Keywords

Introduction

Enabling programmes are Australian university preparation programmes designed to widen tertiary participation for people who, for a variety of reasons, have not matriculated to university. These access schemes have been a feature of the Australian tertiary landscape, especially since World War II (May and Bunn 2015). In 2014, there were 20,087 students commencing in Australian enabling programmes, an increase of 5.2 per cent on the previous year, while overall commencing students in 2014 numbered almost 570,000 (Australian Department of Education & Training 2015). Today enabling programmes attract a high proportion of mature-age people (20+) who are the first in their immediate families to try to access university study. They are often from low socio-economic strata, as well as from rural and refugee backgrounds (Crawford 2014, p. 16). These people are trailblazers and they have an awareness that their participation in the enabling programme will have important consequences not only for themselves in the future but for their familial and social circles. This chapter builds on the previous chapter by examining the specific motivational and relational factors influencing this extraordinary group of first-in-family (FiF) enabling students. Of particular interest are the opportunities and risk s that these students identified in relation to this form of study. Their stories reveal their willingness to embrace the substantial changes and hard work that enable them to achieve their educational goals.

As described in Chap. 1, this chapter rests primarily on two sets of data generated from Study B: one set from an anonymous survey and another arising from semi-structured interviews, collected from volunteer enabling students for the Breaking the Barriers project (O’Shea et al. 2015). The interviewed group numbered 14 and included four men. All of the male interviewees were single and aged between 20 and 31 years with no children. There were ten female interviewees: three of them were single and seven were partnered. Six of the women had children and three of these women were single parents. All of the interviewees were undertaking study on-campus. Two of these interviews included one child of each of the interviewees. The surveyed group undertook an anonymous survey of 36 questions and attracted 30 responses with 12 of the respondents identified as men. Fourteen of the Surveyed Group identified as parents, 13 female and one male. Across both groups, the largest age group comprised those aged between 25 and 30 years (39 per cent or 17/44), with 23 per cent (10/44) aged 30–40; 20 per cent (9/44) aged 40–50, 7 per cent (3/44) aged over 50 and 11 per cent (5/44) under 25 years. In the analysis that follows, the interviewees are identified by a first name pseudonym and the survey groups are numbered from 1 to 32, with brief biographical details of each participant also included at the end of each quote. All enabling students attended their enabling programmes on-campus.

This chapter utilises biographical method harnessing ‘the power of the personal voice’ (Pitman 2013, p. 31) to explore these enabling students ’ motivations and relationship impacts, mainly from their point of view as they underwent their initial tertiary educational journey s. Student motivations to enrol in higher education (HE) are not uniform across student groups more generally but reflect social differences and inequalities (Boyle and Abdullah 2015, p. 170). In Australia, this has been construed by equity policy makers as evidence of the existence of aspiration and information ‘gaps’ (Sellar 2013, p. 250). However the motivations to seek HE discussed by participants here are shown to be deeply embedded and complexly formulated within temporal and relational contexts as well as within their broader social, cultural and economic locations. While they show that these FiF learners have understood the current governmental message that they can aspire through their own efforts to HE, they also indicate that they are motivated by the intention to impact positively those around them, especially their children if they have them.

The participants here frame their involvement in a personal politics of hope: Whether this constitutes a ‘cruel optimism’ based on the ‘false promises of aspiration ’ (Sellar 2013, pp. 251–52) remains to be seen. A basic proposition here would be that it is better to have some hope than none, and that universities worldwide, and those who fund them, should be working to widen the arc of hope and deepen the support to bring that hope to fruition. At this point in writing, research in Australia and countries like it, shows, in Chesters’ words: ‘the continuing lack of intergenerational mobility within economies with expanded educational opportunities’ (2015, p. 387). As will be shown later in the chapter, a further proposition is that engagement in HE is a social as much as an individual act having impacts far beyond the transformations that the enabling learner personally undergoes. This goes to their role and value as FiF trailblazers for their families and more broadly for their communities.

