Changing trends in recruitment: the case of the former colleges of education

Abstract

Summary An important conclusion reported by Adelman and Gibbs (1980a) in this journal was that up to 1979 a constituency of students, different from the traditional university intake, was still being attracted to those former colleges of education that had emerged as the new colleges of higher education. They differed not only in terms of age and sex, but also in their social and educational background, including the experience of higher education amongst the immediate family. Based on the evidence they had collected for the DES funded project, ‘A Study of Student Choice in the Context of Institutional Change’, the authors concluded that without the colleges a significant minority of students, and women especially, would have been either denied the opportunity, or would not have otherwise considered higher education. The present article reports a selection of results from a larger study that both continued and extended the work of the ‘Student Choice’ project. In an attempt to answer the general question ‘What sort of student comes to a college or institute of higher education?’, the article examines age and sex distributions, where students come from, entry qualifications, secondary schooling, family experience of higher education and social class. For the early items the evidence is based on information derived from registry records; the remaining items under discussion are based on results of a questionnaire completed by 82 per cent of undergraduates in the 1980 entry (n = 1617).