Student Support Services Project




Falling Down Ladders and Charming Snakes: the meanings and implications of young working class student drop out from HE: an international participative study
		The Institute for Access Studies (IAS), Staffordshire University was awarded funding from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, under their Ladders out of Poverty Programme, for a major research project on young working class student drop out from universities. The Joseph Rowntree Foundation is the largest independent funder of social science research in the country. Its priority is promoting knowledge-based change by supporting high quality research. In the words of its founder, it seeks to "search out the underlying causes of weakness or evil in the community, rather than remedying their more superficial manifestations." Its goal is nothing less than to "change the face" of society. So why is the question of working class drop-out so important to our society? The government has identified 50% participation in HE for those under 30 as one of its highest priorities and believes that access to education is the key to economic growth, social justice and regeneration. Yet the numbers of working class students are not growing and when they do enter universities, even those most geared to their needs, in areas where the traditional industries are in crisis and jobs are few, they are still dropping out. Are students falling down the ladder back into poverty, are they even ending up more disadvantaged than before? Are there alternative ways of conceptualising lifelong learning, drawing on international experience, which will allow the "poisonous snake" of drop-out to be "charmed" into more mobile and flexible opportunities for working class learners. The IAS designed this project to explore how drop-out is experienced and understood within local contexts and worked in four UK locations: Staffordshire University, England, University of Glamorgan, Wales, University of Ulster at Coleraine, Northern Ireland, and University of Paisley, Scotland. Expert partners include Professor Danny Saunders and Professor Gerry McAleavy. Previous research on drop-out has relied on impersonal surveys, but the approach of this project is much more participative, involving ex-students, members of the local community, employers and university staff in debate and in depth interviews about the meaning and perceptions of drop out locally and what the implications are for regeneration. The international dimension of the project is facilitated via the IAS international retention research network. This is a well-established group of experts from: UK, Australia, USA, Sweden, Norway, the Netherlands, Croatia, Canada, Eire, Germany and Italy. The project uses the network to analyse how working class drop-out has been experienced and addressed in other countries, and what new perspectives can be brought to break the current deadlock situation in the UK. This major research project was presented at an international colloquium hosted by Staffordshire University on Monday 28th June 2004, at which the research findings,policy recommendations and report were launched. Click here to see workshop presentations and papers which made up the colloquium publication Click here to see details of the final report 'From Life Crisis to Lifelong Learning' BACK TO TOP OF PAGE
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