<i>Really Useful Knowledge</i>: The<i>New Vocationalism</i>in Higher Education and its Consequences for Mature Students

Abstract

This paper offers a discursive analysis of the position of mature students vis-a-vis higher education and its increasingly necessary linkage with industry. Longstanding questions are raised as to what higher education is actually for: intellectual expansion, or merely to prepare young people for work? If it is the latter, then where does this leave mature students, who have less ‘career’time left to use their degrees, and may simply be studying because of an interest in a given subject?