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This article reports on the findings from a small-scale qualitative study of the experiences of five black women studying on a Post-Qualifying Child Care Award (PQCCA). The study considered the expectations of the women, their experiences of recruitment and selection, and support for the candidates from their agency and from the universities offering the programme. Also reported are the experiences of the course content, course completion and the specific experience of being a black candidate on the course. The article sets all this in the context of post-qualifying education, current child care practice and the relevant literature. We make extensive use of the rich data provided by the five respondents in the study, and conclude with recommendations arising from the black women themselves and the researchers" reflections on their experiences.

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IntroductionThe purpose of this article is to contribute to the ongoing discussion of black participation in Higher Education (HE) by offering our reflections on our experience as lecturers in one of the new universities. One of us (YC) lectures in Social Work and the other (AF) lectures in Sociology. We wish to draw attention to the roles black educators play in shaping and moulding higher education.The first part of the article looks at Black Studies and the sociology of race and the second part focuses on the black student-lecturer experience in general and more specifically in social work education. Recent changes to the structure of HE and with it the transformation of an academic/collegial culture to a more entrepreneurial one has made teaching and reflection on the teaching/learning experience less fashionable than winning contracts for research. Nonetheless the interaction between students, lecturers and curriculum remains crucial in the assessment of the quality of an HE programme. We are now at the end of the governments expansion of HE. Black HE lecturers remain few and for the most part concentrated in particular disciplines like Social Work. Most Black lecturers are located in the lower salary scales and more recently hired cohort of the new universities with nil representation within the upper echelons of senior management. The nature of academia today is such that promotion is intimately connected with research/publishing on the one hand and participation in management on the other. Both activities can take many lecturers out of the classroom, leave them divorced from students' experiences and particularly blind to the needs of students from less powerful communities. The situation for black students does not appear to have changed very much within the period of expansion. Black students individually experience high levels of stress and anxiety, and experience as a group difficulty in obtaining quality degrees. In short they encounter a great many more obstacles to and within HE than their white counterparts.One response from management to the charges of institutional racism which has been levelled at HEIs by black students and staff has been to employ equal opportunities policies. However such policies have thus far been ineffective in changing our observations and experiences.

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