A Lifelong Learner: One Mature Student’s Path to University

Many first-year students gasp and give looks of faux horror upon hearing that one of their new friends is over the age of nineteen, but for Erin McCauley, the opposite is true. It can be “quite a shock” to realise that her new social sphere mainly consists of eighteen-year-olds. Though only a few years older than the average undergraduate, 27-year-old McCauley is what the University of St Andrews considers a mature student. This semester marks the start of her first year studying International Relations and Arabic at the University.

It can be difficult for many students to return to a routine of long nights spent reading academic journals and writing sesquipedalian essays after the summer holidays, so it’s hard to imagine how intimidating the prospect of returning to full-time education must be for mature students such as McCauley, who left school in 2013. 

Though many mature students enter higher education with vastly more experience and maturity than their teenage peers, it’s typically been several years or even decades since the last time they had to sit down and spend hours making sure their citations were in line. This reality can make the prospect of applying to and succeeding at university seem daunting or even unattainable, with few clear paths existing. This is where the Scottish Wider Access Programme, also known as SWAP, comes in.

SWAP is a programme designed to enable adults “with few or no qualifications and who have been out of school for some time” to find a route back into the education system without feeling like they are being abruptly thrown into the deep end of the pool. As a partnership of colleges and universities across Scotland, they provide year-long access courses across all regions of the country, with the aim of re-instilling the general academic skills required to thrive in a university setting and providing the essential content knowledge needed before starting a specific degree. 

SWAP offers access courses in an array of colleges situated everywhere from the Isle of Arran to Edinburgh, in a diverse range of subjects. For McCauley, SWAP offered a desirable opportunity to explore new career options after years of working in sales analytics and recruitment. “I had a good job […] but I realised I was still looking for a job, not a career,” said McCauley.

Originally from Paisley, McCauley has always been fascinated by languages and global affairs but didn’t always have the easiest time letting her intellectual interests shine. “I was very disruptive,” recalled McCauley. “Each of my teachers had to sign a behaviour sheet and I had to submit it every week to my pastoral care officer.” When she received an autism diagnosis at fifteen, her troubles in school began to make much more sense, though she believes she didn’t receive enough support at that time to turn her high school experience around.

Despite being interested in pursuing higher education, McCauley began working in sales analytics and recruitment. She made good money, but eventually decided she had other ambitions. “I just wanted to go do something else,” she said. When she heard that a couple of her friends had taken access courses through SWAP, it sparked new ambitions and offered a path forward to what she really wanted to pursue. “I actually wanted to do primary school teaching,” she explained. “When I joined my access course, that was the plan.” 

However, McCauley stated the pathway towards a SWAP teaching course was very “singular,” and she was concerned about the lack of jobs for teachers in Scotland. She still applied and was accepted to a SWAP course called Access to Primary Education and Humanities, which was “super broad” and covered everything from law to education to social work. 

“It was a nice gateway back to school when you’ve been away so long,” said McCauley. The course was also essential to her as, though she had “good grades in high school,” they were now out of date and useless for achieving higher qualifications. One of SWAP’s core purposes is to act as a stand-in for out-of-date or non-existent grades, as it is specifically targeted at adults with few or no previous qualifications. 

When asked if her SWAP course provided a gentle return to the trials and tribulations of the educational system, McCauley replied that it was “definitely a bit of a shock, but I was really eased in because there were people on the course who’d been out of education for twenty plus years.” She added that you couldn’t “slip through the cracks unless you wanted to.” 

SWAP access courses often attempt to provide much more personal attention and interaction between students and lecturers. “The relationship you have with lecturers is more like the ones you’d have with your [school] teachers,” said McCauley. However, she noted that the course was “really fast-paced,” as students go from receiving lots of personal support at the start, to university-style lectures and independent work all within the space of a year. 

SWAP also partners with universities (including the University of St Andrews) to ensure that the grades students attain through SWAP courses are accepted as evidence for offers. Since she was in high school, McCauley has been intrigued by world politics. When it came time to apply to a university course, St Andrews’ School of International Relations ranked high on her list. After a year of hard work, McCauley achieved an AAA profile through SWAP and was accepted into the University. 

Socially, it was quite a change for McCauley to transition from her college to the University of St Andrews. In her access course, most of her peers were ages 27-30 and often had “similar experiences.” Whereas at St Andrews, most of her coursemates are in their late teens and early twenties, with significantly less life experience. “It was difficult coming here, where the age gap is so large,” she said. However, McCauley said she feels lucky to be at St Andrews under the Pathways Programme, which is for “students who need a wee bit of extra support.” 

Students in the Pathways Programme do a weeklong induction before other students arrive, which allows them to make valuable connections and start to adjust to university life before the semester begins. Still, McCauley sometimes feels left out of the Venn diagram of student social life. “It’s such an international university, and so everyone has something in common with each other […] whether it’s shared nationality or age, you have a way to connect with each other […] but that’s harder for me,” she explained. 

Now halfway through her first semester, McCauley is glad she made the choice to participate in SWAP and attend St Andrews. Recalling her days as a struggling high school student, she remarked on the vast difference between where she was then and where she is now — “What a f***ing comeback.”

Illustration: Magdalena Yiacoumi