I’m standing inside the Anniesland campus of Glasgow Clyde College, but the room I’ve come to isn’t a lecture space. It isn’t built around a smartboard, nor is it lined with banks of computer screens or rows of desks.

That’s because this is a practical classroom, a ‘learn by doing’ type of place – but even then it is unusual. Yes, all the usual suspects (workbenches and vices and saws and offcuts and boxes filled with thousands of tiny screws) are in place, but the purpose is very different. The group getting down to work aren’t here to become joiners or carpenters - they’re learning how to repair, refurbish, and create something very specific.

All around the room, stringed instruments – and pieces of stringed instruments – can be found in various state of completion and repair. Posters of blue prints are stuck to the walls. On one workspace, a near fully-formed guitar rests in a carefully constructed frame, with vertical strips of wood carefully positioned to press firmly but gently as everything sets in to place.

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There’s a real buzz as the students start to arrive, much of it generated by the real interest they seem to have in one another’s work. Before I’ve said a word to any of the students, I can tell they feel welcome and relaxed here, and that atmosphere is an important, but never guaranteed, feature of what I’ve come to see.

This is ‘Guitar Restoration’, a course is on offer as part of Glasgow Clyde College’s ‘Love to Learn’ programme, which provides people with the chance to pursue a remarkably wide range of interests in low-stakes, non-certified courses. Classes last for eight weeks at a time, cost between £100 and £200, and in most cases take place either in the evenings or at weekends.

There are classes in photography, philosophy, woodcraft, film making, sewing, Spanish, flower arranging and more. You can even learn how to ‘tap into your psychic abilities’.

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This evening’s advanced class (a beginner level is also available) has attracted a group of eleven men and two women, all of whom have their own reasons for participating in the sessions, and very different ideas for what comes next.

In some cases, the goal is to move into full-time learning on the NQ Stringed Musical Instrument Making course (which is so accessible that it doesn’t even have formal entry requirements) and, from there, to progress through the two-year HND programme. These courses are unique in Scotland and there is considerable competition for places, so attending the evening classes is seen as one way of building up the necessary skills and experience for a successful application.

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But while some people step back into education, for others it looks more like a leap, and throwing yourself straight into full-time, full-on learning can be a daunting prospect. For so many students, courses like this one provide just enough support, and generate just enough confidence, to help people get over that hurdle and on with the rest of their lives.

In many cases, however, this relaxed, low-stakes environment provides all the learning that students are looking for.

Stuart, a retired teacher, repairs guitars for friends and family free of charge. He completed several blocks of this course a few years back, but has decided to come back to gain fresh knowledge and hone his skills.

Andrew, who used to be a BBC cameraman, is self-taught, constantly smiling, and “happy working on the repairs and restorations.”

Alan completed four years of the full time courses after retiring from teaching, but gets a lot from coming back to these weekly sessions: “I like to be able to confirm what I’m thinking, and it’s good that you can bounce ideas off other people.”

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For some people, courses like this one – that were once dismissed as “hobby courses” by an SNP education secretary – are unimportant at best and a waste of time and resources at worse. They believe that colleges should be focused on qualifications, especially those that are relevant to the workplace.

Implicit in that argument, however, is the entirely misguided belief that working class people (the ones that colleges exist to serve) only benefit from training – not education – and that their learning is only to be valued when it leads to a financial reward. Such a colourless, impoverished outlook represents a fundamental failure to understand the real value of education.

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Sitting quietly in a corner, and illustrating this point beautifully, is John. He is a man with an extensive background working with wood – after all, he taught joinery and carpentry in this very college for thirty-seven years.

“I wanted to keep my hand in,” he tells me when I ask what brought him back.

In front of him on the workbench a frame is coming together, but it is too small to be a guitar. It is, in fact, a ukelele – but it’s not for John, who doesn’t actually play anything. Instead, he’s building it for her daughter, who is a music teacher.

He explains some of the subtlety of creating an instrument, such as why the back is made of two halves glued together instead of a single piece of wood, and the amount of care and commitment he shows is only magnified by the knowledge that he is doing all of this for someone else.

He’s not going to make money out of this – he’s going to make his daughter happy.

Why on earth wouldn’t that be more than enough?