Mature students face unique challenges accessing post-secondary education

Mature students, those aged 24 and over, are of vital significance to enrolments in New Brunswick post-secondary education institution. At the University of New Brunswick (UNB) Fredericton campus alone, mature students make up 40 per cent of full-time students. The rate is even higher for part-time mature students: 78 per cent. Given this, how are universities and colleges within the province meeting the unique needs of this group?

Based on my calculations using data from Statistics Canada, one in three Canadian post-secondary students (33 per cent) are mature-aged. Most provinces in Canada fall within this range. New Brunswick is at the lower end with close to 30 per cent, and the Northwest Territories on the higher end with 74 per cent of their post-secondary population being mature-aged. At the national and provincial levels, this is a highly significant group of students.

For one reason or another, mature students take longer to reach college or university. They may need to take a mental health break, start a job for much needed funds, take time to support their extended family, or start a family of their own. Yet, as they return to restart their education, many find they have more responsibilities than they would have if they had entered fresh from high school. Those who enroll directly from high school might live in dorms or with parents who are able to provide more financial and social supports. As a mature student, securing financial aid may also be more complicated, due to the very circumstances that led them to defer further study to begin with.

I spoke with mature-aged students with children who are currently completing post-secondary education in New Brunswick. One strong theme that emerged was the social support they receive from their own families, often in the form of informal childcare, more so than direct financial support. The question is, why do students have to rely on family for childcare? This reliance on family while in studies is typically due to the long wait lists and the costs of attending daycares close to their university or college.

Student newspapers are one place to look for discussion of the challenges faced by mature-aged students. In a 2017 article for Mount Allison University student newspaper The Argosy, Jill Macintyre linked the challenges of mature students to their sense of isolation from the wider student community, perhaps in part because they are not understood as a group needing specific services. She also noted that first-generation and low-income students are over-represented among mature students.

Macintyre’s discussion resonates with the experience of Andrew McCullough, reporting as a mature student in his 2021 article in the University of New Brunswick’s student newspaper The Brunswickan. As McCullough wrote, “Entering education as a mature student, I felt I had a lot to prove.” He described his experience of firstly dropping out as a freshman, and then returning at 29 with a firmer viewpoint on his education. Mature students have had time to grow and focus on their purpose in seeking education. Typically, they have a better understanding of the fields and forms of education they are passionate about. With hard earned life experience, they enroll because they want to learn, not party.

In my own experience as a mature student attending Mount Allison University with children, the first challenge I faced was finding a place to rent that met a range of criteria: a place that was affordable, accepted children, and was walkable to the campus. I did not have a car or driver’s license at the time. Sackville, where Mount Allison is located, has no public bus service. Students are expected to live close to campus or else use private transport. Finding a home was hard back then but would have been near impossible in the rental market today. Had I not found that house, I probably would not have been writing this article, as an incoming graduate student at the University of New Brunswick.

While completing my undergraduate studies, I had to balance home life, family life with kids, and school life. By necessity, some mature students will have to add work life on top of all this.

Larissa Ruby Marshall, a parent who attended Oulton College in Moncton until last year, reaffirmed the idea that balancing these different aspects of our lives is strenuous and difficult, and more than likely something must give if one is to succeed as a student.

“My house definitely took the back burner during that time,” she said. “It’s very rewarding but it can be challenging. The short-term struggle is definitely worth the long-term gain.”

Post-secondary education institutions need to be proactive about ways to minimize this struggle in order to retain their mature student enrollments. If otherwise motivated students become drop-out statistics. This is a huge waste of human potential and university resources.

Alejandra Poulin, currently a second year student at Mount Allison University, faces a range of other difficulties as a parent with three young children. Scheduling conflicts are a persistent problem. Whereas such conflicts arise for most students, being a student with three children makes them significantly complex to resolve, even when resources are provided by the school.

Poulin noted, “I did have trouble accessing additional resources available to me. Help sessions with the TAs are in the evenings. I can’t attend those.” The challenges Poulin describes are more than understandable in the context of any parent’s evening responsibilities, from dinner preparations to bedtime routines, to making tomorrow’s lunches. While speaking with Poulin we both reflected on the informal help we got from amazing faculty who were both understanding of these situations, and flexible as they assisted us in navigating complex systems and rules not designed for students with kids.

Some students with families have younger children not yet in school. One should not have to choose between higher education and family, and yet the question of childcare forces this choice on too many mothers who want to study.

Tara Leger, a fourth year student at Crandall University in Moncton with a 10-month-old baby, explains this best: “I was ‘on duty’ around the clock, often up with the baby 3-5 times a night.” For myself, I had my third child during my fourth year of undergraduate studies. I took a semester off and then returned the following semester with a beautiful daughter who was only a few months old. I made this work with the help of my own mother, who provided childcare during the day so I could attend  school. As any parent also understands, the daylight hours are not the only challenge.

Understanding the issues that mature students face—and especially those with families—brings us a step closer to being able to offer aid that would benefit these students. Something needs to be done about childcare: the lack of availability, especially for children under two years of age; the waiting lists; and of course, the extra costs this adds to the family budget if and when a space can be found.

Having to balance these different aspects of mature students’ lives is another larger issue at hand. As a student who has attended quite a few study skills workshops, I can say that these never broach the subject of balancing your children’s affairs with home and school life. Kids are the big stuffed elephant in the room, so to speak. It needs to be recognized that as mature students get creative with scheduling to fit in which extended family who offer help, this further amplifies their time management challenges. Universities and colleges need to understand this and accommodate accordingly.

As we transition away from ways of working and studying that we used to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic, we are in a period where ways of working, and studying are in the spotlight. There is no better time to confront these issues faced by mature students, and those with families.

It should not be a surprise that mature students, especially those with families, feel a deep sense of pride as they recognize their own strength and resilience, and that of their families.

As Tara Leger of Crandall University put it, “I feel like an absolute rockstar for completing this year.” She takes credit for the difficult and rewarding education she received. As she should, and for all of us mature students who face many adversities with little to no aid geared specifically for us. Yet we come out with degrees, certificates, diplomas, and honours in spite of these challenges. Maybe it’s time that colleges and universities took a more proactive approach that relied a little less on our resilience and learned a little from the creativity we use to succeed against the odds.

Kirsten Leclaire-Mazerolle, from Natoaganeg First Nation, is a researcher and writer working out of the Human Environments Workshop (HEW) funded by RAVEN.