Degrees of Choice? Exploring the Structure/Agency Debate within Higher Education - A Study of Potential Students from Cornwall

This study is a quantitative, questionnaire based, project that sought to examine the structure/ agency debate amongst potential higher education students in Cornwall. Existing literature showed that there were two main approaches to access to higher education debates; those that put structural factors such as class and parental status first; and those that put more emphasis on the role of the individual. This project sought to examine both sides of this debate in an area of low socio-economic status; Cornwall. As such the research question for this project was: 'Which factors play the larger part in the decision making behaviour of potential imiversify students from Cornwall; the structural or the agency influenced factors?' In order to achieve this, 600 questionnaires were delivered to potential higher education students (current AS/A level students) at 12 colleges around the County. The questionnaire sought to examine the decision making factors of the students and also asked if the student plarmed on applying to University; there were 24 questions spread over 5 sections in total. A response rate of 53% meant that there were 319 cases for analysis, which were then entered into SPSS manually. Data analysis consisted of three main stages; firstly, the life goals data that was collected was subjected to factor analysis. Secondly a logistic regression model was constructed to represent the structural factors of the decision process; and lastly, a second logistic regression model was constructed that represented all the agency factors. The factor analysis revealed that there were three main themes of life goals that were held by the students; relationship goals; wealth and status goals; and altruistic goals. These were then made into separate variables and used in the second logistic regression model. The first model that was constructed; the structural model; was found not to be significant at the conventional (p < 0.05) level. The second model; the agency factors; was found to be statistically significant; however not all the variables were significant. A backwards L:R model revealed that only four of the variables significantly impacted on the dependent variable (intention to apply). As such the conclusions of this project, whilst limited because of the small sample size, argue that students from Cornwall who take more AS levels; would rather apply to the South-West than abroad; felt that their family should help with money whilst they were studying; and felt that University was worth all the assorted costs, are those students who are more likely to apply to University. To address the research question, the evidence collected in this study suggests that agency factors play a larger part in the decision making behaviour of potential students firom Cornwall; which has raised some interesting implications that require further research to explore further.FACULTY OF SOCIAL SCIENCE & BUSINES