ABSTRACT
International comparisons are helpful when considering the structure and organisation surrounding access to higher education in the United Kingdom. Teichler suggests that they serve as 'useful heuristic tools in understanding one's own situation and in identifying possible options'. The introduction of the market effectively allowed the government to cease to function as the direct provider of higher education. Marketing is now a major part of the organisational strategy of any university. Institutions operate within a much greater competitive context and face an uncertain future in which they need to become 'more market responsive'. The university system continues to ensure the reproduction of class privileges, universities control their recruitment and their teaching through 'misunderstanding and the fiction that there is no misunderstanding' Bourdieu et al. As a marketing strategy then, prospective students are more concerned to be offered a guarantee of accommodation, than they are with the quality of the leisure and study facilities.
