ABSTRACT
Since the 1990s, there has a been a significant expansion in the numbers of students attending university in the UK, with a measurable shift towards gender equality (Egerton and Halsey 1993) and a range of initiatives to broaden the social composition of higher education. This has coincided with the conversion of polytechnics and colleges to universities resulting in an increasingly institutionally and socially diverse higher education (HE) system (Houston and Lebeau 2006). Within this disparate system, there has also been a range of other changes including a proliferation of degree programmes, changes in funding regimes, increased flexibility and modularisation, an increased emphasis on employability and a shift to a highly competitive market where students theoretically have more choice. It is within this dynamic context that the authors of this chapter took part in a four-year research project (SOMUL) funded as part of the Teaching and Learning Research Programme, looking at the social and organisational mediation of learning processes and outcomes in higher education. More specifically, this UK-wide project aimed to identify how variations in institutional organisation, curriculum design, the social and spatial context of study and informal learning experiences mediate student conceptions of their learning and identity (Brennan and Jary 2005). The 15 SOMUL case studies, involving surveys and interviews with first-and final-year students, in addition to staff interviews, reflect the diversity of the undergraduate experience in three contrasting subjects (business studies, sociology, biosciences). Drawing on a subset of data from the SOMUL project,1 this chapter focuses particularly on choice and expectations at times of transition and explores the student perspective on transitions at different stages; from the choices made before entering HE and the transition between first year through to final year. There are many transitions and choices to be made throughout a student’s educational career but it is usually only in the post-compulsory sector that students begin to make independent decisions whilst simultaneously considering potential changes in their personal lives, and their social and financial circumstances (Foskett and Helmsley-Brown 2001). These transitions and choices are made within a highly diverse education system (as described above).
