White Working Class Males in British Higher Education
events and activities . A number of students highlighted the support available at the university as influential in their choice to attend , as illustrated by these three quotes :
The large amount of support that ’ s available if you start falling behind say in the work , there ’ s a vast amount that you can get to help you catch up , do better , learn the stuff in the lectures in a different way to make it sink in better . There ’ s so much support for that kind of thing that it really does … I didn ’ t know about it until I came to an applicant day and spoke to some of the current students , and they said ‘ Yeah , there ’ s Maths Café , there ’ s office hours , you can speak to the lecturers directly after the lectures , you can email them ; all of this is available to you ’.
I think a community aspect , like I like Portsmouth ’ s idea of everyone supporting each other and everyone coming from different walks of life , meeting different people . … I think the societies and the stuff uni can offer is a really big highlight for me … So that was a real attraction for me , is all the societies and the sports clubs as well as the employability . It ’ s what the uni can offer itself in terms of how it comes across by supporting you and doing the best it can for you .
The university offers a range of help to all students ; financial , social , health and course specific . … My course has everything I wanted / expected and more and so was the only university I wanted to go to , otherwise I would have likely [ chosen ] employment or an apprenticeship .
Since this group may see attending university as a risk , as discussed in the previous section , and since this group is concerned about making the transition into university life , as will be discussed later in this report , highlighting the support services available during recruitment and outreach efforts may help make students more confident in their decision to pursue higher education .
For participants in this research project , the most discussed reason for choosing to pursue an undergraduate degree was employability . For most of the students in this study , higher education was viewed as a necessary part of improving their job prospects . This is further explored in the next section , which is focused on the role of employability on the higher education decision-making process for this group of students .
6.3 Career-certainty spectrum
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For the majority of the participants in this research project , employability was the biggest factor in their decision to pursue university . These quotes from focus group participants highlight the importance of their post-graduation career prospects :
As well as uni experience and a degree , it ’ s all about employability and this course had 91 % employability , so that ’ s the main reason why I came .
“ The main thing I thought about was the percentage of people that get a job related to the degree , because … I don ’ t want to be spending all the money and just be getting the same job that I ’ d be able to get without actually having a degree .”
--focus group participant