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This paper explores recent changes in tertiary education policy in New Zealand, which are designed to address legitimation deficits. By offering an analysis of the making, and the subsequent unmaking, of quasi-markets in tertiary education, this paper attempts to describe how the state dealt with legitimation deficits resulting from providers' of tertiary education use of the adult and community education funding category to increase their revenues. In providing this description, the paper helps to provide a way of understanding how the state in New Zealand has responded to legitimation deficits by introducing a new regime of governance. The paper concludes by arguing that, in terms of its treatment of category 5.1 funding, this regime is supportive of neo-conservative goals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present paper raises questions about the use of the concept of reputation in sociological studies of the relationship between higher education and the labour market. Sociologists of education have yet to subject the concept of reputation to sustained critique and evaluation. This situation is unsatisfactory because a number of critical scholars claim that graduates earn a premium as a consequence of attending an elite institution for no reason other than the institution has such a reputation. However, research generally does not provide unequivocal support for such an effect and neither is the source of this effect clearly theorised or identified. One result of this lack of clarity is confusion over what is driving the formation of reputation. This paper advances field theory as a way of developing a sociology of reputation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper maps the global dimension of higher education and associated research, including the differentiation of national systems and institutions, while reflecting critically on theoretical tools for working this terrain. Arguably the most sustained theorisation of higher education is by Bourdieu: the paper explores the relevance and limits of Bourdieu's notions of field of power, agency, positioned and position-taking; drawing on Gramsci's notion of hegemony in explaining the dominant role played by universities from the United States. Noting there is greater ontological openness in global than national educational settings, and that Bourdieu's reading of structure/agency becomes trapped on the structure side, the paper discusses Sen on self-determining identity and Appadurai on global imagining, flows and 'scapes'. The dynamics of Bourdieu's competitive field of higher education continue to play out globally, but located within a larger and more disjunctive relational setting, and a setting that is less closed, than he suggests. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

At a time when 'personal development planning' is being rolled out across the UK higher education sector, this paper explores young adults' inclinations to plan for the future in relation to work, relationships and other aspects of life. Although Giddens has emphasised the prevalence of strategic life planning (or the 'colonisation of the future') in all strata of contemporary society, du Bois Reymond has argued that there are important differences by social class, with young people from more privileged backgrounds more likely than their peers to engage in such life-planning activities. This paper draws on interviews with 90 young adults (in their mid-20s) to question some of these assumptions about relationships between social location and propensity to plan for the future. It shows how, within this sample at least, there was a strong association between having had a privileged 'learning career' (such as attending a high-status university and identifying as an 'academic high flier') and a disinclination to form detailed plans for the future. In part, this appeared to be related to a strong sense of ontological security and the confidence to resist what Giddens terms 'an increasingly dominant temporal outlook'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Unlike most papers on education and ecology, this one is not concerned with the content of education but its organisation as a system and hence its purpose or finality. The central contention of the paper, which takes English education and training (or 'learning') as a case in point, is that in a new market-state formation the pursuit of short-term goals is tied to the global free-market economy over which any attempt at democratic control has been relinquished. At a time when humanity worldwide faces increasing change in the ecology that sustains it, this is considered to be 'ecocidally insane' and the opposite of any sort of learning from experience to alter behaviour in the future. The re-regulated new global market is seen in conclusion as a crisis response to the end of the previous Keynesian welfare nation-state formation. As such, it is argued to be unsustainable in any sense. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the organization and representation of time in certain kinds of undergraduate programs, here represented by a sociology program in a US university. Written requirements for the major are analyzed as constituting a 'chart' that defines academic time in terms of units of before-after relationships. The paper shows how students 'reuse' these temporal units when charting paths through the university and reckoning their academic work to specific futures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Theorists of friendship in contemporary society have suggested that our relationships with peers are characterised by their emphasis on openness, disclosure and emotional communication. Moreover, Beck and Beck-Gernsheim argue that friendship, as a deliberately sought, trusting partnership between two people, can play an important role in countering some of the negative consequences of a market-driven society, 'acting as a shared lifeline to take the weight of each other's confusions and weaknesses'. However, drawing on a series of in-depth interviews with students from nine different higher education institutions, this paper will argue that such theorists overlook significant complexity in the ways in which young adults choose to 'order' their friendships. Indeed, it will suggest that highly individualised and ruthlessly competitive approaches to academic study can be maintained alongside more socially cooperative relationships with friends and peers, played out in non-academic arenas. The paper will discuss the implications of this for both sociological theorising about friendship, and policy and practice within the higher education sector. