KEY POINTS:
The opportunity to enter or return to tertiary education at any time during our adult lives is something New Zealanders are fortunate enough to access with reasonable ease.
Further study not only opens up new career paths, it also provides huge potential for personal growth.
When accountant Mike Mann survived a bad car accident in 2001, he realised it was time to follow his lifelong dream to work with disadvantaged youth.
He left a 20-year accounting career to work at a Barnardos residential centre for youth at risk, also enrolling part time in Unitec's degree in social practice and counselling. The lifestyle change, which involves five to six years part-time study, was made affordable by a smallish mortgage and adult children. The role involves live-in shifts with the youth, doing everything from cooking to physical activities, as well as working on their confidence and self-esteem.
"I had always hankered for this kind of work after doing it temporarily in London years ago. An accountant is in a removed role, not at the coal face like this. I wanted to be more of service to people."
Although he finds the assignment load daunting at times, Mann is coping academically. He finds his life experiences, as well as his job, help him through.
"The learning isn't so much about what you can write, but about how to apply different methods to your practice. I'm very practical and need reasons for doing things and this fits like a glove from that perspective."
While his main focus is on gaining skills, he is also experiencing huge personal growth.
"There is a lot of self-exploration in the study which challenges all your beliefs about who you are and where you've come from. It was like travelling to Pluto when I started, it is so different from accounting."
Now 58, Mann wants to be active as long as possible.
"My dad retired at 60, but there is no way I would do that. The physical stuff with the boys will get harder as I get older, but doing this degree will hopefully help me eventually move into the management side."
He believes his passion for social practice is what gets him through.
"You need that passion to energise yourself."
Six years ago, aged 65, Pat Long decided to dedicate herself totally to her art after a long career as a primary school teacher and deputy principal.
"I loved working with young people for they have exciting creativity, but I reached the point where I wanted to express myself more and in a different way, and art is something I've been committed to one way or another all my life."
She spent eight months preparing for her first solo exhibition, then in 2004 enrolled in a Masters in Fine Arts through Whitecliffe College of Art and Design's seminar and distance-based programme.
"I felt I needed to accelerate. I wanted to know more. I wanted to know what made art 'art'. I sought the theoretical understanding to be able to look at art and interpret what the artist is saying, appreciate its intention, decide whether for me it has integrity, and to be able to scrutinise my own work," says Long. "At Whitecliffe, the student's art theory was driven by the studio work. Art produced was critiqued and through these processes I gradually developed as an artist, able to analyse critically my own and other work."
Although it was a steep learning curve, Long says Whitecliffe gave her a secure environment in which to explore and find her way artistically.
"It helped me mature artistically and develop my confidence. It was very empowering."
Immediately following completion of her MFA in January 2006, her husband - who was terminally ill - deteriorated. Her next six months were dedicated to quality time at home with him until he passed away in August.
As a late starter, Long was driven to catch up in the artistic world. While she would have loved to change careers earlier, she says she made the decision to put her family of three first - an appropriate choice at the time.
"That was a pretty important compromise for many of my generation."
She's now been in a number of group exhibitions, had a second solo exhibition and is working on another. She says there is much more to being a practising artist than creating art.
"I make applications for funding, I network. I manufacture and promote, record my work and organise marketing and outlets. I also have to continually upgrade my technological knowledge across a wide range of media, such as computer manipulation, website and reproduction of images. Being an emerging artist takes organisation, a clear focus, self-belief, energy and commitment."
She also does occasional relief teaching with local Whakatane high school senior art students, where she also provides voluntary mentoring and critique.
Long encourages others to follow their passion.
"Who knows what you can achieve? The possibilities are limited only by our own thinking."
The chance to "exercise her brain" and open up new possibilities was behind Gwyn Fox's cautious enrolment 14 years ago in New Start, a University of Auckland short bridging course.
Although she'd travelled and worked for years as a qualified nurse, before having her children, she was lacking confidence in her academic abilities. "People who went to university were different beings to me," says Fox.
Not so any more. Now 62, Fox teaches on a University of Auckland foundation course in European Studies and lectures stage one Spanish. She also does translations, recently translating and checking translations of 17th and 18th century Spanish voyaging documents for professor Dame Anne Salmond.
She did her Bachelor of Arts in English and Spanish part time over five years.
She initially decided to major in English, her best subject at school, then added Spanish, a language she'd been fascinated with since staying there while on her OE.
"At the end of my BA I had to choose and went with Spanish because I did not want to lose the language I had acquired. Through studying Spanish I've discovered a whole literature hitherto unavailable to me except in translation."
Offers of scholarships enticed her into postgraduate study, including her PhD on women and literature in 17th century Spain, which was funded by a Research Science and Technology Bright Future Top Achiever doctoral scholarship. Such a scholarship is a significant acknowledgement of a person's academic abilities.
Older students are very much part of the university population, says Fox, whether studying a single paper a year or doing full-time study.
"I meet older women who have devoted their lives to their families and are now pursuing a long-held dream. There is a man in his nineties doing a BA in classics, who religiously turns up by bus each morning."
Older students are great to have in tutorials, she says.
"They bring a lot and many of the younger students appreciate them as a useful resource. Younger students are very accepting of older students, even though older students have a tendency to answer everything, ask heaps of questions and have read all the material, and sometimes more, before coming to tutorials."
Indeed an issue for mature students, says Fox, is that they tend to be perfectionists and work too much.
For Fox, university study has been a life-changing experience, personally and professionally.
"Sometimes I'd feel it is all too much and that I am too stupid because I don't understand something straight away, or that I am not in the same league as everyone else. You get past those feelings when things go well and you become sure you can do it."
What older people don't realise, she says, is that life experience does count, and coming into contact with younger students is encouraging and invigorating.
"Before I began studying, I'd misjudged the importance of what we learn and gain generally from life."
Adult students
* Between 2004-2006 the University of Auckland had a 40 per cent increase in enrolments of students over 40 years. (This includes the amalgamation with Auckland College of Education). The university's general student numbers increased by 10 per cent over the same period.
* At Unitec, 19.5 per cent of all students enrolled in 2006 were 40 years and older, an increase of two per cent from 2003.
* In 2006, AUT had 1609 students between 40-49 years and another 932 students were 50 years or older.