Motivations for Returning to Education

The interview and the survey data revealed a range of motivations for those FiF students seeking to gain entry to university via an enabling programme. These motivations reflected a wide array of individual hopes, dreams and fears that were embedded in the complex relational contexts within which they lived. The stories of motivations to enrol were infused with the actions, thoughts, feelings and/or opinions of partners, parents, children, friends, workmates, professionals and workplaces. In terms of life experience of the students, motivations also reflected temporal concerns arising from past experience, stimulated by present conditions, and anticipating the future (Scanlon 2008). The following student’s account of her motivations are given as an illustration of how these relationships and temporalities structured accounts in demonstrable ways. The quotation, from a female survey participant, was originally one continuous written comment, but it has been broken down to reveal relationship effects (underlined) and temporal orientations (in square brackets):

  • [Past] I had been working full time for the past ten years in the security industry before going on maternity leave .

  • [Present] I did not wish to return to shift work as it is no longer convenient due to the big changes in my life .

  • [Past] A friend encouraged me to apply for Open Foundation. I had always wanted to go back to study but I found it very hard to break out of the security industry . I felt as though I was trapped there.

  • [Present] My daughter is my prime motivation for wanting to return to study.

  • [Future] I want to earn a degree that will enable me to have a career that pays well so I can give my family the best life I can . (Participant #27, female, 30–40, partnered, one child)

This latter quote illustrates both strong agentic and relationship motivations where the focus shifts from desires and ambitions located within the self and those externally arising from others or projected onto close family. Her daughter, aged 23 months, provided a key focus for this student’s embrace of significant change. As detailed in Chap. 4, there is an explicit understanding that HE provides access to a better life, found to be a ‘key driver’ for attendance and success for first-generation minority college students (Boyle and Abdullah 2015, p. 170). Yet the push and pull desires to escape present conditions on the one hand, and improve them on the other, were evident in many of the FiF enabling students ’ stories. Scanlon (2008, pp. 23–24) found in her study of adult ‘motives’ for returning to HE, that while there was a range of motives exhibited by adult returners , the majority focused on what Emirbayer and Mische (1998) called ‘an imaginative engagement of the future’ (cited in Merrill 2015, p. 1865) and often concerned relationships in some important manner. Orth and Robinson (2015) also reported similar themes shared by enabling students in their motivations to enrol in an enabling programme, including: the desire to be a role model for others in their lives; the need to have a career that gave job satisfaction; and concern about the future both emotionally and financially. These findings are supported here.

For enabling students in this study, there was a remarkable consistency in some of the responses about motivations. Indeed the most frequently expressed motivations came as a future-oriented pair: the first, as in the above quote, was a career that led to a ‘better life’, and the second was that this career would be one about which they were passionate. Isabel (female, 19, partnered, no children) had always wanted to come to university, it was ‘a thing’ of hers:

well it is a dream [but] it’s just more the fact that I’d love to get a good career and a good start in life so I can eventually own my own home and have what I want, hopefully. I know that’s not what you always get. And, plus just the fact that I want to do what I want to do. I don’t want to go into a job that I don’t love and, if I can study what I love and become a nurse which is something I want to do, then I’m going to enjoy my job and just generally I guess, have a happier life … I want to go to work because I want to, so applying for university is going to help me do that. Yes, so that’s why.

The above resonates with Rick (male, 21, single, no children) who was motivated to get a job in the field he wanted. He explained:

Well, university offers [a] more in-depth and longer course and the choice to specialise in a certain field which can be considered a niche market … or a job that I would enjoy rather than jumping in and out of different jobs that I don’t enjoy much.

Anthea commented that ‘a lot of things’ drove her. The first was her own obvious desire to pursue an interesting career from a very young age. The second was her family’s persistent prompting that she could ‘do more’:

I think it’s just the fact that I’ve always loved books and I guess my whole family has just always said, you know, “You’re a smart person. Don’t waste your life not going to uni”. … Also my mum has pointed out that with a university education you do have a better chance of getting a job and you do get a bigger pay than someone who’s never had that education and she’s really pushed all three of her girls to really consider getting that piece of paper to make the world know you’re smart. Even if you know you are, it’s what the rest of the world sees at times. (Anthea, female, 21, single, no children)

Another woman reported that her motivation to enrol: ‘would be able to gain a worthwhile career that is something I love to do and also to be able to provide a better life’. But in the comments that followed, this student also revealed the complex temporal and relationship embeddedness of these personal motivations when she wrote of the ‘defining experience’ that fuelled her motivations:

Well my fiancé and I had been going through some real tough times over a six-year span. The situation at times quite unbearable but we have managed to turn our lives around … now I can fulfil my dreams and also to prove to me [that I could do it as] I always thought I never had the brains for uni. (Participant #30, female, 25–30, partnered, no children)

Lurking in this student’s educational biography , as in those of many others, were the sources of a negative self-belief, which also formed a background motivation. At some point in her educational past, this woman had learned that she should not think of herself as university material, as not capable and therefore not entitled to consider HE as part of her future. She had constructed herself within a deficit discourse in what Penny-Jane Burke (2012) has called the politics of misrecognition.

