Increased participation in Higher Education (HE) is regarded by policy-makers at national and European levels as an important contribution to equal educational opportunities and the promotion of social mobility. However, Watson (2006, 93) argued that the far-reaching discourse about HE access ‘[…] is the most troublesome item in talk about HE’ because the research base in this area is fragmented to a degree that almost any conclusion can be drawn from it.’ Linked to this debate about HE participation, Vocational Education and Training (VET) policy in England has as one of its explicit aims increasing access to HE via this route. However, the implications of this debate spread much wider than England since they are germane to the trade-offs between the efficiency of labour market allocation and equality of educational opportunity (Bols and van de Werfhorst, 2013). If social mobility is partly dependent upon access to HE, then opening up pathways from vocational tracks to HE is arguably a feature to be promoted in European VET policy.

There is however little research that speaks to the either the effectiveness or the efficiency of this policy, since these connections made in policy discourse are not necessarily realised in practice.  Furthermore, international studies have shown that not all upper secondary education, particularly VET, leads to improved educational opportunities (Arum and Shavit, 1993; Leathwood and Hutchings, 2003; Pugsley, 2004). Certainly, educational participation beyond the compulsory school age has increased globally the in the UK constantly since 1945, with a massive increase in participation in full-time provision between 1985 and 1994 (Hayward, 2005; Hayward et al, 2005; Pring et al. 2009). This expansion can partly be attributed to the increased availability of vocationally-oriented qualifications aimed at 16-year olds. Subsequently, the Curriculum 2000 initiative increased the flexibility that was given to students to combine different types of qualifications, which has had an impact on the proportion applying to HE with a mixture of vocational and academic qualifications (Hoelscher et al. 2007). In the UK investigations into the educational value of some vocationally-oriented qualifications, in terms of their currency for further progression, have concluded that they only offer a ‘mirage of wider opportunities’ (Pugsley, 2004, p. 28). Instead, each wave of new vocationally-oriented qualifications has contributed to the overall tendency toward educational credentialism. Further, in terms of access to HE, despite the overall expansion of the sector, the incremental growth in student numbers remained greatest for those in the middle-class holding traditional GCE A-level qualifications (Ball, 2003; cf. also Sutton Trust, 2005).

Framed in this context, the Degrees of Success project interrogated the underlying policy assumption that increasing the numbers of people with vocational qualifications in HE promotes widening participation. This paper draws upon the data from this two-year research project that investigated the transitions of people with vocational qualifications to Higher Education (HE).The study involved a mixed-method design combining a survey, aimed at providing a meta-level descriptive account of the transitional terrain between Vocational Education and Training and HE, with the qualitative exploration of young people’s learning pathways and subjective experiences of transition.  The study aimed at systematically connecting the experiences in HE to students’ educational background and their learning careers. The latter concept constituted the overarching framework that guided the research, since it allows for the incorporation of both ‘objectively and subjectively defined experience [and] has the capacity for describing, in both objective and subjective senses, continuity and transformation ’ (Bloomer, 1997, p. 149). Transitions are conceptualised as situated at the interplay of structural and agentic forces, of multiple affordances and hindrances, that dialectically shape students’ pathways to HE and their learner trajectories.

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