Continuing Education Practice, Lifelong Learning and the Construction of an Accessible Higher Education in the United Kingdom

In the extreme volatility that has characterised UK higher education in the years since the mid 1980s, there is only one certainty: that fundamental change is now endemic and unpredictable. This article delineates briefly the major aspects of these changes and argues that there is a series of essentially political or ideological choices to be made about the future of higher education. Policy formulation and implementation in higher education do not take place autonomously, in a vacuum, but reflect the wider socio-political environment and prevailing economic conditions. The volatility of higher education thus reflects the post-Cold War, New Labour uncertainties which characterise British society in the early years of the twenty-first century (Taylor, Barr, and Steele, 2001, forthcoming).