Older mature undergraduate students and discourses of age

1. Older mature undergraduate students and discourses of age Anne Massey annemassey81@gmail.com

2. The fieldwork took place in a 'post-92' university using focus groups & semi-structured interviews • twenty-seven informants: 21 undergraduate students and 6 recent (1st degree) graduates • 16 of the informants were in their 50s and there were 3 in their 60s, 6 in their 40s, & 2 in their 70s. • 18 women and 9 men • 8 Black African, 3 Black African Caribbean, 10 White British, 4 white other / South American, 2 Asian.

3. Judith Butler concept of gender performativity • has helped in looking at how constructions of age and gender combine to shape identity and consequent action including the personal and public portrayal of self. • a performative is that discursive practice that enacts or produces that which it names" (Butler,1993) • Performativity relates to repetition, very often the repetition of oppressive and painful norms • ‘the act that one does, the act that one performs is, in a sense, an act that’s been going on before one arrived on the scene’ (Butler,1999).

4. Age performativity • Butler (1999) suggested that performativity could be applied to attributes other than gender. • Just as 'gender intersects with racial, class, ethnic, sexual and regional modalities of discursively constructed identities' (Butler 1999:6), so is it not possible to separate 'age' from its intersections.

5. internalised ageism • carried within discourses on the learning capacity of older people • as in idioms such as 'you can't teach an old dog new tricks' • The expression having a 'senior moment' shows age performed to cover mistakes • 'People are more likely to attribute memory failures of older adults to intellectual incompetence, and memory failures of younger adults to lack of attention or effort’ (Cuddy, et al. ,2005:270) .

6. What ! This old Thing? the perfomativity of age is exposed in the practice of undergraduate study.

7. “But what are you doing it for?” Arksey et al 1994 p iv • Since all the participants had already established adult lives, a key aspect of their accounts was how friends and family reacted to their study and the consequent relationships with friends, partners and children • Some of the strongest feelings expressed by participants concerned their interactions with those outside of the 'privileged space' of the university.

8. ‘seriously weird’ / mad as a hatter nearly all of Frank's friends thought it was ‘seriously weird’ that he was at university. their first response was “Why do you want to study at your age? Jack, who received similar comments, rebuffed them saying that most of his friends already knew he was 'mad as a hatter' and that his going to university was viewed as: 'Jack’s doing something crazy again’.

9. Partners subtle sabotage from partners 'capillaries of power’ associates having long become accustomed to them performing specific roles in their family and community participants reported that male partners said that it was now the time in their lives when they could start to relax participants reported that female partners were concerned about income.

10. Looking at undergraduate study with older students has shown that the ideal neoliberal learner is actually a compliant subject devoid of experience • Participants reported that their experience was not valued and that lecturers found them to be a threat • Evelyn(white British, 50-54) spoke of her life experience not being recognised by lecturers: ‘I think you have to go into a child mode almost. You know, a teenage mode or something’

11. University is not geared for older people.... The atmosphere is not even geared for us. You know, the rooms, the chairs, everything, are not geared for us. Toilets, despicable. Obviously they're saying “We're geared for older people” or they wouldn't be inviting us in, right? (Evelyn white British, 50-54)

12. Altruistic motivations Nigel perceived that a degree would provide credence and open the access to fora from which he had been excluded:  'my approach towards University is that there are certain things I want to say [ ].. issues for argument's sake of culture. Issues of race, issues of identity across the board. How people represent themselves. People's voices. And funny, you know, if you've got some kind of university education, you can say much more, and people perhaps listen to you [more than] if you're just a layman with no qualifications'.  (Nigel, Black Caribbean 50-54) Others thought that they could be an example to their children but some (such as Evelyn) did not know what they wanted from the degree.

13. Positioning outside the employability agenda • Nigel said that he had given employment-related motives in order to gain entry onto his course, but that he was not studying in order to gain employment. • 'University really is all about getting people into the workplace. And clearly from my point of view I'm at the other end of the workplace, the other end of it my views are a little bit different'. • Interestingly, Nigel talks about 'getting people into the workplace' as opposed to, for example, 'improving their career prospects';

14. The ‘generation gap’ • Only one participant reported being questioned by a young person as to why they were studying • differences between generations are fuelled by ageist discourses but the respondents' reports suggest that possible differences between age groups can be reconciled through shared activities, in this case, attendance on a similar course or at a similar institution.

15. children role reversals with children becoming instructors. Pam (60-64, White British) showed her coursework to her (adult) son and received feedback from him:  “ I think they can see that I'm just much more relaxed because I'm not doing work that I'd sort of grown out of' Evelyn described her 7 year old granddaughter helping her to use computers. Nigel said that the bond had strengthened with his 8 year old daughter because she would ask him ‘how is school?’ Angela said: 'My children's friends think it's great, they ask about what's the essay about. All sorts of things really that kids would probably talk to each other about'.

16. Who is the student? • problemizes the association of student with 'young' and lecturer with 'old'. • Age ambivalence highlighted when some of the youngest participants described themselves as 'elderly' and the oldest called themselves a child.

17. The invisibility of age within discourses surrounding mature students is both classed and gendered, where the older student is assumed to be middle class and studying for leisure. • the young White, middle class, male student acts as the ideal, universal, normative subject, against which the Other must try to (but can never fully) measure up. • The mature undergraduate student is equated with lack (eg of a traditional education, of the wherewithal to go to university following school or the knowledge of modern technology).

18. Older students do not embody what Skeggs (2004:62) refers to as the 'subject of value'. • They do not fit with the traditional model where university education is sequential to secondary school. • Yet, the presence of older undergraduate students serves to disrupt the neoliberal value of investment in the future and is more about the present. • When education is presented as 'the future', then older people's education is of lesser importance. 

19. Policy Implications • students' prior experience is a largely ignored resource within undergraduate courses. This applies to all students, not just older students • older students offer particular opportunity in development of the curriculum. • such omissions may not just fail to meet university obligations, but are also a missed opportunity to enhance and promote the success of its students.

20. Policy Implications • There continues to be a gap in policy regarding the older undergraduate learner • Participants' accounts demonstrate the value of HE to older people and to their families and, consequently, the importance of continued financial support to this group of students. • the publicity and facilities of the university need acknowledge older undergraduate students, including older disabled students.

21. References • Butler, Judith. 1993. Bodies that matter : on the discursive limits of "sex". New York; London: Routledge.  • —. 1999. Gender trouble: feminism and the subversion of identity. London: Routledge.  • —. 2004. Undoing gender. New York; London: Routledge.  • Cuddy, Amy J. C., Michael I. Norton, and Susan T. Fiske. 2005. "This Old Stereotype: The Pervasiveness and Persistence of the Elderly Stereotype." Journal of Social Issues, Vol. 61, No. 2, 2005, pp. 61:267--285.  • Foucault, Michel. 1980. "Power-knowledge : selected interviews and other writings, 1972-1977." edited by C. Gordon. New York ; London: Harvester Wheatsheaf.  • Maguire, Meg. 2008. "Fade to Grey: Older women, embodied claims and attributions in English university departments of education." Women's Studies International Forum 31:474–482.  • Skeggs, Beverley. 2004. Class, Self, Culture. London: Routledge.