As publicly funded multipurpose post-school institutions serving local and regional populations, further education colleges in England have important, if under-recognised, educational, social and economic roles. Colleges sit between secondary schools, universities and training providers. They provide academic, vocational, general and higher education as well as workforce training. Qualifications span the basic, intermediate and higher levels. Students are diverse in age and background. They include a disproportionate share of disadvantaged and second chance students. Further education colleges do not enjoy the status generally accorded to schools and universities. In part, this is a legacy of their history as technical colleges predominantly concerned with vocational education for industrial workers and employers. A shift to more diverse missions, together with their independence from local government, brought colleges into competition with better known institutions and more prestigious establishments, but also with other colleges. Issues of organisational identity, funding and status are acute, as highlighted by a wave of mergers and closures. Monitoring of colleges is against a narrow range of performance measures. Studies of the character and wider benefits of college learning are few. In this paper, concepts of boundary marking and boundary management are used to analyse the transition of colleges in England from technical and vocational institutions to general further education establishments. A relationship between boundary conditions and organisational identities is posited. Although further education was loosely defined in legislation, the division of labour between colleges, schools and universities in the 1950s and 1960s was uncomplicated. Where technical colleges were locations for part-time education and training geared to employment, grammar schools were places of general education leading to academic qualifications, and (for the few) universities were providers of undergraduate and postgraduate education. By contrast, the open and overlapping boundaries of modern-day general further education colleges are zones of competition with schools, universities and training organisations. The features and changes making for this transition are reviewed. Their implications for the social and community roles of colleges are examined. Issues in researching and evidencing the impacts of colleges are highlighted. Recent attempts by governments to recover a vocational mission or technical route for colleges are appraised, including their potential for inclusion and diversion.

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