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The provisions of the Higher Education Act (2004) have renewed interest in widening participation research. Therefore, this paper explores the development of this scholarly field, primarily in the United Kingdom, by examining major trends in the study of higher education. Political debates related to higher education, the prevailing structure of the sector and predominant sociological perspectives have largely shaped the empirical and theoretical concerns of widening participation research. These delimiting factors have resulted in incomplete accounts of the barriers to higher education, which do not fully explore the relationship between students' social characteristics, learning experiences and university careers. Furthermore, contemporary research runs the risk of reinventing the wheel and replicating the mistakes of the past, since there has been a collective act of forgetfulness with respect to earlier contributions. In contrast, this paper provides guidelines to facilitate a holistic agenda for future widening participation research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the spread of English as a medium of higher education in the Arab world, addressing questions about the relationship between higher education, language shift and cultural (re)production through such post‐colonial educational bilingualism. Drawing on exploratory ethnographic research, it documents how both Arabic and English have been implicated in the re‐configuring of collective identities through mass higher education in one Arab Gulf country against a context of rapid modernisation with a regional undercurrent of recurrent pan‐Arab and Islamist‐tinged nationalism. It examines how far the resulting linguistic‐cultural dualism amounts to a loss of linguistic–cultural diversity, and how far there is a linguistically‐framed discourse of resistance to such a process. Theoretically, the paper engages with discourses relating to socio‐cultural reproduction, collective identity, educational standardisation, change and cultural chauvinism, and markets. It offers insights into the potential for both language and higher education to act as tools or fields for cultural transformation and for resistance identity construction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the changing nature of professional practice in English further education. At a time when neo–liberal reform has significantly impacted on this under–researched and over–market–tested sector, little is known about who its practitioners are and how they construct meaning in their work. Sociological interest in the field has tended to focus on further education practitioners as either the subjects of market and managerial reform or as creative agents operating within the contradictions of audit and inspection cultures. In challenging such dualism, which is reflective of wider sociological thinking, the paper examines the ways in which agency and structure combine to produce a more transformative conception of the further education professional. The approach contrasts with a prevailing policy discourse that seeks to re–professionalise and modernise further education practice without interrogating either the terms of its professionalism or the neo–liberal practices in which it resides. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper draws upon a range of ideas and concepts developed by the British sociologist Basil Bernstein to examine recent challenges and changes encountered by members of professional occupations, including those who teach and research in higher education. The paper discusses and seeks to develop Bernstein's analysis of how particular structurings of knowledge may be related to the formation of occupational identities centred in what Bernstein refers to as 'inwardness' and 'inner dedication'. It then examines a range of challenges to such identities--particularly those arising from the 'regionalisation' of knowledge and from 'genericim'. The paper concludes by assessing the prospects for perpetuating such identities in an era of increasing marketization and managerialism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Much is made of the potential of lifelong learning for individuals and organisations. In this article we tend to make much less of it, certainly with respect to its use in universities to discipline academics. Nevertheless, we argue that academics now need to re-learn the positions they occupy and the stances they take in response to the marketisation of Australian universities. In particular, we suggest that the position of (pure) critique no longer commands attention in Australian contexts of higher education, although the paper does not suggest a disregard for a critical stance purely for the sake of participation. It is in understanding the interconnections between position and stance , and how they might be strategically performed during the everyday practices of academics, that a more promising way of engaging with the venalities of the market is envisaged; a strategy that could be described as 'sailing into the wind'. In discussing these matters, the paper draws on semi-structured interviews with academics located in university faculties/departments/schools of education along Australia's eastern seaboard. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous studies of higher education (HE) choice have tended to draw a strong contrast between the decisions made by young people from working-class backgrounds and those of their middle-class peers. This paper draws on a qualitative, longitudinal study to argue that such assumptions about social class homogeneity overlook the very different ways in which students from a similar (middle class) location come to understand the HE sector. It also suggests that while families have a strong influence on young people's conceptualisation of the sector, friends and peers play an important role in informing decisions about what constitutes a 'feasible' choice. Indeed, this paper shows how rankings within friendship groups were, in many cases, transposed directly onto a hierarchy of HE institutions and courses. On the basis of this evidence, it concludes that a two-step interaction between family and friends best explains the decision-making processes in which these young people were engaged. