Mature students in higher education: Academic performance and intellectual ability

Mature students are sometimes said to be deficient in the basic skills needed for effective studying in higher education or to be impaired by age-related intellectual deficits. However, the research literature on the academic performance of mature students contains no good evidence that mature students perform any less well than younger students on courses of study in higher education. Moreover, the idea that normal ageing impairs the capacity for learning in higher education is most questionable: even the oldest mature students can obtain good results when assessed by means of both examinations and coursework