education for the former reasons included those motivated by a desire to change their careers or enhance their career prospects, whilst those in the latter category referred to the desire to enhance self-confidence or fulfill a private challenge.
• For some married women the motivation to return was to fill the vacuum created by children becoming more independent when they became older.

Evaluation of Access Courses

• Two respondents agreed that they felt ill-equipped to deal with the demands of university life taking the access course entry route.
• The majority of respondents however felt that the Access course provided a useful bridge between returning to education and entering university. Most respondents felt that without the support of Access tutors, they would not have had the confidence to apply for a university place.

University Experiences

• Most of the respondents stated they felt nervous and apprehensive on coming to university, albeit tinged with elation that they had actually made it to this stage.
• Most of the respondents felt initially very intimidated by the huge lecture theatres (holding up to 400 students) and were very conscious of being older than the majority of their fellow students.
• Many students stated that they felt inadequate regarding their ability to take lecture notes (compared to the slow dictation of Access tutors).
• All the respondents came from working-class backgrounds and felt intimidated by the sophisticated language that seemed to come from academic staff.
• Most respondents found the tutorials manageable and enjoyed the opportunity to discuss aspects of the course in a tutorial setting. However, they tended to feel that they dominated tutorial discussions, and this often resulted in mature and younger students feeling ill at ease with each other.

Effects on Family Relationships

• Three main aspects of support which husbands can give to their wives in order to allow them to study have been identified as practical, financial and emotional support. In no case were the married respondents receiving all three types of support.
• Financial support was dependent on the financial circumstances of the household, in particular whether the husband was employed. If the husband was unemployed, money spent on study materials was seen as an ill-afford luxury.
• In two out of the four households where the male was unemployed, the wife engaged in part-time work as well as attending university, and part of the earnings from this employment was utilised to subsidize university expenses.
• Some husbands in well paid jobs gave financial support to their partners, but this was seen as temporary and justified because of a future lucrative career for the wife which would economically benefit the family as a whole.
• Other husbands were less generous and felt that because they were bringing in a wage to the household, they were entitled to domestic and childcare services from their wives. Often these men made their wives feel guilty for not fulfilling their domestic roles.
• Practical and emotional support were linked together and often interdependent. Husbands' emotional support was often dependent on not having their lives returning to study. While there were some instances where husbands were generally encouraging, in other cases, emotional support was limited to passive acceptance or a mere lack of opposition.
• In most instances, wives were still overwhelmingly responsible for housework and childcare and in a third of cases, women met with considerable resistance form their husbands over their decision to return to education.
• Among the 12 married women, one quarter had been victims of domestic violence and several respondents felt their husbands' lack of support, non-cooperation and sometimes violent action was due to feelings of insecurity at their wives returning to education.
• Several of the women however felt a sense of empowerment through their return to education.