For another woman, the ‘defining moment’ occurred around the time she gave birth to her third child in midlife. In the time away from paid work, she wrote that:

I had time to reflect on my life up until that point, and plan what I wanted my future to look like after she wasn’t so dependent. I realized that at my age, I wanted a career … I wanted to spend the rest of my working life doing something I was passionate about, and to do that I would need to go to university. (Participant #28, aged 40–50 with three children)

This reflexivity arose from a pivotal time in her life course as she faced the midlife dilemma of how to achieve deep, meaningful engagement in her future paid working life. The university is signalled as the pathway to materialise this desirable outcome: motivations, means and ends are intimately entwined.

Motivations and Significant Others

As mentioned in Chap. 4, significant others figured in many stories; this was particularly noted in stories about the motivations to enrol in an enabling programme. For one woman, her mother suggested the programme to her (Participant #25, female, 30–40, single, two children); for another, it was a friend ‘who saw in me things that I didn’t see. He encouraged me to study, motivated me and supported me’ (Participant #21, female, 40–50, no children reported). Children of all ages figured especially in the women’s responses to this question. For Participant #25 again, motivations around children were powerful:

I want to become more self supporting and show my children that higher education even for a mum is possible. [I] want them to see me as more than just a mum. (Participant #25, female, 30–40, single, two children)

Participant #6 (female, 25–30, partnered, one child) said that she did not want:

to be stuck in the rut I am in for my whole life, I want to inspire my son. I have the intelligence but not the confidence and I needed to challenge myself to prove I’m not stupid … I felt it was the right time for me. My son is starting kindergarten this year and he loves that mummy goes to school too. I’m ready to open my mind to new opportunities.

One woman, whose two elder children would soon complete high school, wanted not only to experience what university might have been like had she gone directly from her high school matriculation, but also ‘to show them what study was all about’ (Participant #13, female, 40–50, partnered, three children). Some children actively suggested university to their mothers, as one woman commented that her adult children : ‘encouraged me to do something for myself after a divorce’ (Participant #18, female, 50+, single, three children).

Professional people in the students’ lives could also prove decisive in motivating the student to enrol. For one woman, an Occupational Therapist was ‘so inspiration al, that I am on my way to become one’ (Participant #10, female 25–30, partnered, no children); while for another, who always wanted to enrol in the enabling programme, her psychologist ‘thought it would be good for me to gain some knowledge and get out into the world’ (Participant #7, female, 40–50, single, three children). Graeme (male, 31, single, no children) was formerly a train shunter in the local Steelworks, when he had a kind of ‘epiphany’ when he realised that he did not want to be physically worn down by the hard manual labour at the Steelworks. He recounted that, while speaking with a university graduate about his hobbies, he realised what he must do:

I was talking to someone about how I couldn’t work in the steelworks any longer and they were just asking me questions; they were university graduates and they were just asking, “What do you like doing, like what else do you do?” And I just talked to them about how I enjoy coaching kids and how … I had this like passion for science whatever and the person was like, “It’s staring you right in the face dude, come and be a science teacher.” So, I’ve basically called in sick that day from the steelworks and came to the university administration and basically said, can I please go here and they said ok, there’s an entrance exam for the college ‘cos you’re so far out of school in about a week you can sit that, passed that and then I went to the college.

While significant others were important for many, there was often an underlying intrinsic motivation. For example, while the fact that one woman’s partner was already studying ‘probably gave me the push I needed’, she also enrolled ‘because I want to further my skills and do something I have been wanting to get into for a while which is Social Work’ (Participant #9, 25–30, female, partnered, no children). The intrinsic motivation towards a specific career was also evident for a number of these FiF students. One woman was interested in studying law because she had discovered her aptitude for legal thinking and presentation, having become a courtroom champion for people dealing with the Australian social services department, Centrelink. She wrote in her survey response:

