What influences students' decisions to study HE courses in FE colleges?

At the start of the 2020 academic year, students across the UK are returning to university campuses amidst the very challenging circumstances resulting from the Covid-19 pandemic. However, some are starting, or returning to, a higher education course provided by a college of Further Education.

Although HE in FE colleges face the same quality assurance processes as universities, colleges are often perceived to be of lower status. This is important in times of widening participation because if 50% of students have a first degree, then employers might be more likely to choose those who graduated from ‘higher status’ institutions.

In a time before the start of the coronavirus pandemic I interviewed students studying HE qualifications at an FE college. I discussed with them their attitudes to higher education, the costs of studying and the role of social networks. These are topics which have been widely explained as barriers to participation in higher education so potentially also impact on the decisions about where students study as much as whether to study at all.

It’s clear that these issues are important. Nobody likes to be in debt and most of the students were clearly looking to minimise the financial risk of studying. It’s also clear that the students sought to ‘fit in’. This could mean staying close to home or travelling with friends and it might also mean getting a degree because all your friends have.

What was particularly interesting was how the students I interviewed perceived education. For almost all it was a means to an end; a way of getting a better job in the future.

The students were balancing the personal and financial costs of the course against the benefits it could bring them. If the qualification or the status of an institution could guarantee a better starting position or a preferred job then they were willing to pay more, travel further and step out of their comfort zones. Unfortunately, under conditions of graduate unemployment at the time few universities could make this promise and so the students saw no reason to make large sacrifices when they could get similar promises from the convenient, cheaper FE college.

This all suggests that as much as we research the decision-making of applicants, we should also be looking more closely at what we are able to offer them and at what cost.

 

Read the full paper: 

Jones, G. (2020). An examination of the factors influencing students' decisions to study higher education courses in further education colleges in the UK. Widening Participation and Lifelong Learning, 22(1), 6-24. https://doi.org/10.5456/WPLL.22.1.7