Not all students are fresh out of school or college. There are those who take a year out, and those who take more than a year out — you know, a couple of decades, say.

In fact, nearly a third of students are classified as mature.

That doesn’t mean they wear cardigans and slippers, drink cocoa to help them nod off by ten and advise you not to run with scissors. It simply means they’re at least 21 by the time they start their course. Actually, most mature students are between 21 and 25, but as for the rest, they might be coming back to education at any point in their lives — even after retirement.

Some universities specialise in mature students more than others. At the University of East London, four out of every five students is a crumbly, er, sorry, mature. Meanwhile, at the Royal Academy of Music, it’s more like one in twenty.

And guess what, this affects the atmosphere. We hardly need to tell you that people generally have a different idea of fun when they’re in their late teens and early twenties from when they find their first grey hair and realise their boobs fall into their armpits when they lie on their backs (and that’s just the guys). Almost every university has ’80s disco nights, but at some it’s retro chic, at others it’s reliving youth.

In some ways, the effect of a lot of mature students is similar to part-timers or local students (many students fall into all three categories). These students have lives and interests outside being a student and so student life as a whole is just that bit less stoked up on enthusiasm. Not necessarily a bad thing, depending on whether you think of student life beyond your course as a pastime or a waste of time.

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