Over the past 10 yrs [I] helped people through Tribunals with issues related to Centrelink, e.g., been denied pension … I have also found mistakes within correspondence sent to customers of Centrelink and … I have been to Tribunals equal to Federal Courts and pointed out numerous mistakes made by a Solicitor whom I was up against at the time. I have had the Commonwealth Ombudsman, Magistrates, Solicitors … contact myself in their own personal time asking why I have not studied Law as they were very surprised I was able to understand and comprehend laws which govern Centrelink. (Participant #22, 50+, female, partnered, four adult children)

Another woman who described herself as a ‘stay-at-home mum’ for 15 years, was having trouble re-entering the workforce. She also wanted to ‘do something’ for herself now that her children were old enough. She decided to undertake a nursing degree because she had always enjoyed doing First Aid. Hannah (female, 33, partnered, five children) from her own ‘self-determination’, was also motivated by her interest in nursing, especially midwifery. She explained:

Well I wanted to do midwifery, nursing and midwifery, and I thought because I have a busy lifestyle I sort of need to be doing work where I’ve got something to do. I’ve always just had jobs where it’s the same thing day after day you know and I just don’t want to do that forever.

Intrinsic motivations also arose from the desire to pursue a career about which they could be passionate. Previous research into First-Year Experience of HE in Australia has indicated that the most important reason to enrol at university was to pursue a particular field of interest, followed by better job prospects. A significant number of younger students also reported that their parental expectations were influential (Baik et al. 2015). FiF enabling students however reveal complex motivations, especially around the development of the self. This finding is corroborated by Johns et al. (2014, p. 22) in their study of 56 Tasmanian enabling students, where 23 per cent undertook their enabling programme for self-development. One man in this study said that he was pursuing ‘self-development’:

I had been poking it for years and felt that I had to make the step at some point. … It is still very early to comment on this in detail although I feel very determined. (Participant #19, male, 25–30, single, no children)

Another man (Participant #16, male, 18–21, single, no children) wanted ‘to get into University and gain higher learning and extend my knowledge’. One woman, whose eldest son was almost finished high school, wanted to broaden her ‘knowledge base’ by studying subjects that interested her (Participant #5, female, 40–50, partnered, three children). Another woman, whose children were older, was bored at home and felt that she needed: ‘something to motivate and encourage me to do something for myself. Something that only I could benefit from’ (Participant #25, female, 30–40, single, two children). Participant #21 (female, 40–50, single, no children reported) was ‘recently single after a 27-year relationship’ and she was seeking self-validation: ‘I wanted to do something for me, be something more than a wife, mother, office clerk’. Finally another woman, having lately moved interstate, wanted to do something for herself as well as embarking on a passionate caree r.

In these stories about what brought them to enrol in a university enabling programme, there is strong evidence of the ‘disorienting dilemma triggered by a life crisis or major transition’ postulated by Mezirow (1995 cited in Imel 1998) as a prompt to action by these FiF enabling students . These dilemmas and transitions ranged from a divorce after a long marriage, the birth of a child, the move interstate, children about to become adults, the inability to find a job and the end of a particularly challenging relationship. What is clear nevertheless is that mono-causal reasons for coming to HE do not suffice; adults have a variety of motivations based on both push factors arising out of past and present circumstances, and pull factors based in the future and centred on hope and discourses of betterment and opportunity for themselves and for their families, especially for children (O’Shea et al. 2015). Powerful temporal conditions and relationships forge the springboard for change.

As already mentioned, in analyses of the access and equity policy agenda, there has been critique of the ‘cruel optimism’ and ‘false promises’ enacted on non-traditional aspirants to HE, such as enabling students , with regard to realisation of human capital accumulation amid ‘the falling value of HE as a positional good’ (Sellar 2013, p. 252). This argument however seems captured by the neo-liberal imaginary and configures the aspirant likewise ensnared by an economistic understanding of themselves solely as seekers of competitive advantage in a ‘better’/higher-paying career . What the above stories demonstrate, however, is that these FiF enabling students also understand that HE can offer a range of other ‘dividends’ (O’Shea et al. 2016) including a means to be a role model for others, especially for children; a way to achieve a passionate career; as well as the development of the self with a richer inner life of more meaning. Further, the passionate nature of the career aspiration is most often based upon making a contribution to community (May et al. 2016). These dividends, both communitarian and individualistic, sit outside of neo-liberal discourse s and need to be figured into analyses of aspiration and indeed the notion of ‘success’ for non-traditional students in HE. Once in their enabling programme, the assemblage of motivations worked to propel and sustain forward momentum for themselves in their courses, but this activity was both affected by and caused effects beyond the educational aims of their courses, into personal relationship realms.

