Reasons people enrol in tertiary preparation courses

“Why did you enrol in Open Foundation?” This was one of the questions former students were asked as part of my PhD project looking at the impacts of this tertiary preparation program run by the University of Newcastle. The data were sourced from the findings of a survey of 350 students who had undertaken this mature age entry program between 1976 and 2012 and were now reflecting on their experiences before, during and after completing the program. The survey contained both quantitative questions in order to elicit demographic data; and qualitative short answer questions which provided more personalised accounts of these students’ experiences and which formed patterned responses or meanings within the data set (Braun and Clarke 2006). While it might have been expected that responses to this question might relate to educational, economic or career aspirations, given the purpose of universities as part of the social structure, when the data were analysed collectively, issues relating to “self-identity” appeared more frequently. Sometimes they related to confirming through education what students already knew about themselves, while at other times it was to prove to others that they had the capacity to achieve at this level of study. This paper reports on the diverse reasons given for enrolling in the program and looks specifically at identity construction; economic and career incentives; temporal factors; confronting a “disorienting dilemma; and other external factors as broad categories of analysis