Mature students were certainly a thing at my (first) university, but that was twenty years ago and also something in which the institution specialised. There have always been a few older folks on every course of study I’ve taken, more so the PGCE than anything else. I was one of the older folks on my PhD programme, surrounded by these bright young things fresh out of their MA and convinced one of the two academic jobs in the country could be theirs, and I felt the institution was aligned with gently disillusioning them at the cost of everything else. Lots of mandatory “transferable skills” workshops.

All of which is to say, in my experience retraining to a new profession often brings people back to Big School, but being in it for the sake of learning is unusual.

Also, our ‘steemed author’s description of Dean as “Blue Harbour at Marks & Spencers,” i.e. a young man whose dress sense is the other side of middle age, has taken up permanent residence in my vocabulary. I felt personally indicted by that considering where my early teaching wardrobe came from. Yet another way in which, to my consternation, I am the Dean Thompson of my own life’s narrative.