Since 1990’s European Union has strongly enforced the policies of ‘active ageing’ and the European Commission plans to designate 2012 as European Year on Active Ageing (European Commission, 2010). Education and life long learning can assist active ageing by prolonging working careers and by helping in transition to retirement (Davey 2002). However, educational research and adult educators have not been so far strongly involved in the planning and implementation of the policies of active ageing. 

The demographic and political changes in Europe put pressure on extending active working careers. In Finland there have been different actions, including the pension reform in 2005, to prevent early exit from the labour market and to support the working ability and competence of older workers. At older age, most workers have had time to witness several changes at work, and have gone through career transitions themselves. Also the formal qualifications required to do their jobs may have changed during the last years of their careers. For some workers, anticipation of changes at work acts as a trigger to upgrade qualifications at older age.

According to Davey (2002), work-related reasons are the dominant ones to conduct higher education studies at older age. A majority of older students want to acquire new knowledge and/or qualification to improve job performance and some are additionally concerned about redundancy at work. Especially those who are doing Master’s studies believe that a new degree will have a positive effect on their future career. According to Jamieson (2007), a large majority of those over 50 still saw the recognized qualification as a very important reason for enrolling to higher education studies.

To better understand this phenomenon, both the efforts of older workers to enhance their expertise and the prevailing cultural assumptions related to ageing and expertise need close attention. In this study, I am interested in investigating in-depth why experienced professionals enrol in degree-oriented university programmes in later life, and what kinds of benefits the new Master’s degree brings to their remaining careers in terms of expertise. Alongside of wanting to know more about the aspirations of older adults, I am interested in the experienced changes in ‘self’ and social status due to a higher education degree. The research question for the purposes of this study is formulated as the following: What difference it makes to earn a Master’s degree at older age?

The research draws on experiences from the Finnish higher education. Entrance examinations are the sole avenue to undergraduate programs at the academic universities in Finland. Mature students who want to enrol to academic universities without prior degree must first pass such exams, too. Mature students in the Finnish universities do not have any special quota or status. If the person already holds a Bachelor's degree from the same (or closely related) field of study, he/she can apply as a graduate applicant without the regular entrance examination. Study programs at the academic university are usually designed for full-time studies, but some students do them while working full-time. Finnish universities are public and Master’s programs are free of charge.

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