This conference paper was presented at the Higher Education Academy Annual Conference at Nottingham University in 2006. Government initiatives such as AimHigher are designed to support widening participation on the basis of encouraging a young group of students from non-traditional backgrounds to enter university. At the same time the ageing demographic change of the whole population means that older learners are potentially a significantly larger proportion of future cohorts. New students are not the largely homogenous group of 18 year olds of the past. They might just as easily be from groups that have been defined as 'Boomers' 'Gen-Xers' or 'Millenials' (Oblinger 2003). This paper considers what issues might be raised by the increasingly pluralistic cultures of youth and age.
