ABSTRACT
This chapter provides an account of the emergence of a mass higher education system in Britain in the late twentieth century. It focuses in particular on the ways in which academic, political and media debates construct students as different, defining who is 'normal' and who is 'other'. The chapter examines how this differentiation occurs, looking, for example, at the institutionalisation of particular categories of underrepresented groups in widening participation debates and funding initiatives and at the hierarchical stratification of universities based significantly upon whom they recruit as students. Currently, higher education institutions (HEIs) are predominantly publicly funded institutions, given monies (block grants) by government, supplemented by fees from students and local education authorities, or contracts from other organisations such as businesses or research institutes. Numbers of full time students are rationed by governments and targets for subject areas allocated to institutions.
