ABSTRACT
Introduction As contributors to this book reiterate, ‘widening participation’ remains a key concern within British higher educational policy since the transformation from an ‘elite’ to a ‘mass’ higher education system has done little to affect low participation levels among particular, disadvantaged social groups. Recruitment of ‘working class’ students is especially low (NCIHE, 1997), and has been identified as one of the last access frontiers (Woodrow, 2000). But relatively little is known about the views of working class ‘non-participants’ and their reasons for not going to university.