Relationship Impacts

While there is a growing literature on the personal impacts of enabling education in terms of increasing confidence (Field 2011); identity formation (Crawford 2014); wellbeing (O’Shea and Stone 2011); academic self-efficacy (Habel 2012) and improvement in employment prospects (Bunn 2013), the impacts on relationships, especially on family in FiF studies, are less well understood. This section examines this aspect to show that the impacts of their choices for FiF enabling students went well beyond the self. Mostly their involvement in HE was reason for celebration, pride and support of their family and friends; but at the same time, ambivalence or outright negativity was experienced. Waller et al. (2011) discussing these ‘hidden costs’ of non-traditional adult students undertaking HE in the UK, suggested that these costs were ‘tension, fracture and reconfiguration’, commenting that:

Returning to learn threatens relationships and positioning within the wider community for those from backgrounds where few—if any—people attend university. Such costs are borne jointly by learners personally and by those closest to them: their parents, partners and peers. (p. 511)

Children should also be added to this list of bearers of the costs of adult education al return; nor should the ‘costs’ be classed as ‘hidden’ so much as (sometimes) unanticipated. Further, ‘benefits’ should be added to this analysis of impacts. Indeed changes in relationships, costs and benefits, were very quickly disclosed to the FiF enabling students in this study by the litmus test of their HE participation.

Across the survey and interview groups, the majority reported how their families and friends provided a source of support and encouragement, and that these supportive relationship frameworks facilitated in multiple ways their quest to access HE. However, there were also strong, if less persistent, indications of the disruptive impacts that were both envisioned and enacted in some participants’ lives. Other research has reported this type of ‘disbenefit’ of adult education for the learner and their relationships. For example, Field (2011, p. 287) commented that ‘although learning helps to extend some social networks, it can disrupt others’. Age and gender were differentiating factors in these students’ stories of impacts on their circles of relationships.

Relationship Impacts on Younger Students

Younger FiF enabling students in the study, 21 years and under, were more likely than older students to mention their parents as pivotal in their stories about the impacts of their enabling educational experience on their relationships. For example, interviewees Isabel, Anthea, and Samir mentioned the positive support that flowed from their mothers as especially noteworthy. In Isabel’s case, even though in undertaking university-level studies, there had ‘been no role model that’s come before’ her, most of the people in her life were ‘supportive of me going into university and I guess fulfilling my dream’. However, her mother ‘adored’ the idea of university, had desired it for herself, and provided a solid foundation of support:

[It was] more my mum, she’s my rock. She said, you know, “It’s taken me so long to get where I am but if you can do it earlier then that’s better”. The reason she’s so supportive is because she wants me to succeed in life and she wants me to have a happy life where I enjoy what I do. She loves what she does but, like I said, it’s taken her so long to get to where she is … so the relationships haven’t changed; I’m still close with my family and obviously my partner but yes, it’s just more that what we talk about now I guess has changed a bit. (Isabel, female, 19, partnered, no children)

Other members of Isabel’s family were more equivocal, for example Isabel’s grandfather had ‘been brought up with, you know, “You work. As soon as you’re able to work, you work”. This stance required Isabel to convince her grandfather that her decision was sound. She explained:

He does support me but it’s taken a bit of explaining to him that for me to work and to have a good job, I need to get this degree and I need to stay in school. My mum, as I said, is supportive, always supportive; my dad’s pretty supportive of me, my brother just doesn’t really care, my boyfriend’s very supportive. My boyfriend’s mum doesn’t understand why I’m doing school for so long; as soon as she could get out of school she went and worked and then she became a mum and she’s never had to work pretty much since then.

