Chapter 5: Accessing Postgraduate Education

This chapter considers the relationship of Access to HE provision with postgraduate study in the field of art and design. Previously, in Chapter 1, it has been suggested that Access courses generally have been seen as a means of enabling ‘second chance’ or mature students to enter undergraduate education. However, this function is too narrow or prescriptive; Access students sometimes engage with a wider variety of activity after they leave their courses. For example, it is appropriate that some Access to HE students progress directly onto postgraduate courses. My particular study (drawn from research I have undertaken over a period of four years) considers the learning stories of mature students who have previously studied on various Access to HE courses and have progressed directly onto a taught master’s programme in art and design. Within the context of postgraduate widening participation, mature students are those who were aged 21 and over at the start of their undergraduate study (HEFCE, 2013); however, this assumes that students have undertaken undergraduate study before their postgraduate course. In addition, Francis (2010) has argued that definitions associated with widening participation are mostly concerned with undergraduate study and need to be tailored to the different levels of higher education.