For 54-year-old Joanna Olsen it wasn't her age that was the biggest challenge when it came to going back to university.

"I was the only person taking lecture notes on pen and paper," she said.

"Everything happens online."

The mother-of-three graduated with a law degree from the University of Technology Sydney this week after returning to study once her children were grown.

"I turned 50 and my three children had left school at that time. I thought 'I really don't want to keep working in the same career'," she said.

"I've still got 20 years of a career and I want to do something I always wanted to do."

Mrs Olsen is part of a growing number of women who choose tertiary study later in life.

The latest Education Department statistics show the number of women over age 40 enrolled at Australian universities grew from 54,800 to 85,400 between 2003 and 2017.

The number of women in those age groups outnumbered men two to one, with just 44,519 men choosing university study in that same age group in 2017.

And, there were almost 2,500 women over the age of 65 enrolled at university in 2017.

Universities Australia figures show most of those women in degrees are choosing subjects like Society and Culture (37 per cent), Health (28 per cent) and Education (14 per cent).

The trend is set to continue with the number of women over age 40 in enabling courses, which help people qualify for university, growing 52 per cent between 2008 and 2017.

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Mature-age students need help to stay in schooling

Universities Australia chief executive Catriona Jackson said while mature-age students were generally considered to be more diligent students, they actually had slightly lower retention rates than school leavers.

"If you're a 40-year-old woman with parents to care for, with an income to earn to feed your family, of course it is likely to take you a little bit longer to complete your degree," she said.

She said as a result, universities often needed to provide different types of support to mature-age students compared to school leavers.

"Sometimes you might have to leave and come back — universities absolutely understand this and have all sorts of mechanisms to make sure that you can successfully complete."

Ms Jackson pointed to one university which has a "kids in class" program and others with online teaching and late night classes as ways some universities tried to help older students.

"Women really, really want to go to uni but will do it despite all the odds," she said.

Universities Australia chief executive Catriona Jackson said older women have lower retention rates than school leavers. ( ABC News: Nick Haggarty )

"They do it in the middle of the night, they will do it while they're caring for a baby with one hand and looking after an unwell mother or father with the other hand. Nothing will hold them back."

Feminist Jenna Price is a university lecturer and PhD student herself and she saw many women who had returned to study after having families.

"I see a lot of women in their 30s and 40s finally doing the degree they wanted to do," she said.

"I don't think it's become easier, I think we have become more determined."

Ms Olsen said the digital focus of university courses has made it easier for women to study part-time and from home.

"It was a whole new system for me to learn about even getting messages."

New generation identify with #MyMum experience

Mrs Olsen's story is similar to that of opposition leader Bill Shorten's mother, Ann Shorten, whose personal story made headlines this week.

Mr Shorten told how his late mother couldn't study her choice of career because of disadvantage, she went onto study law later in life and became a barrister.

It prompted Ms Price to ask people on Twitter to share their mother's experiences of putting off their dream of university.

What followed was an outpouring of emotion as people relayed their own mothers' story of sacrifice and generated the hashtag #MyMum.

Jenna Price shared her own mother's story as a Holocaust survivor who came to Australia from Czechoslovakia as a migrant.

Jenna Price looks at a photo of mother, a Holocaust survivor who came to Australia from Czechoslovakia as a migrant. ( ABC News: Alison Branley )

Her mother Zuzi never got the chance to go to university but instead instilled a value for education in her daughter.

"The responses were not that usual thing you can get on Twitter which is that people are bitter and angry and want to get into wars with each other," Ms Price said.

"They had very heartfelt tiny little vignettes of what their mothers have been through.

"So we had everything from very tear-inducing to fantastic happy recognition of their desires at the end."

Mrs Olsen said she closely identified with Ann Shorten's life experience.

"When I finished school, I grew up in the country, and for me at that time the options really were to become a teacher or a nurse," she said.

"I became a teacher but it was only in my mid-twenties I thought I'd like to be a lawyer.

"At the age of 27 I thought I was too old to retrain."

Bill Shorten pictured with his late mother Ann Shorten, who became a barrister later in life. ( Supplied: Twitter/ Bill Shorten )

But it was her three children's entry into university that inspired Mrs Olsen to do the same thing, at the same time.

She graduated with a Juris Doctor, her third degree after getting her early childhood degree and Masters of Education.

Like many, Mrs Olsen was also the first in her family to obtain a degree when she became a teacher, but now new challenges in family law await.