ABSTRACT
As tertiary education has expanded since the early twentieth century, it has become increasingly a site for the ascription of inequality. As students have arrived from less advantaged social backgrounds, they have been allocated to different spaces; new settings for tertiary education are judged by the standards defined for the elite. Despite policies for ‘widening access’ and ‘permeability’, visible and invisible barriers exclude undesirable students from the most advantaged sites. This leads to the systematic devaluation of higher-level professional and technical qualifications. Transitional provision purported to support students in passing from vocational to higher education spheres tends to reinforce rather than penetrate the barriers between these settings.
