Daily Archives: 20th October 2017

Age, Diversity

Meet some of the UK’s oldest university students

Leave a comment

What does a student look like?

Forget the stereotypes. Think of diversity in a different way. And meet some of the country’s oldest undergraduates.

Maureen Matthews is starting a three-year law degree at the tender age of 79.

She’s not even the oldest student on her new course at the University of West London in Brentford.

Sitting next to her in lectures is 84-year-old Craigan Surujballi.

This isn’t dabbling in learning with an evening course – it’s an intensive, full-time degree, studying alongside people with ambitions to become lawyers.

“You may look at me and see an older face – as may many young people,” says Maureen.  More

Diversity, Equality, Ethnicity, Inclusion, Race

Christian Cole: Oxford University’s first black student

Leave a comment

In a salute to a “remarkable” man, the University of Oxford has paid tribute to its first black student. But who was Christian Cole and what was life like for him at a time when being black at the university wasn’t merely unusual, but remarkable?

Cole was always likely to turn heads when he arrived in Oxford to read classics.

It was 1873 and he was a 21-year-old black man from Waterloo, Sierra Leone, studying alongside young men from the elite families of Victorian England (His arrival pre-dated the institution of the university’s first women’s college by six years.).  More