Vndergraduate Page
THE OLDER STUDENT
ByA. B. BUSHBY (University of Liverpool)
THERE is at present much enlightened discussion of the role of the universities in our national life, and a beginning has been made in the organisation of adult education, but so far las I am aware the' attention of the public has not been drawn to the existence of the older undergraduate. by "older undergraduate" 11 do not mean the ex-service man in his twenties or early thirties, but men and women between about forty-five and seventy years of age. It may come as a surprise to some people that such a class exists at all, and it may be of interest to explain how a few perfectly normal men and women acquire academic ambitions late in life, and discuss whether they are likely to increase in numbers in the future, and whether they have any contribution to make to the Isvork and life of the universities. I believe that a document of very great human interest would result if an enquiry were made into the lives and careers of older undergraduates. All that I can attempt in this essay is to quote a few cases and see if some general conclusions can be drawn from ;them. The most illuminating case I know of is that of a woman, Mrs. Edith Sinclair Martin, whose obituary notice was published in The Times a year or two ago. The wife of a distinguished lawyer in Belfast, she lost her only son, who was killed in action at Festubert in 1915, and her husband four years later. She therefore determined to build up a new life from the ruins of the old. She went to Queen's University in her late forties as an undergraduate and took her 'Master's degree in science. Then she turned to the study of . Hebrew and theology, graduated as B.D. and died at the age of seventy-nine Minister Emeritus of a remote congregation in Perth, Bt which time she was planning a theological thesis for her doctorate.
The second case is that of a retired officer of Indian Police with 'whom I have some slight personal acquaintance, for I succeeded him in a humble Government appointment which required a . knowledge of oriental languages, and from which he had resigned to 'take up a position with the B.B.C. I only met him once, but I remember him well on 'account of the difficulty of the test which he set me as his successor. He had to retire from the B.B.C. on attaining the age of sixty-five (why, I can't imagine) but did not lose heart and is at present an undergraduate of London University Iworking for an honours degree in Oriental Languages.
It always seems to me that medicine, with its long and arduous training, is a particularly difficult subject for the older undergraduate, but I know of two people who have faced the task. The first was an old doctor at Bangalore who had paid for his university training out of his retired pay as a Lieut.-Colonel in the Indian Army, the second that of the late Richard Clitherow, M.P., whose career started in the Royal North-West Mounted Police. Later he became a pharmacist, and in middle age a medical student at Liverpool University.
I myself became an undergraduate at Liverp3o1 nearly fours years ago. Invalided out of the Army in 1942 after twenty-six years' service, I managed to find employment as long as the war lasted, but then had to face hard facts. I applied for a vacancy in the emergency scheme for training teachers, but was rejected as un- suitable, presumably on account of age, for I was not granted an interview. Then I had a very, very depressing interview with what for me was the "Unemployment Exchange." The officials there were most kind, but gave me no false hopes. They passed me on to the local education authority, who suggested that I should apply for admission to Liverpool University. I had never passed any matriculation exam, but was admitted after an interview, and after passing an unexacting "examination for persons of mature years."
It seems clear that older undergraduates are drawn from two classes of people. First, there are those who adopt a career which may lead to early retirement—such as the Regular Army, the Royal Navy or the Police. Similar is the case of the married woman who loses her husband in middle age, and whose children have either died or no longer require her ministrations. Secondly, there are those who are by nature devoted to learning, but who are forced by economic circumstances to adopt a more immediately remunerative career. Others, like myself, belong to both classes, and Army or Navy retired pay furnishes the means to indulge in tastes which could not be afforded in youth. Modern conditions may lead to an increase in older undergraduates. The number of persons who have to retire early will remain about the same, and so will the extreme difficulty of obtaining alternative employment without further training, except for men of outstanding ability and known reputation.
The number of those who can afford a comfortable retirement without working, and of those who feel morally justified in such a course, will certainly decrease. The majority will, as now, seek an outlet in farming or gardening, but not all will have either the taste or the physical fitness for such work. State scholarships may reduce the number of those suited to a university career who cannot afford it, but many potential scholars will still be forced to seek employment offering an immediate satisfactory remuneration. Even the older student usually hopes to gain some small financial reward for his labours, but if this hope fails and he is faced with the question: "Cui ergo ista didici?" he consoles himself with Seneca's answer : "Non en quod timeas ne operant perdideris si tibi didicisti."
It remains to be discussed whether the older undergraduate is socially desirable and to be encouraged ; whether his enthusiasm makes any contribution of value to the universities or to the nation as a whole. Some may think that in the present overcrowded state of the universities preference in admission should be given to those who have a whole life's work before them, but over a wide range of studies this objection does not apply. At the "red brick" universities, at any rate, what may be called the "vocational" faculties, of which medicine is the best example, are overcrowded, but when it is a case of pure learning the students are lamentably few. At Liverpool University there is a department of Celtic •Studies, but when in my first year I attended a course in Welsh I had the services of the lecturer (now a professor at Oxford) all to myself. This, it should be noted, was at Liverpool, sometimes facetiously called the Capital of Wales. There is an honorary lecturer in Hellenistic Greek. Sometimes he has one student, sometimes none. Liverpool has two cathedrals, but apparently no undergraduates to study the Gospels in the original Greek. Other subjects like Hebrew, Aramaic, archaeology, Egyptology and palaeography are not much better supported. My own subject is classics, and for most of the courses a lecture-room is not required ; we are a select little party and meet in the professor's study.
Economic necessity prevents the young and fit from studying subjects other than those required for qualifying for some definite em- ployment, yet a little reflection will show that the intellectual life of the nation would be much the poorer if such subjects were not studied at all, and it is here that the older undergraduate can make a special contribution to the spiritual if not to the economic life of the nation, and help to prevent our seats of learning from degenerating into mere vocational training-centres. Even in over- crowded vocational subjects such as medicine I do not think that the older student should be excluded, not at any rate while such large numbers of women students marry before or immediately after qualifying, and actually practise for a shorter period than the older student might be expected to do. The latter, supported neither by his parents nor by a Government grant, will not apply for admission and pay for a seven-year course unless he is really enthusiastic, and enthusiasm is a valuable asset to a university.
Just as the life of our universities is enriched by the mingling of all social classes, so it has something to gain from a leavening of older students of varied antecedents and experience. I should like to appeal to those responsible for our educational pelicy to bear in mind the human needs of a small but possibly increasing class, to continue the facilities which at present make it possible for older students to enter the universities, to let them compete for scholar- ships and consider them for fellowships on equal terms with their juniors and make the academic world a happy exception to the maxim "too old at forty," which in any case can hardly be main- tained in a country where the proportion of older people is con- tinually increasing.
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