ABSTRACT
In Ireland there has been very little in-depth research undertaken which explores non-traditional students' experience and we know very little about how students view higher education. For both empirical and egalitarian reasons this is deeply problematic. Our research — which involved 125 biographical interviews with non-traditional students — seeks to bring these voices into the centre of debates on access and to explore Irish HE from a ‘bottom up’ perspective. This chapter will give an overview of policy and social context for the research, will highlight some of the main findings and then delineate what this means for a critical theory of higher education. The empirical and theoretical themes will then be explored in further depth through two case studies.