Likewise, Anthea’s mother’s experience had a decisive impact on Anthea’s educational choices as an object lesson:

My mum, she graduated high school but when she was my age, 21, she fell pregnant with her first child and got married and settled down and because she was married, the government wouldn’t support her like they support students now with HECS and things like that so she just couldn’t afford to go to uni …. It’s sort of affected her entire life. (Anthea, female, 21, partnered, no children)

Anthea also commented that her father, who dropped out of high school three days into Year 11, and whom she regards as ‘such an intelligent person’: ‘even he has sort of suffered because of not being able to go to uni and things like that’. Interestingly, Anthea was discouraged at home from talking about her university experience, which was what her father called ‘big school’: ‘At home people don’t like me being overly smart; they encourage me to be smart but they don’t like me being smart in the same sense’. This goes to the reciprocal anxiety that some members of their families and enabling students experience within their home environments, in response to this unprecedented involvement in HE (Waller et al. 2011, p. 513). Samir, 20, from a recently settled refugee background, also singled out his mother and the ‘ripple effect’ on his brothers when talking about the positive impacts of his study on his relationships:

My mum’s really proud that I’ve actually decided to go to uni rather than TAFE and pretty much a lot of my [five] brothers and stuff are looking up to me now and they all plan to go to uni … My mum thinks it’s a really good opportunity for like basically to open up the world for you and … no one really has ever had that much opportunity in my family. (Samir, male, 20, single, no children)

While some of his friends were already at university and helped him ‘a lot’, other friends were not going to university and his relationship with them had changed ‘because I don’t hang out with them as much as I did before’. For Rick (21, single, no children), who once believed he could ‘never do university, like I sucked at school, I could never do it’, going to university is now normal—‘kind of just another day sort of thing’—and dissonance regarding his choice is minimal because his family all support him and all of his friends attend university too. The only survey participant in this age group, #16 (male, 18–21, single, no children), believed that he had ‘gained a bit more respect’ as an enabling student. His family was proud of him and they saw ‘university as a pathway to a better future’ for him. Nevertheless, he also wrote that he had had family obstacles in that he had to ‘convince my family that I could do it’.

Relationship Impacts on Older Students

For older students, while parents still featured in their stories, especially in single and childless partnered people’s accounts, a different constellation of relationships made up of partners, ex-partners and children, impacted on their participation in HE. Most participants over 21 years in both interview and survey groups reported that their families and friends were supportive of their efforts. Yve, for example, had not experienced any negativity at all in her educational return. Her family were all supportive and her relationship with her mother had actually improved because Yve was now on a path her mother had recommended for some time:

I’ve probably gotten a better bond with my mum just because, ever since I left school she was like “Become a teacher. You’re an idiot if you don’t become a teacher”. Because I kind of went on the music path because my dad’s a musician, she was just like “You’ll regret it. You’ll end up wanting to come back”. We’ve always had arguments about my job and study and all that, so that’s kind of brought mum and I together a bit. (Yve, female, 26, partnered, no children)

When Yve told her friends that she was going to university, a few of her mates commented: ‘“Oh my God, you’re going to uni” as if they would never have expected it with me because I was so career -based in my retail job’. Because she was now away from home studying, Yve was finding this ‘a strain on my friends’ but monthly dinners provided a partial solution to this. Another woman experienced the same difficulty around not having as much time for her family and friends, some of whom did not understand her need to study. She wrote:

They were all happy for me. My friends and family know I want to be happy with my work beforehand [so] I don’t get as much time to spend with friends. Some don’t understand that uni work is another priority for me. … I study on weekends and sometimes miss out on doing things as a family. I try to study at night but like spending quality time with my husband while he is home. (Participant #1, female, 30–40, two children)

Graeme (male, 31, single, no children), who successfully completed his enabling programme and was in a teaching degree, also had mixed reactions to his initial decision to enrol in his pre-university course. Reactions were ‘about 50/50’ positive and negative in his words, as his decision involved a ‘direct opportunity cost’ (Chesters 2015, p. 387) that he incurred as an adult returner in giving up a lucrative position at the Steelworks to study to become a teacher. However, while friends closer to him were supportive of this move as a positive one for him, his parents were initially opposed. He recalled:

So my parents were really like “What are you doing? Do not do this. What can we do, like, to change your mind? Can’t you study part-time?” and all those kind of things but obviously now that, like I’m here and I’ve got another job and stuff like that, they love that I’m at university. It’s the first thing they mention whenever I go somewhere. “Oh Graeme’s gonna’ be a science teacher. He’s in university now. He’s in his 4th year.” They just love it.