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper begins by highlighting the concerns of a number of commentators about what they perceived as an unprecedented incursion of market-oriented instrumental values in higher education in the last quarter of the twentieth century. Bernstein's analysis of these issues is shown to draw upon Durkheimian concepts of the sacred and the profane. Similarities and differences between Durkheim's and Bernstein's definitions of these concepts are examined, and Bernstein's use of them in relation to the formation of pedagogic identities is a major focus of the paper. The second part of the paper examines two particular aspects of Bernstein's exploration of the consequences of growing marketization and managerialization for identity change in education: the displacement of 'singulars' by 'regions', and the introduction of 'generic' pedagogic modes. In both cases, although perhaps to differing degrees, the sacred is displaced and, under certain conditions, the profane 'outer' is in danger of becoming the subjective 'inner'. Bernstein's discussion of generic modes is illustrated by reference to recent changes in teacher training in England and Wales. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines how the restructuring of Australia’s university system and the introduction of corporate managerialism has changed the work performed by academic staff. The paper illustrates how the emergence of higher education as both a major export industry and a vehicle for attaining greater international competitiveness has led to more intense regulation of academic work. Within a context of funding cutbacks, substantial inequities have emerged between and within universities, as they compete more aggressively for higher education markets. Hierarchical line management, with clear divisions between different categories of academic staff, has substantially replaced collegial forms of administration. This paper demonstrates how these processes have worked to undermine the effective implementation of Equal Employment Opportunity initiatives, as women remain concentrated in the lowest paid and least secure positions within universities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Beginning from the argument that the sociology of educational knowledge remains a sociology without a theory of knowledge, this paper illustrates the significance of the structuring of knowledge for the development of intellectual fields through a study of cultural studies in British higher education. The paper presents a means of bridging the divide between analyses of ‘relations to’ and ‘relations within’ education (Basil Bernstein) by conceiving educational knowledge as legitimation, i.e. as both positioned strategies within a field of struggles and potentially legitimate truth claims. First, the institutional trajectory of and claims made for cultural studies by its proponents are outlined. Analysis of the underlying principles of this language of legitimation is developed into a generative conceptualisation of modes of legitimation, and cultural studies is defined as a knower mode, where knowledge is reduced to the knower and epistemology replaced by sociology. Using this framework, cultural studies is then analysed in terms of: (i) relations to its institutional trajectory (developing Pierre Bourdieu’s ‘field’ approach); and (ii) relations within its mode of legitimation, focusing on their ramifications for the field’s structure. It is argued that legitimation embraces the insights of both approaches, thereby contributing to a cumulative and epistemological sociology of educational knowledge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Contract researchers constitute an expanding occupational group in UK higher education and contribute significantly to national research output Despite recent concern and debates over their marginal status and inferior conditions of employment, little is known about the actual complexities of contract researchers' working lives. Drawing upon qualitative interviews, an attempt is made to remedy this lacuna, by portraying certain kinds of occupational knowledge and practices utilised by social science contract researchers. The paper focuses on the understandings and strategies which are developed and refined as researchers attempt to sustain employment in a highly insecure realm. What is portrayed is not the technical expertise required for this kind of research, but rather the knowledge, acumen and action which are more informal, tacit and indeterminate. This paper examines the cognitive and interactional processes which need to be developed and combined with technical expertise, if employment is to be maintained in such a competitive and insecure field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Alongside debates concerning managerialism, marketisation and performativity, the question of accountability in higher education has come to the fore in recent commentary. Discussion of the subject has tended to be divided into two distinct camps. On the one hand, there are strong calls for more accountability to the public purse - a desire to witness more productive returns and efficiency on investment in higher education. On the other, there are academics who rail against the oppressive, panoptican-like nature of the audit culture, emphasising the debilitating effects of quality assurance mechanisms on academic life. The paper suggests that one way out of this impasse is to place the current accountability agenda - what Travers refers to as the 'new bureaucracy' - in the context of Max Weber's account of bureaucracy and rationality. Habermas' reconstructed version of Weber's work is identified as a possible means of delineating the reaches and limits of modern bureaucratic accountability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Labor market conditions, a pervasive public discourse about the benefits of higher education, and parental hopes push many young working-class people into university. The institutional culture and demands of university, however, often remain elusive and fraught with uncertainty. In this paper, I draw on qualitative interviews with first-generation, working-class students at a