ABSTRACT
Higher education in the UK is moving rapidly towards becoming a mass system. Between 1979 and 1999 the proportion of 18-19-year-olds in higher education (known as the age participation index, or API) more than doubled from 12 per cent to 32 per cent (HEFCE, 2001). Although since that time growth has slowed, widening participation has become a central plank of government policy with a target of a 50 per cent participation rate by the year 2010.