For Patricia, a 45-year-old single woman with one child of five, her parents’ support was practical as well as emotion al. They were not only ‘so proud’ of her as she excelled in her studies, but also helping her financially as well as reading and commenting on her essays. As with parents, partnered enabling students generally reported that their partners not only were supportive in an emotional way, but also provided practical help. One woman wrote of her partner:

As I spend my face-to-face university time over two nights per week, and do a lot of my study and assignments in the evening, my husband has been amazing at taking care of the children through doing homework with the older ones, cooking dinner and doing the bathing and bedtime routine with the youngest child when I am unable to. (Participant #28, female, 40–50, partnered, three children)

For other older people, however the impact of their decision to seek HE provoked negative commentary. Tamara (female, 34, single, two children) reported that, while her mother and step-father were supportive, her natural father, her brother and ex-husband were negative because they all held ‘the ridiculous idea that uni is for bludgers’. 1 Her ex-husband has been particularly critical, but Tamara, who has a 60:40 custody arrangement with him for their two girls aged nine and eleven, suspects it is because her study has had practical consequences regarding the children:

My ex-husband, he’s a whole other kettle of fish.… [I]t comes back to having to pay child support, “Well why can’t you just go and get a job?” because the more I earn, the less he has to pay so whilst ever I’m not working, he thinks that he has to pay more child support which isn’t the case, you know, and he thinks because I start Mondays and Fridays … at 9:00 and our girls don’t start school until 9:30, I was dropping them off at his house early in the morning and his girlfriend wasn’t liking that because there was a perception that he was helping me. Heaven forbid he should help me out with his children for an extra hour of a morning, like they were dressed, they had breakfast, [and] they had their lunches packed.

Tamara quickly found a solution to this before-school care issue to lessen her ex-husband’s critique which she believed was upsetting their girls:

I know the kids have come home from their dad and said, “Oh dad thinks you’re just wasting your time at uni” and they get a bit upset when he says that because I can see that they’re proud of me and that they’re like, this is something that they’re interested in, like we can all engage in what I’m doing … “Well I told dad that you’re learning lots and you’re doing really good and your colouring in is wonderful” (laughing). (Tamara, female, 34, single, two children)

While for one woman, her family and children were supportive, if doubtful of her ability to succeed, she suspected others thought she was too old. She also believed that a romantic relationship would not be possible ‘if I continue with my studies’ and a sense of social risk and alienation pervades her comment:

Some of the men I have dated have seen it as a big negative … that you can’t commit to a relationship when you are focused on your study. Perhaps I get the vibe that they feel threatened by it. … I think some people find it hard to acknowledge someone who is trying to better themselves. Perhaps they feel like they will be left behind. … I do believe that it will be difficult for me to enter into a relationship. (Participant #21, female, 40–50, single, with unspecified number of children)

As an older person, another woman felt derided and isolated by her decision. She said that:

Most laughed at me going at my age, some felt I should have given the space to someone younger who could have used it … They are not interested. … I feel like they don’t really want to discuss any of it with me. It’s just something I do and they are not really interested. (Participant #7, female, 40–50, single, three children)

In general, the motivation by enabling students to be a role model for their children was demonstrated in their discussion of the impacts of their study. While parents strove to minimise the effects of their study on their children by working when the children were away at school or after they were asleep, children were reported as mainly happy to have a student-parent. Parents reported that some children chose to ‘do their homework’ alongside them as they studied for their courses. For example, one woman said: ‘My kids actually study around the table with me’ (#5) and another commented:

My youngest daughter is 12, and at this age, she is quite happy for me to study, or read a textbook alongside her on the lounge. I don’t think it has impacted her greatly: I do a lot of my study on the weekends when she is with her dad. (#21, female, 40–50, single, with unspecified number of children)

In her interview, Patricia, 45, spoke about her little boy of five, observing that she ‘couldn’t ask for a better kid’:

He’s in pre-school three days a week … he does his ‘homework’ with me. So he has his homework. Like my girlfriend Nic came over yesterday afternoon and we had a study session yesterday afternoon for Earth Science so we had all our stuff on the table and Sam goes “I’m just going to go and get my homework”. So he goes and gets his piece of paper and his pens out of his room and he comes and sits down with us and he’s writing his letters and doing his drawings …and he loves it. I’ve brought him here, he’s seen where mummy goes to uni. (Patricia, female, 45, single, one child)

Tamara’s two girls show a keen interest in her work, especially in her Visual Art course. She related that they want to be involved:

“Oh what’s mum doing? Oh, can we have a look through your art diary mum? Oh I really like this. I really like that”. I’ve noticed that both of them are doing their homework more if that makes any sense. … And they’re taking more pride in their homework; they’re not just scribbling it. (Tamara, female, 34, single, two children)

But some impacts on children were challenging. One young mother said that her 23-month-old daughter had become ‘more clingy’ (#27, female, 30–40, partnered, one child), supposing that this was because she was not home as much as she used to be and that the child was missing her mother. Another mother of three observed that while her eldest son ‘sits at the table and studies more—but not enough’, the other two only ‘pretend to be interested’ (#13, female, 40–50, partnered, three children).

