An overview of research on student support:

In the quasi-marketised environment of the new, mass HE, centralised policy continues to dictate conditions and traditionally stable sources of income are being made increasingly unreliable. An increasing emphasis on student support within HE institutions (HEIs) has been made necessary by targets for student numbers and the funding that rests on these. These tensions have been added to for ‘post-1992’ universities, by the Widening Participation initiative that brings with it particular issues around recruitment and retention. In this context, it is not surprising that the issue of student support has triggered a raft of research and scholarship geared towards providing technical solutions. This paper argues that before such solutions are fixed on, HEIs need to investigate the conceptual underpinning of such mechanisms. Rather than focusing on the models and systems of support that are being developed in different HE settings and their effectiveness, the aim of this paper is to theorise the imperatives behind these, to look again at the context that informs their inception and how the various support structures position and identify students. Through this, the tensions that exist between financial incentives, ‘bums on seats’, Widening Participation and academic achievement rates will be explored. Introduction: the context In the current climate, the newfound emphasis on the retention of students in HE and interest in addressing the barriers to completion have the resonance of common sense. Quite apart from chiming with governmental considerations around the cost effectiveness of the (semi) public sector, there is a more teacherly concern that high drop out rates indicate that there is a mismatch between student expectations and abilities and the educational courses they are undertaking. One response to this is to investigate and devise support structures that seek to address these issues and provide technical solutions (e.g. Lawrence, 2004). In contrast, this paper will develop an analytical approach that originates from a Critical Theory perspective and as such, it will take a different starting point. To begin with, it will examine the context in which these common sense hegemonic concerns around retention have evolved. It will then go on to problematise and theorise the taken-for-granted relationships between HEIs and their students that underpin the technical solutions approach to this issue. i) New Labour and HE The much trumpeted ‘Third Way’ of New Labour at first glance appears to support the traditionally humanistic philosophy that underpins much public sector education. Third Wayism promotes the idea that the balance between the interests of capital and the human project of social justice and freedom is not nearly as tricky or as difficult to maintain as some (notably Critical) theorists have suggested. Indeed, Third Wayism