Over the past twenty years, in the UK and across Europe, universities have increasingly opened their doors to non-traditional students. Yet while these institutions have in various ways sought to address the needs of this proliferating group, the system in which non-traditional students find themselves is one that is, for the greater part, designed for traditional students, and yields, rather than an atmosphere of togetherness and belonging, both barriers and inequalities.

This seminar draws from a series of in-depth biographical interviews that were part of an Erasmus+ EU funded project concerned with enhancing the employability of non-traditional students. In this project, the voices of non-traditional students in higher education were key to identifying the challenges they face in fitting in and ‘belonging’ in this environment, as well as their perceptions regarding the transition into the graduate labour market.

While employability is a key policy issue across Europe our research takes a critical stance as the stories told by our adult students reveal that higher education is not a level playing field. Issues of inequalities in relation to class, gender, ethnicity and age impacts on who gets access to particular types of jobs in the graduate labour market. In analysing our stories we drew on the work of Bourdieu and his concepts of habitus, capitals and field.

In the light of such concerns, the task of assisting non-traditional learners requires greater awareness and understanding with respect to students and staff alike, as well as, with respect to the labour market, employers. As has been observed, non-traditional students as opposed to traditional students may be “in a different place in life and view the world and their future differently” (Kasworm 2003a, p. 9) but they also provide an enormous source of potential and serving them effectively requires institutions to cultivate and enhance approaches and provide effective resources to successfully meet the needs of this group.