Canadian university to analyze the ways in which these students discuss their reasons to attend and their expectations for university, and the implications of their attitudes for their future success at university. Analysis of the interview data shows how the relatively high and risky investment of working-class youth in education leads to strong utilitarian and vocational orientations toward university. Although a narrow focus on the career potential of university is generally perceived as problematic, I argue that it may also help working-class students in their transition to university. Nonetheless, a critical educational process is necessary that not only helps working-class students achieve their educational and occupational goals, but also understand their unique status in a social institution that they entered as outsiders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite policy provision enabling sexuality education to address more than disease and pregnancy prevention, this focus continues to permeate many school programmes. This paper problematises the danger prevention emphasis in sexuality education, examines school's investment in it and asks how useful it is. The ways this kind of sexuality education may inhibit the reduction of 'negative' sexual outcomes and fail to support young people's sexual well-being is explored. Suggesting sexuality education might be conceptualisxed without this danger prevention emphasis necessitates an exploration of what might replace it. Foucault's work around an ethics of pleasure is drawn on as one example of how the objectives of sexuality education might be re-envisaged. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that the recent debate about plagiarism has taken on aspects of a moral panic, which reflects underlying anxieties about the state of higher education in the United Kingdom. In contrast to the moral absolutism of some commentators, we argue for the significance of posing the phenomenological question of ‘what is plagiarism in its appearing?’ We present a detailed idiographic analysis of two cases taken from a wider study of staff perceptions of plagiarism looking at the multiple meanings of plagiarism in the life‐world of individual staff. Our approach does not entail judgemental relativism; rather, it involves a proper recognition of the limitations of rule‐bound approaches to complex ethical matters. We argue for a virtues‐based approach to plagiarism, which recognises complexity, and for a more measured and collegial debate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite rapid growth in UK postgraduate education and a current focus on issues of access to higher education, consideration of possible social class differentials at the postgraduate level is missing from the sociological literature. Using Higher Education Statistics Agency data, this paper presents a preliminary investigation of the relationship between social class and progression to postgraduate study in England and considers the interplay with other salient variables, including subject of study, institutional type and first–degree achievement. Evidence of a social class differential in progression to higher degrees is used to test various sociological theories, particularly those proposed by Bourdieu. There is support for the concept of ‘institutional habitus’ developed in recent UK studies. It is concluded that there is scope for further in–depth empirical research into social class and postgraduate study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper moves beyond a conceptualization of globalization as a top-down imposition of policy directions 'from above' to focus on the active two-way dynamics between global, national and local levels of policy processes. Arguably, the particular 'case' examined here of 'quality' policy is especially appropriate as quality policy and golbalization rose to prominence in educational discourses at roughly the same time during the 1990s, suggesting that the two may be intimately interconnected. An analysis of new quality policy in Australian higher education for the 2000s is used as a vehicle to explore the dynamic reciprocity of global-national-local interactions in policy processes as revealed through empirical evidence collected during interviews with members of the national Australian Universities' Quality Agency. The concluding discussion highlights a key meta-level theme of education policy transfer between countries and the potential for global policy convergence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Government policy towards financial support for students means that students increasingly have to bear the costs of their education, often through acquiring significant student debt. This policy is largely justified with reference to the private benefits (through enhanced life-time earnings) that university graduates can expect to enjoy. Using evidence from a qualitative study of 49 students, this paper analyses the extent to which students are engaged in a process of rational weighing-up of the costs and benefits of higher education as implied by the policy stance. It also explores their interpretation of their financial position and Government policy towards them. It argues that students are very poorly informed about both the costs and benefits of higher education, and that financial outcomes are not created in an essentially private and individual fashion, but instead are strongly mediated by cultural and familial resources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses Pierre Bourdieu's multi-faceted understanding of the higher education process by considering the evolution of this domain since the end of the 1970s both in France and England. Following a brief review of Bourdieu's main interpretations of higher education, several theoretical shifts in his thought and practice over time are identified that have sought to accommodate the rapid changes that have occurred in the higher education sector in recent years. This theoretical repositioning is used to reflect on ideas of homological reasoning advanced by Bourdieu and others, and their limitations in the cross-national comparative exercise. Using the findings of her own comparative study of the evolution of the French and English higher education sectors, the author tests some of the conceptual tools developed by Bourdieu mainly during the 1960s and 1970s, and discusses claims for their