ABSTRACT
Reports on global education argue that every human being is entitled to a decent education, which is recognised as highly important for the development of individuals and the nation-state. This chapter draws upon the research on mature women students in Ghana, conducted as part of the research project Widening participation in higher education in Ghana and Tanzania: Developing an equity scorecard funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) and Department for International Development (DFID). It combines Robeyns' instrumental/intrinsic rationales for Higher education (HE) and Scanlon's conceptualisation of motive, which is derived from Schutz and Hewitt's interpretive framework. The chapter reports only on participants' background characteristics, the factors that facilitated their return to HE and their rationales for returning. The current trends of the knowledge explosion and HE massification have created demand for HE in both high- and low-income countries. A combination of factors influenced women's return to HE and exerted different effects at various points in their lives.
