Page 67 - Grasp English B2 (Workbook)

7 Academics

There are many reasons why more and more senior citizens
are enrolling in university courses once they retire. For some,
it allows them to gain a qualification which they simply
couldn’t get when they were younger.

Mavis, 73, says that although nowadays half of Britain’s
teens go to university after they graduate from secondary
school, in her day people were much more likely to give up
full-time education at 16 and start work. She’s now studying
a bachelor’s degree in criminal law at the University of
Gloucestershire.
“It’s a field that’s always interested me,” she says. “I think really
the inspiration came from my granddaughter, who’s in her
second year of forensic science up in Middlesbrough. She
knows how much I love watching crime series on TV and
joked that we could become a crime-solving duo. Although
she was only kidding, I thought, Well, why not? So I enrolled
in a course at the local college to get a certificate to enter
higher education and applied.”

Bernard, 69, also left school at a young age to start work. He
says back then there was a lot of discrimination in higher
education, and people from the working class weren’t given
the same opportunities as others. He thinks there’s still an
amount of elitism in certain universities today but says his
grandchildren have a much brighter future than he did at
their age. For his final year project at Keele, he’s writing his
thesis on imposter syndrome in the working classes.
“I’ll admit that a lot of my friends thought I was crazy when
I said I was going to study educational psychology. I’d not long
retired, and while most of them were enjoying playing golf or
gardening, I found I wanted something to do something to
keep my brain more active.”
He says he felt imposter syndrome to an extent when he first
started the course, but that he quickly realised he needn’t
feel that way.
“You can’t help but compare yourself to other people when
you start, and it’s easy to forget that everyone is in the same
boat. When classes started, and I realised that my ideas and
opinions were being validated in the same way as other
people’s, my confidence grew.”
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