For Vicki’s 16-year-old son, Christopher, who came to the interview with her, his mother’s example was more sobering. He was very happy for his mother when she enrolled in HE: ‘I was just happy for her. It was like something different for her to do. Yes, I was happy for her’. He believed that she had become more ‘dedicated, like she’s more keen to do things’ and he saw a correspondence between his own life as a high school student and his mother’s as a university student. He said: ‘Maybe when I’m studying and trying to figure something out and hating life because of it, she’s doing the same’. He also noted in the interview when asked about the impact of her study on their home life that:

Usually when you walk in from school you see her in the TV room like on the computer or talking to someone but you don’t see her anymore when you walk in the house. You know what I mean? [My sisters] I think they’re sort of the same as me, like they don’t really see her much and yes, I think my other sisters find mum a bit stressed sometimes and a bit angry because she’s so worried about uni work. So yes, I guess that’s it. (Christopher, male, 16, son of Vicki)

Vicki agreed with this assessment as accurate observing that this is ‘what it takes’. While Christopher was definitely thinking about going to university ‘down the track’, his mother’s example was a caution about the amount of work involved:

It seems like a lot of hard work, watching my mum study a lot. … Like I didn’t think it would be that hard when she wanted to do it but as I’ve seen her, [and] all the hard work and the dedication she’s put into university, I’m like “Oh man, you do have to work hard.” (Christopher, male, 16, son of Vicki)

As with Vicki and Christopher, Noelene and her 11-year-old son, Nathaniel, attended the project interview together. Like many other of the mothers in this project, Noelene was determined that disruption to her children would be minimal and that her two school-age boys would not feel like they had been neglected because of her educational participation. She said:

I still volunteer at the two schools because I want to be involved in their education as well. I really try to have a unified sense of “We’re all in it together”. There are definitely weekends where they get the hand, you know…“Talk to the hand” because I just can’t, I just can’t but they’re both very independent, self-reliant children as well so they’re able to just get on with it without me being around.

Meanwhile, Nathaniel was in his own words ‘actually quite pleased for her’ when his mother enrolled, although, because he thought that university would be like an American college, he thought that she would have to go away to study and that there ‘would be some changes around the house and everything’. When his mother reassured him that she would still be coming home, he recalled thinking: “Oh thank God!” He was also concerned that the ‘the projects or whatever’ would be too hard for her and that she would be seeking his advice ‘a lot’! Basically Nathaniel thought that the university experience was mainly positive for his mother, notwithstanding her frustration over her assignments at times. He thought that she was undergoing a similar transition to himself in his new school:

University [is] a bit of like I’m doing, it’s sort of like a challenge at my school because I’m meeting new people sort of like mum; like she’s meeting new people, trying new things and stuff like that, like trying to start a project and everything.

Nathaniel also observed that his mother has been ‘very, very, more happy and more excited about her studies and learning lots and lots and lots of more information about all different characters and everything’.

Conclusion

Johns et al. (2014, 2016) recently reported in their longitudinal study of the outcomes for students of one enabling programme in Tasmania that enabling students, who successfully completed their programme, were well aware that they were not only transforming their own lives but also influencing their family and community expectations with regard to HE by virtue of their efforts. From the accounts of their motivations to access HE, the FiF enabling students discussed here revealed a similar awareness. Their personal politics of hope was predicated on the understanding that HE has the power to confer both direct and indirect benefits such as a greater sense of self-worth, more personal fulfilment and a passionate career . However, they also sought, in direct and palpable ways, to transform the lives of their families in a number of ways, such as through attaining a more secure financial future and acting as a role model, especially for their children. These transformations are not limited to only enabling students but reverberate throughout these narratives . These FiF women and men are trailblazers who, through energetic intervention in their own lives and determination, sought to forge a pathway through what was for them and their immediate family, unchartered educational terrain.

Note

  1. 1.

    ‘Bludger’ is a derogatory colloquial term in Australia for one who lives off the efforts/earnings of others.