University?

[Thinkingaboutme]

I have 2 young children and I've been working in retail for about 10 years now. I'm 30 and I'm starting to feel like I'm trapped in my job. I recently starting think about university. Has anyone been to university as a parent? We also live nowhere near any universities so it would mean either a lot of travel or my family would have to relocate. We live in Scotland where I think we get funding to pay for the courses? Is this still correct for mature students?

Your other option is the Open University - you could study without needing to relocate, and could carry on working while you study. Worth considering!

Don't know about funding as I'm in England, but I'm at university - a brick uni that does a few online degrees - there are lectures and seminars during the week, but they're all online on zoom or teams. I'm in my 30s, with a 16 year old and a 6 year old. Lots of people seem to be going back to uni in their 30s - we still have so much of our lives left!

You’ll probably be working until you’re 65-70 so that’s another 35-40 years from now.

If you start a degree this year, you’ll be 33 if you finish it full time and 36 if you do it part time. The time will pass anyway, you’ll be 33 or 36 soon and it might as well be with a degree.

You can do it, as PP said look at OU courses.

Done this twice now. Science degree at open university then a teaching degree in the arts at a London uni. Second time, I got full maintenance loan and various grants which was then topped up by universal credit . This meant I could afford to study full time. Both times I had preschoolers. Worked brilliantly for me. Much more enjoyable than I thought and I wasn’t hard up. Scotland looks a bit more complicated , you contact them first to check your funding and maintenance entitlements. I’m sure you can do it though.

I'm struggling to decide what I actually want to do. I'd be interested in midwifery and from what I can see online there is an online access course that I can do to get me what I need to get into full time university. So it would be 4 years in total. But I just don't understand how I will be able to do all of that and still be a mum to my 2 kids. I know I need to do something and in the long run it will be so much better for my family but for now I'm just not sure how we will manage.

I live in Scotland and am about to start a nursing degree next month, also have 2 young kids (7 and 2) . Midwifery is similar to nursing in terms of bursary and funding. Scottish students have free tuition for these courses and a non income assessed bursary of £10,000. The courses are 50% placement/50% uni so you are entitled to apply for 50 weeks worth of childcare assistance for the year. Between the childcare bursary and uni fund I will have approximately £3700 towards childcare for the year as my youngest doesn’t have 30 hours government funding until next year. I’m not sure how the access courses work but just some info for the uni side of things. I’m mid 30’s and like someone else said the next few years will pass regardless and it’s a drop in the ocean really. Will be hard but worth it for the rest of your working days.

Sorry that was meant to say £5,700 not £3,700 for childcare costs

Wow that's quite generous Quiet. Good luck with your course

My sister did it with 4 under 10’s (History degree then PGCE). She tried the Open University course first and that didn’t work for her, she just couldn’t find the space & time to study and just fell behind. Going to a bricks and mortar University did work - all the kids were at school by this point.

It was very hard work and involved a lot of juggling childcare with DBiL . It’s do-able though!

I’m mid thirties and will graduate next year with a business degree from a Scottish university. I’ve got a couple of friends who have done/are doing nursing as mature students. The difference between health courses and others is huge, in terms of funding and time in particular.

My degree is very flexible and doing it from home around the kids/lockdown has been easy enough, I only have 2 12 week semesters a year. All childcare costs were covered, I started when my youngest was 6 months. When the uni is open the amount of time spent there isn’t huge so I don’t have to make the long journey everyday anyway.

In contrast on a nursing course the placements and classes take up pretty much the entire year and shifts can make childcare challenging. There are extra bursaries and funding, and you can pick up bank HCA work when not on placement.

I’d recommend going to uni as a mature student to anyone. My experience has been amazing and it’s given an excitement for the future I could never get stuck on dead end jobs. My dissertation is actually going to be about mature students. Money is super tight for now, but with kids you are entitled to UC as a student if needed. I’ve also picked up some paid research opportunities through contacts on my course. I think, particularly in Scotland, it’s not as scary to return to study as you might think and the benefits are huge.