Does access work? The relative performance of access students at a Scottish university

Abstract

Since the mid-1980s there have been very considerable changes inparticipation rates of all age cohorts in higher education courses withinhigher education institutions and further education colleges in Scotland. Inparticular there have been disproportionate increases in the number ofentrants aged 21 and over to full time undergraduate and sub-degreecourses. The increasing heterogeneity of the undergraduate population raisesquestions of performance of the different populations of students. Whilstsome research has previously been carried out on the performance of mature,'non-standard' and 'non-traditional' students, existing data is constrainedby the restricted data sets of national admissions systems, and thelimitations of institutional record-keeping. In particular, littleinformation exists on students whose entry route is the Access Course despiteits designation as the 'third' route into higher education (DES 1987) and itsincreasing popularity as a mode of entry from the late 1980s to the presentday. In this study the performance of students admitted to the University ofStirling with a variety of traditional and non-traditional qualifications iscompared. Using detailed student records, fine distinctions by type of Accessprogramme or other mature entry qualifications and by points scores in GCE'A' levels and SCE 'Highers' are compared. We show that performance of formerAccess students bears a relationship to the extent of control that theuniversity exerts on the particular type of Access programme. We confirm thatnon-Access students who didn't enter the university direct from school, butwho came in with a variety of qualifications perform at least as well as'standard' entrants. Our studies of entrants with 'standard' qualificationsconfirms previous research that points scores are important indications ofsuccess or failure. Finally study of a discrete sub-set of former Accessstudents studying Mathematics and Science courses at the university showsthat their performance is slightly poorer than all Access students.