Vocational and Mature Student Success in Higher Education Foundation Programmes

Abstract

is a Senior Lecturer in Microbiology and has an interest in investigating the transition which students undergo when entering Higher Education and the impact this has on academic attainment. A Senior Fellow of the HEA, she has also been awarded a PGDip in Academic Studies with the focus of much of her early work on the academic attainment of international postgraduate students when combined with English for Academic Purpose provision. Vocational and Mature Students Success in Higher Education Foundation ProgrammesHigher Education in the UK is pressured to widen participation due to the social justice issues of mobility and movement through the class divide. However, those from lower classes and mature students, elect for qualifications that do not classically allow entry into university, for example, Business and Technology Education Council and Access to Higher Education Diplomas. A solution to this is a university bridging programme. Such a programme was analysed as to whether it prepares different cohorts of students effectively for undergraduate programmes; those who have just missed the entry tariff points but are coming from Advanced levels qualifications, the other coming from non-traditional entry routes. Data from one academic year was anonymised and analysed. Results indicated that students coming from widening participation courses score significantly lower on the programme than those coming from Advanced level awards of any subject. This indicates that vocational and returning to education qualifications fail to prepare students for academia due to being focused on the outcome, rather than the objective, of learning. The study also questions entry tariff point equivalency as it was seen that those with higher points, had nontraditional qualifications, yet performed worse, suggesting entry points cannot be used prognostically.

Research on the Development Strategy of Vocational Undergraduate Education in the Context of Digital China Construction

“…As a new thing in China's education reform, the talent cultivation model of vocational undergraduate colleges should unlock the path of the talent cultivation model of higher vocational colleges and independent colleges, make up for the shortcomings of the two due to path dependence, and ultimately create new paths suitable for themselves [13] . Path dependence and path creation theory both recognize the influence of history, the historical accumulation of knowledge to form the content of talent training, and will produce new knowledge to continue to pass on, the process of the formation of culture, tradition and system.…”

Depicting Bourdieu's Concepts as a Set of Stackable and Transparent Lenses

“…Within the traditionally upper to middle classed practice of higher education inequality is often visible (Davey, 2009; Reay et al., 2001) since widening participation efforts has enabled participation from students from a variety of backgrounds (Black, 2022). This has prompted an interest in using the concepts of Bourdieu to understand the trajectories of such students.…”

Mature Students’ Choice to Study a Foundation Year at Private Higher Education Institutions UK

“…A foundation degree leads directly into the final year of a full undergraduate degree (Ooms et al, 2012;Pike & Harrison, 2011), whereas the foundation year is delivered as an additional year of Level 3 study (Black, 2021). The foundation year is one kind of foundation programme that higher education institutions only offer, and it has been used to promote the "widening participation" (WP) agenda as part of social mobility and justice (Black,2021).…”