Who wants a sixtysomething graduate? Forty years is a long time to wait to fulfil an ambition. I left grammar school at 17, with decent A-levels and a place at Warwick University to read History. It was a marvellous time - 1969 - to be going up to one of the new universities, where student politics were erupting and Germaine Greer was preaching firebrand feminism. But I was emotionally immature and got swept up in socialising and designing posters for student sit-ins. Studying got in the way of fun. I would sit in one of the library pods, intent on reading, and within five minutes I'd be catching up on a lack of sleep. The giant history tomes were incomprehensible to me, useful only as desk pillows, and I was too shy to ask for help with my studies. At the end of the first year, I dropped out and got myself a job as a typist on a magazine. My lack of education didn't hinder my career. In fact, if I had got a degree I'm quite sure I'd have ended up as a graduate trainee at Marks & Spencer (my Plan B), rather than editor of Cosmopolitan and SHE magazines and author of three novels - a rather more exciting outcome, as far as I'm concerned. So my desire to further my education was never about furthering my career, but the sense of widening my knowledge through reading and learning and a sometimes uncomfortable feeling of being intellectually underpowered. For all the years I was juggling motherhood and a top job, my truncated education pricked at the edge of my subconscious whenever I failed to articulate an idea to my satisfaction, and especially in the company of friends and colleagues with their Oxbridge degrees and intellectual confidence. Two years ago, at the age of 58, with the flexibility that a freelance writing career now provides me, I decided to give a degree a go. Birkbeck specialises in part-time evening degrees and most students are mature, though perhaps not quite as mature as I am. At first I was terrified. Terrified that I wouldn't be able to keep up, terrified that I'd make a hash of academic essays, and terrified that my exam papers would remain blank as I failed to remember a single relevant piece of information. The exam nightmares that I had finally shed about 30 years ago came flooding back, but my fears were never realised. Once I got into the swing of it, I found that my concentration was way better than it had been at 17; that homework became more of a pleasure than a chore because I was genuinely interested in the subject; and that I had rather more confidence - and ideas - than some of the younger students around me. It was especially weird, in my first year, to find myself in absolute awe of a brilliant young seminar leader who was barely older than my son. But I quickly realised that while he knew way more about philosophy than I did, he perhaps knew rather less about life, and soon the age disparity became irrelevant. I'm not saying it's been easy. I've laboured over essays, and sometimes have to read critical texts three times before I understand them. For exams, out of pure fear of failure, I swot like a demon. But now, with a thrilling sense of self-satisfaction, I have a rudimentary knowledge of Freud, Descartes, Marx, Foucault and Thomas Paine. I've read Don Quixote and Gulliver's Travels and Barnaby Rudge for the first time. And I've made new acquaintances from the ages of 22 upwards and from every corner of the world. The astonishing thing is that now I've embarked on late-life learning, I'm not sure I ever want to stop. I've already found myself researching further degrees, asking myself whether, once I've got this one under my belt, I might move on to Classics or Philosophy or Sociology. But I was lucky, slipping in before the increases in tuition fees, which will have doubled by the time I will be in the position to do another degree and which I may not be able to afford. As for Willetts's suggestion that a degree might further my career, I don't suppose any employer will be advertising for a graduate trainee in her sixties with a BA in Arts and Humanities. The point is that while I'm not going to be any more interesting as far as employers are concerned, I'm enjoying my own company rather more as I wrestle with notions that take me beyond the humdrum of my daily life. Right now I'm waiting anxiously for the result of my essay on the dramatic function of the popular crowd in Shakespeare's Julius Caesar. Really, Mr Willetts, it won't enhance my CV a jot, but it makes me feel great just the same.