ABSTRACT
In this chapter I will describe and analyze the University of Sheffi eld’s Working With Communities Programme and particularly its Foundation Degree. I will describe the Foundation Degree and its place within the university’s commitment to widening participation, and within the context of the changing role of adult education in the UK. As a programme director on a part time university tutor contract I am well placed to look at the ways in which the programme is caught in a web of dilemmas and contradictions which challenge taken-for-granted ideas about the accessibility of education and its relationship to social mobility and social justice. This discussion draws on the work of a range of writers who have asked searching questions about the changing role of higher education and the role of adult education in the process of widening participation.
