For much of modern higher education, the undergraduate curriculum has been designed around young adults in their late teens or early twenties, transitioning directly from secondary school, with limited external responsibilities and uninterrupted years ahead of them to focus on study. Breadth modules widen intellectual horizons. Service components build civic consciousness. Internships provide first exposure to the world of work. This assumption has shaped timetables, attendance policies and expectations around participation.
That model also reflects a widely accepted three-stage life trajectory: education, employment, retirement. But this sequence is now “stretched thin and challenged by individual and social change”, as Singapore Management University president Lily Kong and researcher Hamish Coates have observed. They note that it is “far from institutionally recognised that three to four years of tertiary education in their early twenties hardly sustains people over the next 80 years”. Education, like employment, needs to be spread across a lifespan.
- ‘Adults bring experience and cognitive strengths to lifelong learning’
- ‘Why do we still timetable classes as if students don’t have lives outside university?’
- Imagine an age-inclusive university sector
Undergraduate cohorts are increasingly heterogeneous. More mid-career professionals are reskilling for career transitions in full-time programmes. Our conversations with adult learners revealed a spectrum of experiences that is seldom seen in university prospectuses. One student in his late forties with health issues showed up to class five days a week between school runs and his elderly parents’ clinic appointments. Another operated across time zones, attending university during the day and work meetings at night. One left a stable career and salary to reskill, focused on maximising the professional development opportunity that campus life has to offer. Yet another returned to study to “learn for the sake of learning” after decades of professional life. They differ in age, caregiving load, financial security and motivation, yet their accounts revealed common themes.
Flexibility as policy, not exception-making
In full-time programmes, physical attendance and class participation remain the default proxies for engagement. When a dependent falls ill or work incidents necessitate all-nighters, flexibility depends on the student requesting an exception. Students appreciated the “generosity” and “understanding” of instructors. In other cases, the physical attendance thresholds held firm. One learner described feeling embarrassed for having to “ask for favours”. Another said: “I suffer from lower back pain and sometimes just can’t sit through a three-hour class. It’s weird when you are 45 and have little agency to decide whether you need to attend class today.”
Flexibility must be built into policy; otherwise it appears as special dispensation. The need for constant negotiation imposes an emotional burden. Can engagement be demonstrated through performance, contribution or mastery rather than time in seat?
Time management
Several interviewees identified shifting schedules as a pain point. Some faced inconveniently timed classes. Others navigated course-bidding systems that produce radically different timetables. As one said: “Every semester is a new challenge because every semester has a new schedule.” Students juggling work and caregiving commitments struggle with changes to compressed calendars. One described the domino effect of managing his life in 15-minute blocks; a delay after class triggered a scramble for a work call. Another student, used to protecting weekends from work, was surprised by Sunday-morning messages from younger classmates working on their team project.
The system assumes full-time students can bend large blocks of time around academic demands. However, for some learners, the hours are split between employers and dependents. Designing for heterogeneity means making structural provisions, not concessions, for lives that do not conform to a single timetable.
Curriculum relevance to different life stages
Mandatory modules, service requirements and internships were built on a model prioritising university over other experiences. For a 19-year-old, mandatory community service or an overseas internship might be formative but for a mature student who has served in public office or worked abroad for years, the same requirements may feel misaligned. This is not an argument against curricular breadth or service learning but a call to revisit assumptions. When education spans a lifetime, recalibration or additional curriculum flexibility is necessary.
Complexity is not age-bound. Younger students might also be juggling studies with work, financial strain or caregiving. Even among more mature learners, there is no single archetype. Designing for the “adult learner” is no more precise than for “carefree youth”. When no single life pattern defines the typical undergraduate, flexibility should be the standard for curriculum and learning design.
What might this mean for universities in practice?
- Universities need to redefine attendance and participation. This means being intentional about when and why synchronous presence is essential and expanding alternatives for students to demonstrate engagement beyond fixed time, place and instructor availability. These changes are increasingly viable with advances in blended learning, digital platforms and AI-enabled facilitation, which mean that rich interaction no longer requires synchronous presence.
- Institutions should prioritise predictable scheduling when decisions affect students with outside commitments. Respecting boundaries around personal time would improve student well-being.
- Curricula should recognise prior learning and allow modular flexibility or exemptions where appropriate. Foundational components must remain consistent across diverse life stages.
- Instructors in undergraduate classes should be equipped to teach adult learners, who bring life experience and clearer goals. This means creating flexible learning environments that highlight real-world contexts. Faculty development should include training in adult learning approaches, guidance on flexible and inclusive course design and instructional technology skills.
Course design with inclusive flexibility
Universities need to treat flexibility not as an accommodation but as a commitment to understanding and meeting the learning needs of a heterogeneous student body. To stay relevant in an era of lifelong learning and reskilling, universities cannot design education for the short window of youth. They must become enablers across the full arc of education.
Ivy Seow is senior manager of learning design and communications, and Tamas Makany is associate provost of teaching and learning innovation and director of the Centre for Teaching Excellence, both at Singapore Management University.
AI acknowledgement: Artificial intelligence tools were used in a supporting capacity for transcription, preliminary data organisation and copy-editing. All analysis, interpretive framing and formulation of conclusions and recommendations were undertaken independently by the authors. AI-assisted outputs were reviewed and substantially revised by the authors, who assume full responsibility for the final manuscript.
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