universal validity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is an attempt to trace the history of working class male ambivalence towards both the structure and the processes of higher education. An analysis is attempted whereby the nature of working class masculinity as ambivalent regarding education is problematised and placed within a much larger social network for consideration. It is hypothesised here that as society changes from being production-led to information-led the nature of working class masculinity will have to change. Previously, working class masculinity had been inextricably linked to notions of hard, unpleasant work. This will have to change, and it is further hypothesised that at present we are witnessing the 'lag' as working class masculinity tries to catch up with the world of work, technology and the forces of Globalisation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to stimulate debate on developments within higher education. It is concerned primarily with the hopeful working out of a new kind of professional ethic. It explores the extent to which and ways in which academic staff working within the context of higher education might be seen as professionals with a shared set of values and expectations. It argues that the changing conditions of higher education have made it extremely difficult to speak of academic workers as a unified 'profession'. Moreover, the stratification of higher education has led to increased and deepening divisions of labour, within which academic workers have become increasingly isolated, while also becoming increasingly accountable. The only way out of this impasse, it is argued, is for academics to re-define their professionalism in terms of their underlying commitments and purposes. That task of re-definition is discussed in terms of a distinction between two competing notions of academic freedom: the traditional notion of academic freedom as freedom for academics, and an emergent notion of academic freedom as freedom for others. It is with reference to that emergent notion that this article speculates upon the possibility of a new professionalism for higher education, while recognising that a new professionalism of this kind would be deeply at odds with the prevailing managerialism of higher education as manifest in its quality-control mechanisms, accountability procedures, and planned systems of professional accreditation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Learning is high on the political agenda for post-compulsory education and training in England. Official discourses about learning assume a predominantly individualist stance, despite the development of theoretical models that stress the contextual and situated nature of learning. In a study following 50 young people through further education over 4 years, it became apparent that the institutional culture of the colleges had a significant impact upon students’ dispositions towards their learning. In this paper, we explore the nature and significance of this impact in a case-study sixth form college: an under-researched sector of educational provision. This is followed by a brief discussion of the implications of our analysis for issues of access, widening participation and inequality in relation to current proposals to reform age 16–19 educational provision in England. We conclude by identifying some of the questions about the fine-grained nature of that college culture that our data does not permit us to address directly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is based on a study conducted among four groups of people who have direct experience of how social-class position affects students' access to, and participation in, higher education. Intensive interviews were undertaken with 122 people deliberately chosen from a range of counties, schools and higher educational institutions in Ireland. Interviews were undertaken with 40 low-income working-class second-level students, 40 others at third level, 10 community workers who were both activists and parents in working-class communities, 16 teachers and school principals including four from fee-paying schools, and 16 second-level students from fee-paying secondary schools. The aim of the study was to examine the barriers experienced by low-income working-class students in accessing and succeeding in higher education. The study also set out to identify strategies for change as seen from the perspectives of the different groups, and to examine the ways in which more privileged students were able to maintain their educational advantage. Working within a broadly structuralist framework, the study identified three principal barriers facing working-class students: economic, social and cultural, and educational Our findings are in general concurrence, therefore, with those of Gambetta. However, our research suggests that while economic barriers are of prime importance, cultural and educational barriers are also of great significance. The three sets of barriers were also found to be highly interactive. The research challenges the view of both resistance and rational action theorists as to the value of structuralist analysis. It argues for a dynamic view of structures as sets of institutions and social relations which are visible, accountable and open to transformation. It is suggested that the dynamic role of the slate, and its collective and individual actors, in creating and maintaining inequality, needs to be more systematically addressed, especial]y in strongly (State) centralised education systems. Through the clarification of how the State and other education mediators create inequalities, it is possible to identify both the actors and the contexts where resistance is possible. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is part (and the outcome,) of my research on the inequality of access to Higher Education in Greece. Al) main focus will be the higher education entry National Examinations (`Genikes Exetasis,). Although my main data refer to the case of the metropolitan area of Athens, in this paper I will deal with inequalities of access to higher education at national level. I intend to show the differentiation, not just between, or within, the various higher education establishments and their respective disciplines (`hierarchisation of knowledge), but also between the various occupations in the labour market (`hierarchisation of occupations',). This will be done, after a brief reference to the international debates on the equally of opportunities in schools, the evolution of the Greek school system, and the relation between the structure of the school system and the main characteristics of the Greek job market. By using national statistics, I will construct some `Indices of Educational Opportunities' that show the patterns of `distribution' of students in the various universities and oilier higher education institutes. The students will be categorised according to their parents' occupation and educational level (i.e. father's occupational category, and father's and mother's level of education). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Effective supervision of research students is acknowledged to be a crucial factor in the latter's successful completion of the social science PhD. How well supervisors supervise is likely to be linked to why they choose to occupy their role. These reasons constitute the supervisor's vocabulary of motives and are examined in some detail from the perspective of inter relative social-psychology. Three dimensions of the vocabulary are depicted, intellectual, functional and subjective. The vocabulary is then situated within as specific locus, namely the institutional context of higher education. Links are then made between the vocabulary and various aspects of the formal value system of academia, a value system which legitimates the depicted vocabulary of motives and declares others to be illegitimate. The paper concludes with some comments on the relationship between why supervisors supervise and the qualify of that supervision, citing a range of factors influencing that relationship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1985, the Higher Education Equity Program was introduced by the Australian Government to improve the participation of those persons from social groups traditionally under-represented within higher education. In 1990, the program was incorporated within A Fair Chance For All which provided more specific details of the government's desire for a system-wide approach to equity issues. One result has been the proliferation of access and equity programs conducted by universities around the country and aimed at redressing the disadvantage of potential students. The alleged success of these programs is based on greater participation in and graduation from Australian universities by individuals from targeted disadvantaged groups. The research reported here, however, would suggest that such programs are prone to co-opt the language of equity and social justice, dependent as they are on satisfying statistically-orientated program performance indicators in order to receive recurrent government funding. Further, the paper argues that success in achieving equity within Australian higher education will remain limited unless the structural arrangements that work to construct social inequalities in mainstream higher education are addressed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is concerned with the me of the 'competency' movement in education and beyond. It argues that 'competency' should be understood in terms of a change in the social control of expertise in society involving a move from a relatively autonomous form of liberal professional community to more direct State control. This, in turn, is located within a broader analysis of the nature of regulation in late modern societies and draws upon the recent work of Giddens and Bernstein in order to analyse the positioning of expertise between its primary theoretical base in higher education and the social relations of everyday life with which it is concerned. The move by the National Council for Vocational Qualifications into the area of graduate level occupations ('NVQ level 5') is discussed with reference to the role of 'functional analysis' as a methodology for translating expertise into 'competencies' and controlling professional practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article studies how sexuality is deployed in regulative and tactical forms in higher education. It examines how masculinity through the internal discourses of education. It demonstrates how, on the basis of the normalization of masculinity, male teachers are able to regulate female student through the sexualizing of situations. This paper draws upon ethnographic research with 83 young, white, working-class women, aged seventeen to eighteen, on "caring courses, conducted over a period of 3 years in a Northern college of Further Education. This article is divided into three sections; section one examines how discourses of familialism, biological reproduction and hygiene, contribute towards the institutionalization and normalization of masculinity by framing the organization and experience of education. Section two examines how sexuality is ubiquitous in classroom interaction. Female students are able to draw upon sexuality as a tactical resource to challenge directly the legitimacy of masculine-regulative power.

This section presents several articles offering sociologists' views on cuts in British higher education as of 1984. John Brennan contributes a nation-wide view of the cuts in the public sector, outlines institutional policies and prejudices and suggests strategies for survival. His paper also shows that the distinctive ecology of public sector higher education poses both threats and opportunities for sociology. Meanwhile, Alan Waton provides a macro-view of the UGC action. Rosemary Deem writers of her experience as a County Councilor involved in working for the retention of courses in a public sector college and provides the only contribution with a happy ending. Also Ivan Reid discussed the problems and potentials of strategies for survival. According to Brennan, there never was a golden age for the polytechnics. He further said that they have experienced cuts and financial stringency over a long period of time. He also said that the effects have been gradual and have become almost taken for granted. Ivan Reid stated that it is difficult to establish whether sociology and sociology of education face threats over and above that posed to higher education in general. The intimate relationship of sociology of education with teacher education has meant that it has shared the fate of closures and cut-backs with the other disciplines of education and faced many of these well before the present situation.